ShinGwang School Festival: A Photo/Video Essay

Back home, we have field day and science fairs. We hop around in sacks and throw water balloons; show off large models of molecules and frothing volcanoes. Given the American stereotype of Asians, you'd think they'd be all into the science fair thing, displaying their Ph.D.-level projects on long, neat tables, waiting with their spectacles and clipboards, ready to explain their Latest Stroke of Genius (patent pending) to the know-nothing waygook English teacher. But you'd be wrong, my friends. Very, very wrong.

Yes, the ShinGwang Middle School festival did have an area displaying some of the students' projects. But these projects had absolutely nothing to do with science, and it was a very small display. My students are into art - particularly performance art - and they don't give a rat's ass about anything academic if they can possibly find a way to avoid it. They are pushed so hard for 6 days a week, up to 14 hours a day, that when given the choice, they run from their schoolwork like woodland creatures from a forest fire. So when the school festival rolls around, they are not budding Einsteins. They are singers; they are dancers; they are artists. They are divas.

The day before the festival, as I was tripping merrily home at 4:30, the students were still excitedly running around the school with their craft supplies, hanging out the windows and singing songs. They had been as horrid all week as the little girl with the curl, but their vibes of excitement and anticipation even put me in a good mood. Large groups of students had been running up to me all day, yelling "Advertisement!" (the previous week's grade 3 lesson topic) and making me pinky promise that I would come to their class's room to participate in whatever they were cooking up. Being the wonderful teacher that I am, I carried through with my promises.

This turned out to be both a good and a bad thing. While I was happy to partake of the pizza in the Halloween cafe (not sure how Halloween and pizza go together, but that's ok), I was quite glad that I didn't ask exactly what sundae is until after I ate it.

Students slicing up sundae for my valiant consumption

Free hugs were distributed in the hallways.

Not a very good businessman.....

....but a very nice student (most of the time).

I shot balloons with a toy bow & arrow in one classroom, got a shoulder massage in another, and went shopping in the little second-hand market on the grade 1 hall. There was even a beauty parlor, where I got my nails and the back of my hand painted. Yes, it was supposed to be face paint, but when the cat-shaped stain finally wore off my hand 3 days later, I was happy I opted out of the facial adornment. I also chose not to get my hair done, mainly because crimping and perms are still en vogue here. (Many things about Korean fashion just scream 1980s in the USA.)

Then came the performance part of the festival. Around lunch time, everyone headed to a brand new building downtown with a huge, tricked-out performance space. There was a flurry of costume changes and students transformed from neatly uniformed children into people I could have easily mistaken for Asian adults. (Mind you, it's damn near impossible to tell the age of a Korean between 15 and 65 by anything outside of their clothes.) The music teacher/concert director/stage manager rehearsed each group until each eye was crossed and each ㅜ was dotted.

Performances included dancing and singing; solos, duets, and group performances; comedy and instrumental performances.

 

This is a traditional Korean percussion ensemble whose loud banging rehearsals I had to was privileged to listen to every day after school for months.

Okarina ensemble playing "My Heart Will Go On" (Koreans love sappy songs). The Okarina is the Korean equivalent of the recorder, which we all learned to play in elementary school, much to the dismay of any musical ear around.

And here we see a full-on performance of what I see in the hallways every day. Shut up, boy!

This first-grader is approximately half my height. Makes his singing somehow better.

And yes, they made me sing, too. It hardly needs to be said that this was not my idea, and it somehow evolved from Caity Teacher teaching an American pop song to the kids (I was not happy), to Caity Teacher singing in a chorus of students directed by Music Teacher (I was slightly less unhappy), to Caity Teacher singing in a trio with two other teachers (I was not at all happy). Of course the trio part was sprung upon me the previous morning, so at least I had little time to dread it. It seemed the other two teachers were more worried than I was, but then again, they aren't native English speakers and we sang in English (the only part of the original plan that was preserved).

"You Raise Me Up". Not quite gospel when sung with a collective Korean accent.

Naturally we did not stick to the published performance order, and my little ShinGwang Chorus of Englishee Singers somehow ended up performing immediately after a dance number by some leather-studded high school boys that basically brought down the house. The first grade girls in my chorus screamed like, well, middle school girls as the high school boys came past us through the wings, reaching out to touch them like they were rock stars and screaming even louder when the boys obliged. The audience was still in the throes of OMGHOTBOYS and screamed through most of our first song, including our little trio. There's no way they heard a note we sang, which is probably why most of the students told me the next day that I "sing pretty."

They did calm down towards the end of the first song and showed great support for their fellow students in the second song, clapping along and cheering loudly at the end. That was probably the most touching part -- even the mediocre performances received rousing applause and great, encouraging cheers from the other students. It's illustrative of one of the main differences I notice between the students here and what I remember from middle school. My students beat the living crap out of each other every day and play many of the same tricks and jokes on each other as we did in middle school, but it's never malicious or done to hurt other students' feelings. The kids here are genuinely kind to each other (as middle schoolers go). This goes hand-in-hand, I think, with the fact that people are far more trusting here (and presumably more trustworthy?), even in the cities. What is it that Koreans are doing that results in what seems to be a kinder, safer society? And do the ends justify whatever those means may be?

Strange things that Koreans believe: Lesson 1

Most important things first: I am completely floored that people are actually reading my blog -- and commenting, too!  You've made me even more excited about this little bloggy endeavor.  Let's hope I can keep things interesting so it's worth your while to keep reading and commenting!

I should also beg your forgiveness up front if this post is a little wonky.  I'm not sure if it's the jet lag finally catching up with me or the 1-hour Korean/Hangul crash course that I just finished, but I'm suddenly exhausted and my brain feels like jelly.  That probably won't keep me from going over the survival Korean chapter in our orientation handbook, though, as it looks like it might help clarify a lot of what the Korean teacher was so encouragingly throwing at us at warp speed.  While others are watching a Korean movie or hitting up the soju, my roommate and I are going to exercise our typing fingers and then hit the sack.

Yesterday I finally figured out why our a/c unit keeps shutting itself off: fear of FAN DEATH (dum dum dummmm).  I had been told about this before, but had forgotten about it.  Apparently it is a widely held belief in Korea that if you leave a fan or an air conditioner on overnight, it will suck the oxygen out of the air and kill you.  This is a phenomenon known (at least to westerners) as fan death.  The extremity of this belief is increasingly giving way to the milder version that sleeping with a fan or a/c on just makes you sick (instead of killing you), but being as how I've slept with both a fan and a/c on all night for most of my life, I am not inclined to buy into this.  And I kind of resent waking up at night in the Jeonju summer heat (which is 10 times worse than DC summers -- I swear the humidity borders on 99% here) because someone decided to protect me from my own reckless sleeping choices.

Fortunately I slept pretty well last night thanks to a rather tiring round of Korean-style karaoke.  We had originally intended to just find a bar in which to sample some of the local selection of soju, but the university seems to be on the outskirts of the city, and since classes aren't in session right now, we were hard pressed to find a place that was open.  Instead, we purchased some not-so-fine beer and soju from a FamilyMart and plopped down on the steps outside one of the closed establishments.  It hadn't cooled off much, and the preying mantises (manti?) presented a challenge in avoidance (they're like moths in the US, flocking in droves to lighted store windows -- perhaps after the other bugs that are drawn to light?), but there's something kind of fun about drinking in the street.  Probably because it's a serious no-no back home, and the last time I did it was in Paris, so fond memories and all.  Our group slowly grew larger as others in the same bar-less situation glommed on, and someone suggested that we find a karaoke room.

Yes, room; not bar.  They're little, in this case underground, BYOB establishments where you rent a small room for a certain amount of time and regale your group with your vocal (and sometimes dance) talent.  This is good, in that mass embarrassment is replaced with small-scale humiliation.  It's bad in that each person gets much more singing time, and people feel the need to put additional pressure on the more reluctant participants (i.e. me).  I've never really been one for karaoke -- I can never hear well enough to stay on pitch and the mediocre musical stylings of my tipsy fellow bar denizens pains my musical sensibilities.  Last night, I was the one causing pain, as I had warned my companions would happen.  They did not listen; I went ahead and got it over with; I was not asked to sing again.  The night ended with all of us belting out a long round of classics en masse and then retiring a good hour before our 1am curfew.  All in all it was good fun and another opportunity to get to know my fellow teachers.

This morning we had to report in shifts for the health check (necessary to secure an alien registration card), which brings me to the second item in Strange Things That Koreans Believe.  This exam included the works: height & weight, blood pressure, eye exam, blood work and a chest x-ray, all conducted in an assembly line of wide-eyed, green EPIK teachers.  I felt rather like a horse that was being looked over before purchase -- if I don't pass, will they not buy me?  We were told to fast for 6 hours before our designated examination time.  The strange thing about this was that water was also on the forbidden list.  I understand the need for fasting before bloodwork, and am accustomed to fasting for 8 hours rather than just 6.  But no water?  No coffee, no soda, sure.  But water??  And there was a pee test involved in the exam, which proved rather difficult for many people.  They gave us a small (perhaps 6 oz) container of orange juice after the phlebotomists had finished with us, but when you haven't had any water since the night before (and in my case are even more dehydrated from drinking the previous evening), your body just sucks that up like a sponge.  Nothing goes through, at least not for quite a while.  Add to that the fact that my exam shift wasn't until 11am and the toilets made available for our use were squatters, and I had some serious issues with peeing in a cup.  Now I'm no medical professional, but I can't see what purpose this served.  Perhaps they just wanted to make sure they got a very concentrated urine sample, which they certainly did from me.

I'm sure there must be some weird/unfounded stuff that Americans or other westerners believe, too, but as an insider it's hard for me to think of any.  Anyone else know of something?  Or perhaps have an insight into the water ban?

Oh, who am I kidding.  I'm going to bed now.  I'll study my Hangul later.  I need to rest my brain so I can make it through a full day of classes tomorrow.