Even North Korea Couldn’t Keep Me From Harry Potter

As anyone who pays any attention to the news whatsoever knows, this was a bit of a rough week for the Korean peninsula. The week was going along as usual until Tuesday. During my afternoon class, I was teaching, and all of the sudden, the power went out for a second and we heard a big bang. I jumped, and all of the students laughed at me. We never did figure out what had caused the short power outage, and the bang, but it set me on edge. After class was finished and I had sent all the children on their way home, I entered the teacher’s lounge to discover all of my coworkers deep in conversation. North Korea had bombed an island of the coast of Incheon.

My co-workers who haven’t been in Korea for very long were really afraid, and one even left early to call her mom. For some reason, despite this being the worst attack since the Korean war, I didn’t feel any fear. I am a bit worried about what’s going to happen in the next few weeks. The whole city is going about business as usual, but everyone is definitely on edge.

This weekend I went out of town with some friends and their friends, and as I was packing for the trip on Friday night. I made sure to include my passport, all of my financial information, and my college diploma, just in case something happened on Sunday before I got back. Luckily nothing has happened as of yet, but it’s a strange feeling having to think about these kind of possibilities. I’ve never checked the news so much in my life. I hope that just like the last major incident in March, everything will quickly return back to normal, and we can all go about our lives again without having to worry about North Korea pulling the trigger.

This past Friday was a very happy day for me. Due to the extreme cruelty of the Harry Potter Release Date planning commission, Harry Potter 7 will not be released in South Korea until December 15th, almost a month after the rest of the world has seen it. I was devastated when I heard this, luckily I have connections. Once the military had released the base from its North Korea imposed lockdown, one of my military friends took us to the theater on the military base, and for only 5 dollars, I got to sit there for 2 and a half hours eating concession stand hot tamales, and watching Harry prance about on screen.

The theatre was filled almost entirely with Americans. It was really weird. I haven’t seen American teenagers in almost two years now, I forgot how annoying they are. It was nice to be able to disappear into a crowd for a few hours, but it reaffirmed that I’m not quite ready to go back to being a full time American yet. I am going to have a very rough readjustment when I get back to the US.

This weekend I went to Namisum, an island in the middle of Bukhankang. It was really pretty with lots of trees and fresh air. There was even some snow blowing around on the ground. We also got the go to La Petite France. It’s this whole little village in the middle of no where that some Korean guy who really loved Le Petit Prince built. There are little statues and buildings dedicated to parts of the book. It’s a really cute place, even if it is pretty odd to find it in the middle of nowhere, South Korea. I went with two friends from my Korean classes and two of their friends from work. There were two Koreans, a French Korean, a Korean-American, and me…an incredibly pale, very non-Asian red-head. It was really fun though. Almost all of the conversation the entire weekend was in Korean, and I managed to hold my own quite well. I was probably the quietest member of the group, but that also had something to do with the fact that I am completely exhausted. I am now going to try to alleviate that problem by going to bed. Good night.

Too Tired to Think of Creative Title

This is going to be an incredibly short post because I am completely exhausted and just want to go to bed. This week was much better than last week. I was pretty happy, not too many complaints about work. The child in my class who is driving me insane is starting to calm down a smidgeon of a percentage, he still drives me crazy, but slightly less.

School is going alright, but I’m so tired in class that I’m not soaking up as much as I would like. I have to give a three minute speech this Thursday about anything I want. I’m open for topic ideas.

This weekend I went to a co-worker's wedding. It was interesting to see the Korean wedding. There wasn’t even really an officiator, they didn’t say “I do” or anything like that. Basically it was a giant photo shoot in a big hall with an amazing dress, some of their family performed songs for them, and both the bride and the groom’s fathers gave them lectures, then they bowed to each other’s parents, and that was the end of the ceremony. They then had a wardrobe change, came downstairs, cut a fake cake, drank a glass of champagne, and called it a day. Apparently there’s a private family ceremony where the parents throw grain on their daughter’s skirt, but other than that, Korean weddings are simple and fast. They also have an amazing buffet afterwards, with lots of delicious food. I ate a lot of sushi.

I also went to another K-Pop concert…This time it was Lee Seung Gi. I’m trying to see concerts from all different genres, so far I’ve got amazing solo act, band, and now versatile momma’s boy. It was a good concert in which the entire cast of one of my favorite dramas made an appearance on stage. One by one all of the main characters in 내 여자 친구는 구미호 (My Girlfriend is a Nine-tailed Fox) came out on stage, and they performed the entire soundtrack. It was pretty awesome. However it went on for over 3 hours…

All in all, life is good, I’m still happy and trying not to stress out too much over what step I need to take next.

Top: The whole cast of the drama, it's fuzzy because I was far away.

Bottom: Lee Seung Gi and Shin Min Ah

스트레스가 많이 밀려요… Stress is Piling Up

This week I was in a pretty foul mood all week. Finally I came to the realization that I am in severe need of a vacation…sadly my next day off work isn’t for another month and a half. Oh well. This semester of my Korean classes will finish in about three weeks, so I should gain a little bit of free time then. I think big city life is finally starting to get to me. Every day I am pushed and bumped, and rudely swept aside by thousands of people. Being from the Midwest, I’m not used to these kind of cramped quarters, and while it was novel and exciting at first, I think I’m finally getting tired of it. I am not a city girl, I’ve decided.

This Thursday was Pepero day. Pepero as I’m sure I mentioned last year on November 11th, is a delicious chocolate covered cookie stick. I bought a lot of Pepero to give to my students. However, my students also brought Pepero for me, so I ended up leaving school with more Pepero than I started the day with. I even tried to give some away to my Korean classmates, but they all had the same idea, so we just exchanged boxes, and all left with the same amount. I don’t think I will be eating Pepero again until next November 11th. Although, next year’s Pepero day is going to be amazing. It will be 11-11-11.

Thursday was the beginning of the G20 Summit in Seoul. Luckily, for the ease of my life, it was on the other side of town, and apart from the amped up police presence in the subways, I barely even noticed that a bunch of world leaders were here. Although they did pull out a bunch of stops to make Seoul look like a more exciting and nice city than it really is. Don’t get me wrong, I love Seoul. There is culture, and fun things to do and see almost everywhere. But they went a bit overboard for the summit. On Friday night, I was out with some friends, just walking around an area, that I’ve been to a million times before, and all of the sudden out of nowhere we see a hot air balloon, so we go over to check it out, and lining the small stream are hundreds of lantern floats depicting scenes from all over the world. It was beautiful, but if it hadn’t been for the international press present in the city, it wouldn’t have been there.

Saturday I went out for Greek food with some friends found a purple coat, then went home and holed up in my apartment. I’ve started being really greedy with my little free time. I should probably stop that. Today I went to church. Apparently for the Christmas program, the choir is performing selections from Handel’s Messiah. I don’t know how I managed to do it, but I have made it through 25 years of life without ever having heard anything from Handel’s Messiah, needless to say, the sight-reading today did not go well, but I am determined that next week will be much better.

Today after church, I came home, made so tuna rice balls…they were yummy. Then I watched the first episode of the new drama Secret Garden. There weren’t any subtitles yet, as it just came out yesterday, but I was able to guess most of the plot. Then all of the sudden, the concert scene came on. I was shocked, I wasn’t expecting it to be in the very first episode, but there it was, I watched carefully, sadly unable to pinpoint us in the large crowd shots. As I was beginning to lose hope a five second segment appeared, it was at just the right angle to be right behind us, and there silhouetted against the lights of the stage were two very tall, obviously not Korean girls, which I am positive were my friends, which means that the slightly less obtrusive figure to the right of them is ME!!!! I made a 3 second appearance in a Korean drama…my life is complete.

One Step Closer to my Dreams of K-Pop Stardom

This week was another exhausting, but mostly good week. I’m still having some trouble controlling one of my students. But I hope that eventually something will click, and he will realize that he has to sit down and be quiet or I’m just going to keep yelling at him every day for the rest of the school year. Other than that work is going well…the job part anyway. There’s been a bit of drama amongst the teachers lately. It’s caused this horrible division between the foreign and Korean staff, and I hate it. It feels like someone is always angry at someone else. I’m trying to play it neutral, but being Switzerland is really hard. I don’t want to upset any of the Korean teachers, so I’m being nice and helpful to them as much as I can when they come to me to complain about the other foreign teachers. Then the foreign teachers complain to me about the newest misunderstanding with the Korean staff, and I can see their side, but if I take it, then I’ll alienate the Korean staff…I hate dealing with drama, and being stuck in th

e middle of it.

School was pretty good this week. After class on Thursday as a class we all went out with our teacher. I wasn’t going to go, because they were going to a bar, but someone dragged me and promised we’d sit in a non-smoking section, so I went. It was interesting. I’ve never hung out with a teacher outside of the classroom before, except for that awkward subway ride a few weeks back. I didn’t stay too long, because I don’t enjoy being around people who are drinking, but I got to practice my Korean a little bit, and see my teacher in a different light.

Friday night I went to see my musician friend perform again. He really is a fantastic musician. Every time I go, even though it’s pretty much the same show, I still walk away in complete awe. I can do a lot of things well, but there’s not one thing in this world that I am simply amazing at, and I’m always in awe of those people who have found their niche, and can just do that one thing so well that it blows people away. Before the show I was waiting for some of my friends in the subway, and I witnessed Korean police using force for the first time since I’ve been in Korea. Some man was causing trouble, and he started shoving the police officer, so they had about four people forcibly restraining this guy, and he still managed to throw one of them to the ground. Good to see that the police here are top notch, especially with the G20 summit happening this week.

Saturday was an amazing day…quite possibly in the top ten of my life. It started out as any normal Saturday would. I slept late-ish got up and made myself some pancakes, got dressed, then caught the subway to meet a friend. We did a bit of shopping, then went to her side of town and hung out at her house for a little while. At 4 we went to meet a new friend. She just got to Korea, and we’ve decided to take her under our wings…basically because she shares our love of Korean dramas and Asian pop music. So we had dinner then all went to a K-Pop concert.

We saw a group called FT Island. They’re one of my favorite Korean pop bands; they even play instruments. Most of you have probably never heard of them, but just to give you an idea of how popular they are in Asia. While we were standing in line waiting to get inside we started talking to this Asian woman, whom we had assumed was Korean. However, she spoke flawless English, and turned out to be from Singapore. She has flown all the way to Korea from Singapore (a 6 hour $900 flight) just to see this group in concert. There were people from China and Japan, all of whom had traveled overseas just to see this group perform. You should you tube them, it’s definitely worth it.

Their concert was really good, and we had a great time, but what pushed Saturday into the top ten was what happened after the show. They played their encore, then the lead singer (who has an amazing voice) said that he had a friend who had come to the concert who wanted to come out and sing something for us. So this guy in a terrible shirt walks out, and I think, “Hey, I recognize him…he’s not a singer, he’s an actor.” So I was really confused because they started hanging all of these posters about this guys comeback album around the place and all of these girls appeared with signs that said OSKA on them, but the actor’s name isn’t OSKA it‘s Yoon Sang Hyun, so I was even more confused. Then through my limited Korean, I managed to understand that they were going to be using us to shoot a scene of a drama. Then this REALLY famous Korean actor walked into the room (Hyun Bin), and everyone starts screaming. So for the next half hour we got to be extras in a crowd scene for a Korean drama called Secret Garden. Dreams really do come true.

The drama starts airing this Saturday, and I don’t know what episode the concert scene will be in, but if we make the cut, I’ll definitely know, because I was standing by the only two ridiculously tall foreign girls in the audience… It was a really nice surprise ending to our happy day, and a nice welcome to Korea present for our new Drama loving friend.

So, now that I have been an extra in a Korean Drama, can I put that on my resume?

Have a good week, and bask in the knowledge that your degrees of separation from the world of Korean Drama stars just got one step shorter.

(Left= Hyun Bin, Right= Yoon Sang Hyun, Below= FT Island)