War and Noribong

For those of you that guessed that I would have forgotten to turn the nozzle in my bathroom back to the sink faucet before my next post, you win. This morning made it a nice even four times that I've been doused with water when trying to turn on the faucet. I love Korea.

During one of my classes yesterday, I actually came to believe that war had officially broken out with North Korea. Here's the situation. I've been reading the headlines and keeping up with the news lately, and I'm aware of the escalating tensions between the U.S., Japan, South Korea and North Korea over the launch of a supposed communications satellite by the North Koreans. With that in my head, the following event happened.

As one of my classes was just beginning, the Vice Principal came over the public address system and made some sort of announcement. Now, I have heard him make announcements before, but never actually during classes. It's always either before, after or in-between classes, so this in and of itself was strange. Immediately after the announcement, my co-teacher took a very serious tone with the class and spoke to the students for about five minutes. During that period, she must have asked them a question, and the response I heard from the students was "Obama." It was right at that time when I started putting it all together in my head, "Holy crap! They just said Obama and she's being super serious right now. The U.S. must have done something about the North Korea situation. Holy crap!" I'm not kidding, until I asked her what she was talking to them about as soon as she finished, I totally thought a war either had broken out or was about to break out in the country just north of me, and had the potential to spill over here. As it turns out, she was scolding the students for one of them saying a bad word in Korean and the Vice Principal's announcement was because they found a digital camera and were trying to see if it belonged to one of the students. Wow was I off. Obviously it was a welcome relief, but I still would like to know what the students said when it sounded like "Obama" to me. I didn't ask my co-teacher for fear of total embarrassment.

The lunch situation at school has significantly improved over the last few days. A couple days ago, I was delighted to walk into the cafeteria and see all the children having spaghetti. Finally, a food I don't have to inquire about. As I get to the serving area, one of the cafeteria ladies runs over and starts talking to my co-teacher. Turns out they used some sort of seafood in the sauce for the spaghetti, but the head cafeteria lady knew of my aversion to seafood and made me my own sauce. So awesome! I was so grateful and totally caught off guard by the gesture. So she goes back to get me my spaghetti and returns with a huge heap of spaghetti in a bowl. Oh my gosh, it was so much spaghetti. I knew immediately there was no way I could finish it all, but I said thank you like twenty times. I took my huge bowl of spaghetti over to the table with all the teachers and as soon as they saw me, they all gawked at the amount of spaghetti I had. They had no idea that this was given to me, so they were under the assumption that I just helped myself to this mound of spaghetti. I did my best to explain, but I'm pretty sure they just thought I got all excited about having spaghetti and took a pile of it to eat. What makes this even funnier, is that obviously some of the students saw the huge bowl that I had, because the next day when I went to lunch, three different students at separate times came up to me and asked me if I liked spaghetti. Great, now they just think I'm the spaghetti man or something. Anyway, yesterday for lunch we had pork and today we had chicken. Things are definitely looking up!

After school yesterday we had our weekly volleyball practice and then had our official welcome dinner for all the new teachers. What I thought was the welcome dinner last week was actually a dinner thanking the teachers for their help with the Principal's son's wedding a few months ago. Regardless, we went back to the same duck restaurant that we went to last week. I wasn't too thrilled with that, but it was still better than a blow fish restaurant. During dinner I had the chance to talk a little with some of the other teachers, and through their broken English we were actually able to have some decent conversations. Topics included American customs, politics and North Korea. Actually, one really funny comment one of the teachers made to me was about Koreans feelings toward the Japanese. He told me that most Koreans don't like the Japanese because they are too friendly. Now, I must disagree with my Korean comrade on this, because I rather enjoyed the hospitality, kindness and friendliness of the Japanese when I went there a couple years ago. Nevertheless, I thought it was a pretty funny reason to dislike the Japanese.

After dinner is where the night gets interesting. I knew there was a possibility this may happen, but I was really hoping it wouldn't. We went to noribong. What is noribong you ask? Well, the too-friendly Japanese call it karaoke. I have zero interest in getting up in front of people and singing. It takes a lot of alcohol to make that happen. Plus, without Karlynn there to sing Endless Love with me, it's totally not worth it. So anyway, we get there and we're in this room that held about 15 of us. It was pretty big. They bring us Hite beer, fruit and other snacks and I sit there as a couple teachers adjust the lighting in the room to their liking and others start flipping through the book to see what they're going to sing. As I'm sitting there, I find myself distracted by the random highlights of Shaquille O'Neal from his LSU days playing on the TV screens. What the hell was that about? Anyway, all the teachers start taking turns singing, and while one of them sings, a bunch of others are up there dancing with them. They totally love it. There is no shame for these guys. Of course, being as though I am the foreigner, they were pleading with me to sing. I really did the best I could to avoid it. I sat there with the book for what had to be 15 minutes or so, hoping that it would take me long enough to the point where they're ready to leave. Well, it became apparent they weren't going to let that happen. So I'm fishing through this book, trying to figure out what the hell I'm going to get up there and sing in front of all these people. There are so many choices, yet I'm going through these songs, like "Do I even know enough words to get through any of these songs without looking like a total idiot?" Before I knew it, I was up there singing what has to be the absolute worst rendition ever of Rick James' Superfreak. I nailed the chorus, but as for the rest of the song, I couldn't have been more off. Now, the plus side is that it was so loud in there, and so many of the teachers were up there dancing, that it's very likely no one knows how bad I actually did. Especially after the obviously broken machine gave me a score of 99. I've included a video below of my co-teacher singing with another teacher, so you can kind of see the set up.

After the disaster that was noribong, my co-teacher drove me and another teacher home. As we were leaving the parking structure my co-teacher noticed a white guy walking on the sidewalk and asked me if I knew him. So this is the life of a minority, huh? He looks like you, you must know him. I actually thought it was really funny.

Today at school I found myself participating in more noribong. This time in class with the students. There are repetitive songs that are part of the lessons for the students to help them learn English, and when they sing, I sing. I just kind of laughed in my head today as I found myself up there singing again, just 12 hours removed from my first noribong experience. The funnier thing that happened in class today was when we were going over a map of the world and pointing out different countries. The map we were using was from a CD that has all the lesson plans on them. This is the standard CD that all elementary schools use, which makes this funnier I think. So anyway, there are maybe five countries that are highlighted on this map with the country's flag and a cartoon person "from" the country standing next to it. The countries I remember are America, Mexico, Uganda (I think), India and Korea.  What's funny about this is that it had Mexico placed in northern South America, about where Ecuador or Colombia is. I had to interrupt my co-teacher and explain to her and the class that the placement of Mexico was wrong and they all thought it was pretty funny. I've given Brent the heads up for when his classes get to that lesson.

I've decided that all my students who don't have English names are going to get one. Not only because it will be easier for me to remember, but because at some point they're probably going to get one anyway and I would like to make some sort of lasting impact on these kids. What better way to do that, than being a part of naming them in English, right? So, you'll be happy to know that I'm going to give them a list of names to choose from, and that list will include everyone I can think of back home. Unfortunately, I won't be able to use names that are not true American/English names. Sorry Mariana. I will be sure to update you if any of the students choose your names.

Now, I know some of you (Troy) are just waiting for some juicy story about me getting into some sort of Korean hijinks or almost causing an international incident or something, so this next one is for you (Troy). I like to call this incident "Shoegate." The other day, I totally forgot to take my shoes off when I entered the men's lounge area at school and was quickly scolded by one of the other teachers. And when I say scolded, I mean he pointed to my feet and said, "Oh! Shoes!" I quickly walked over to an area by the door and removed them. I can't believe I didn't get fired. That was a close one!

Brent, Ashley and I are going to try and attend a soccer game this weekend, so hopefully I'll have some good photos/stories from that for my next blog.

Meanwhile, here are some photos of the classroom I teach in, my cubby for my sandals at school, a cool view of Busan and me and my co-teacher. Also below is the aforementioned noribong video of my co-teacher and another teacher. Take care everyone!