The Surreal Life

For those of you who find my blog too long to read and want a shorter entry:

Yesterday, I started off my day by judging a Karaoke competition, and ended it by losing a dance contest in a hip-hop club. In between these two events, I broke at least 3 Korean laws.




For those of you who really love me and want to read about my life here:
Let's face it: Korea is Bizarro World. There are things here that just leave you scratching your head, wondering how it all happened. After a while, though, you just get used to it, accepting the surreal life here, and simply living in a constant state of about 40% bafflement. You see one country bus stop with an old couch at it and think "That's kind of strange. Hey look everybody! There's a couch at that bus stop! Neat!", then you see a row of people waiting for the bus in reproduction Chippendales, and don't even bat an eyelash. Odd things are always happening to the other foreigners (Matt and Helen play a concert to 4000 people at a Korean beef festival; Steve becomes a poster-boy for the local golfing range....) You just come to expect this surreality and accept it, and just get on with your life.

Yesterday was just another ordinary day here...

... Well, except that I had to go to school, for which I was rather displeased. Going to school for some sort of "Poreign Languagee Pestibal" (Foreign Language Festival) on a Saturday morning was not my idea of "pun".

It all started about 6 weeks ago, when my head teacher approached Melissa and I at school and asked us to come to school for two hours on a Saturday, for which we would be paid. It sounded like we would just have to show up, so we shrugged, and said that we would be there. What seemed so simple turned into one of the more stressful times that I've had here (What? What stress? Sorry.... that should read "The only stressful time I've had here"). To say that the organization was completely, 100% ass-backwards would be putting it mildly. I won't go into the details, but this damn "Festival" dominated my life and my classes for the past month, and cemented my decision not to re-sign my contract with the same school again (Am I staying in Korea? Hell yeah! Am I staying at Suncheon Jeil Keudong Hakkyo? Probably not!).

And so, yesterday morning, Melissa and I stumbled into school, waiting for what we were sure was going to be a train-wreck of a day, a culmination of the past month. And yet, we were surprised: The front hallway was decorated, there were so many kids jammed into the auditorium that it was standing room only, inside and outside (with kids watching through the windows as well). What a relief, the Festival was a success (the fact that nobody seemed to have a schedule or know what was going on is beside the point, okay?)....

The first thing that we had to judge was a "popsong competition", featuring kids singing English songs with a karaoke machine (!!). Now, as a high school teacher for many years, I've sat through many a "talent competition", and it's usually quite painful. The popsong competition was no exception, and made me feel a bit like I was on Korean Idol or something. And yet.... I loved it! Korean culture is more about singing than dancing. And if there's one song style that they excel at, it's the "Ballad". The airwaves are jammed with shaggy-haired Korean boy bands with voices like melting chocolate, whimpering into their microphones over "sarang"(love) in music videos where everybody dies at the end or everybody is a kitten or something. It should not have been surprising, then, when a few of my male students got on stage, tugged at their shaggy sideburns to make them longer, and wailed out a few heartwrenching hit songs. I was floored by their voices, and began to relax into the surreality of it all as it occurred to me that it wasn't even 10:00 on a Saturday morning and I was judging a damn Karaoke competition. (Melissa and I rocked the house with a beautiful rendition of "Let it Be", briefly forgetting that every Korean student comes equipped with a cell phone that also takes pictures and records videos, leaving us open to blackmail for many years to come.)

Following the Karaoke competition was a "speech contest" where every competitor read the exact same paragraph and, the highlight of the day: The English Skit Competition.

Melissa and I have been preparing the students for this Skit competition since September. It was a long, extremely frustrating month, but let's not get into that now. The kids did an awesome job but still, the mere mention of Aesop's Fables is enough to make me curl into a fetal position and start banging my head on the floor.

Here's the law-breaking part:

I headed off to pick up my scooter from my hot mechanic, Do Hyun. I walked into the bike shop and was greeted by one of my students (!) who was showing all the mechanic guys a video on his cell phone of me massacring "Let it Be" on a stage in front of 300 kids. Great.

I had decided that I wanted to ride my scooter out to the Suncheon Bay reed fields so Do Hyun looked it up on his GPS, drew me a map and sent me on my way.... ON THE HIGHWAY. Although not really that dangerous, it was a tad on the illegal side. Coupled with the fact that I don't have a license (Korean or otherwise), insurance or registration, I was kind of flouting a few laws. I made it there and back in one piece, finding a different way home that didn't involve the prospect of deportation.

And the hip-hop club?

Later that evening, I met up with Melissa and her boyfriend Chris. They were planning to head out to a Korean hip-hop bar known as Black (Yes... yes... you read that correctly). Melissa and I got there first, getting in for half price by pretending that we didn't speak Korean and didn't understand the concept of a cover charge.

And then we hit the dance floor.

And we were ushered back to our seats by a guy in a white suit.

And we realized that we had just crashed a dance competition.

(we won third place)

Certain things in Korea are imitations of things we have back home, but they are just a little bit off. It's as if Korea sometimes wants to emulate certain American things, but without fully understanding them.... as if they read an article about it, and decided to go ahead and do it. Pizza has corn on it. Cole slaw comes topped with a cup of ketchup and mayonnaise. Three year olds have perms.

Reflect on this for a moment, then try to imagine what kind of learned-from-imported-music-videos moves one might find at a hip-hop club. It was absolutely insane. Melissa, Paula and I danced all night, going from one guy who could have made a worst-dressed list (were they not already winning for world's most spastic dancing) to another until the wee hours of the morning.

Today, my plans include eating a sandwich and doing the dishes. However, I'm pretty sure that something weird will happen anyway and leave me shaking my head, thinking "Only in Korea".