No Business Like Show Business

Hoowhee! It has been a while, my friends, it has been a WHILE. Terribly sorry, but I was busy flexing my well-honed theatre muscles in order to put on a production of great eminence and renown. Not many people have the opportunity to make use of the theatre skills they acquired throughout high school and college just six months after graduation, but I am one of the lucky few. 

I am, of course, referring to the annual Hanyang Oregon Preschool Concert. 

What? You've never heard of it? Have you been living in hole?? Well, let me give you an overview.

A little over two weeks ago, Angela and I were informed that we would be taking part in the yearly concert put on by the kindergarten (I am coming to realize that the terms "kindergarten" and "preschool" are interchangeable here). Apparently, they had been rehearsing for said concert for over two months, but, as per usual, no one thought it was necessary to mention this to us until it was time for us to join the rehearsal process. 

So, for two weeks, Angela and I forwent our usual kindergarten teaching duties in order to take part in what would become one of the most curious amalgamations of performances that I have ever witnessed. 

There are four kindergarten classes in all, each named after the international symbol of children: fruit. Cherry class, Apple class, Kiwi class, and Papaya class each had the daunting task of performing at least one song and dance number as well as a skit of some sort. The kicker: all, all of it had to be in English. 

Now, I adore my kindergarten students, but most of them cannot manage to string together words from their English vocabularies in order form a complete sentence. If they do have this skill, it becomes a challenging game of "Guess Which Word the Child Just Tried to Pronounce." Suffice it to say, I was a bit skeptical as to whether they would be able to remember entire scripts in a foreign language. 

Never underestimate the abilities of small children. 

The day of the performance, we traveled to a real, honest-to-God theatre near Hanyang Oregon (up to this point I had been under the impression that the concert would take place at the school). I practically began drooling at the sight of lighting instruments, a fly system, the booth, and a proscenium. I began running around like an inmate just released on parole, racing up the old, metal spiral staircase to luxuriate in the catwalks and stroking the curtains like they were long lost childhood possessions. I've missed theatre just a bit since I arrived in Korea. 

As I lapped up the atmosphere of the theatre, a crew of men arrived and began defacing it with the most flamboyant, garish set ever conceived by man or beast. I do hope no one takes offense when I say this, but the best way to describe the stage by the time they were finished with it is as a set for a gay pride parade for children. 

The set designer seemed to think that "rainbow" was an apt color scheme for the production, as everything from the footlights to the castle backdrop to the inexplicable giant inflatable mushrooms looked like they were painted by ROY G. BIV himself. 

Check it out. I took this photo before the actual performance, during the pre-show run-through, so you don't get the full effect of the costumes, but you get the idea. This is a shot of Apple class rehearsing "I Have a Dream." No relation to the speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. 

The costumes added a whole new, Liberace-like effect to the production. As the children arrived, the air tingled and quivered with the kind of excitement that can only precede a theatrical production. I hadn't had a chance to see the costumes before they climbed into them, but once they did, the dressing room was transformed into a dwelling of creatures that resembled cartoon characters. And what costumes they were!                                                                                            

Here you see Dorothy and Julia prepping 

for Papaya's dance number, "The Twist," and Jenny all decked out in her baby chick outfit for Cherry's rendition of "Are you My Mommy?" 

Below you can observe the brides and grooms preparing for the Apple wedding ceremony. 

And, of course, Kiwi class in their . . . cheerleader . . .? outfits getting ready for the "Hey Mickey" cheer dance. 

Despite the fact that the set had no relation whatsoever to the performance itself, and that the costumes only occasionally matched the song or skit my students were trying to enact, the whole thing turned out to be a wonderfully exuberant, vaudevillian production. What exactly the teachers who came up with the concept for the show intended by combining a children's wedding ceremony, an imitation of a Korean soldier television show, and a retelling of a Korean folk tale with a 50's-like sock-hop dance, cheerleading, and a Taekwondo demonstration (among other things) is unclear, but it was marvelously entertaining. 

I was the MC for the first half of the show, and later got to show off my acting chops by playing my student's girlfriend (don't ask, absolutely mystifying) and then running onstage as an ogre/goblin who emerges from a pumpkin in order to punish the selfish Nolbu of Korean folk fame. Yes indeedy. 

The kids were very pleased with themselves, and, as I could see from their delighted expressions in the audience, so were their parents. Strange as it may seem, I felt a bit like a proud parent myself, watching my three to six-year-old students pull off a full length production like little virtuosos. 

Now that the production is over, it seems a shame to go back to teaching them as I did before. After seeing them sing and dance with such gusto, how can I honorably return to shouting English letters at them as they jabber in Korean, color their desks, and pick their noses? 

The only solution is to begin covertly teaching them another production behind the backs of the Korean kindergarten teachers. Next stop: Korean equivalent of Broadway with "Fiddler on the Roof." 

I think they can handle it.  

Hanguk Halloween and Expat Elections

You'll note that I've made some changes to the format at the request of some whose eyes are too aged to read light print on a black background with ease. I'm not sure I like what I've done with it, so I might be dinking around with the settings for a while. Feedback and suggestions are welcome. 

Since my last post, there have been two events that were very strange to experience outside of the U.S. I think I'll write about them according to both chronology and importance. 

So the first event up to bat is . . .

HALLOWEEN

Halloween, as you probably know, is traditionally a western holiday, with its origins in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (thank you Wikipedia), though it has more recently become popular in many non-western countries thanks to the glorification of American pop culture. So, as you can imagine, I was very interested to see Korea's take on this spooky pastime. 

My hagwon originally planned to have a Halloween party for all of the students, but, like so many other plans at Hanyang Oregon Language Institute, no one ever followed through. An unfortunate situation, but I still feel a bit new here to start running around and demanding that the other teachers set up a haunted house, make caramel apples, and create a pin-the-tail-on-the-monster game for the students. 

Still, most of the students managed to come to school in some fantastic as well as inscrutable costumes. 

This is one of my favorites. Who wants to take a stab at what Dorothy dressed up as? It's okay--she didn't know either. It reminds me of a blue version of those muppets on acid in Labyrinth who take their heads off and throw them at Jennifer Connelly. 

I lied a little bit earlier; the kindergarten teachers actually did manage to plan a nice party for the four kindergarten classes, which somehow involved handing out wrapped presents to the students, but the kindergarten is sort of separate from the rest of the school, so that was a bit different. 

The problem with throwing a Halloween party for kindergarteners is the very essence of Halloween: it's supposed to be scary. The older children enjoyed themselves immensely, but when I arrived, several of them quickly ushered me into a classroom, where I found little Tommy cowering under a desk, refusing to come out on account of the creepy decorations and the scary costumes some of teachers were wearing. 

I was eventually able to coax Tommy out of his lair of safety, at which point I witnessed

something not generally associated with the spirit of Halloween: the compassion of children. Sure, my students frequently punch and hit each other, say things in Korean that make the other students cry, and refuse to share the toys, but every once in a while I'll spot an instance that proves that they actually care about each other. In the picture to the right, you see Paul and Danny, some of my oldest kindergarten students, comforting poor Tommy, which they proceeded to do for the remainder of the party. Tommy, as you may have surmised, is the one in the middle with the expression of pure terror on his face. 

I myself put together an unimaginably lame costume, composed entirely from a cheap witch hat that I found at a grocery store and a scarf that I tried to pass off as a cape. At least all of my students understood what I was supposed to be. 

Annie's usually much livelier than this, I promise. It almost looks like we color coordinated, doesn't it? 

After the kindergarten party, the rest of the Halloween teaching day involved me drawing deformed versions of haunted houses, pumpkins, vampires, and ghosts on the white board in order to teach my students these words in English. A well-experienced teacher would have had the foresight to bring in pictures of these glorious symbols of Halloween, but alas . . . well-experienced is far from the correct adjective to describe my skill level. 

I also had one heck of a time explaining exactly what trick-or-treating actually is. I believe, though cannot confirm, that some of my students understand the concept of trick-or-treating, but the rest of them appeared to think that the phrase is English for "give me candy! NOW!," and can be said at any moment, in any situation. So, in each class I would try to demonstrate the practice by running outside of the classroom, knocking on the door, and shouting "Trick-or-Treat!" when a student opened it. Despite my best efforts, most of the students would just race up to me with their hands out and very adamantly exclaim, "TRICK. OR. TREAT!" I would give them a piece of candy, at which point they would hold out the other hand and repeat the phrase, as if I may have forgotten that I just gave them candy. 

It was a fun, if distorted version of the Halloween I know and love. 

On to more serious matters:

THE ELECTION

I cannot accurately describe how bizarre it was to be outside of the states on November 4th. It would have been strange during any election year, but, as we have been made painfully aware of by the media, this was a historic election, and it was the first time I regretted coming to South Korea. Not for long, of course, but where on earth is teleportation technology when you need it? I could have zipped right back to Portland for the announcement of the results and the subsequent raucous celebration and been back in time to teach my morning classes. 

Actually, that's not in any way true because of the 17 hour time difference (yes, it used to be 16, but apparently daylight savings time isn't very "in" here), but since the technology still doesn't exist (I'm looking at you, NASA), I feel I have the right to make hypothetical claims here.

So, like any anal-retentive, terrified American, I spent the weeks preceding the election consuming every tidbit of information I could find from any news source I deem reliable--The New York Times, CNN, The BBC, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report . . . 

I watched. I waited. I annoyed my coworkers with my constant babble about American politics.

And then. 

Early afternoon on November 5th at Hanyang Oregon, I saw that Barack Obama had won Pennsylvania. And Ohio. Projected to win in Florida and Virginia. I hadn't wanted to believe it until that exact moment, was sure some terrible Bradley Effect would come and pull the rug of hope right out from under my feet, but suddenly all that built up stress from watching the campaign unfold just dissolved. I didn't start screaming or crying like I expected I would; instead I sat quietly smiling at my computer screen, unaware of anything else going on around me. And I couldn't wipe that smile off my face for the rest of the day. 

I felt a bit like a brain-washing imperialist when I spent the rest of the day teaching my classes to chant "O-bam-a! O-bam-a!," but I couldn't help myself. The entire kindergarten now knows that if they come up to me and say, "Teacher! Obama, very, very, very good!" they will receive an extremely enthusiastic high five. 

But it's not all imperialism. It's easy to forget how much more informed other countries are about the rest of the world than America is. Almost all of my students already knew who Barack Obama was, some even exclaiming, "Teacher! I see Obama TV! Very good!" High five.

If the vote had been up to the entire world, Obama would have won in a ridiculous landslide. Somewhere along the campaign way, I heard a conservative pundit remark that "other countries aren't afraid of Barack Obama, but they're afraid of John McCain." Is this a good thing? Shouldn't we be hoping to work together with other countries rather than to strike fear into their hearts? In The New York Times, one columnist wrote that Obama was ahead in the polls because he has a similar mindset to Ronald Reagan, who said, "Whatever else history may say about me when I'm gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears." I think this perfectly encapsulates the difference between the way McCain ran his campaign, and the way Obama ran his.  

Now, I don't think John McCain is a bad person. I was pleased to hear he gave a very decent, gracious concession speech. I feel a bit sorry for him, really, because I think he compromised so much of what he used to believe in in order to run a very Republican campaign. On election day, as the final numbers came in, he looked much older than he did just the day before. 

Sarah Palin, however, I have no pity for. But that's another long rant waiting to happen. 

I've never been a very patriotic person, but, like so many others, this is the first time in my life when I can say I really am proud of my country. I'm not so naive and idealistic that I think Obama's going to pop into the White House and sweep away the nation's problems with a wave of his hand, but I do think that, for the first time in 8 years, we will have a president who is intelligent, rational, and well-spoken. A president who has the best interests of our country at heart. 

Almost more important than the president himself is what this election says about the evolving mindset of the American people. The majority didn't vote out of fear, they voted out of hope. Race is still an issue in our country, but it wasn't enough of an issue to stop us from electing a biracial man to our highest office. We're making strides, people, we're making strides. 

The only damper on this election for me was the passing of the gay marriage bans. I mean, California? Really? We thought you were a blue state! As Jon Stewart pointed out, some of the black voters in California who helped elect Obama must also have voted to ban gay marriage. So you're just going to turn it right around and take away the freedoms of others? That just doesn't make sense to me. 

The gay rights movement clearly has a much farther distance to travel than the civil rights movement at this point, but there are such strong parallels between the two that I can't believe it's not pointed out more often. Let's not forget that interracial marriage was still illegal in 16 states until 1967. 

I could go on and on, but this post is already extraordinary long, and I think it's time that I stop playing make-believe political columnist. 

Happy Halloween and Gobama.