End of the Semester Happiness

I'm ecstatic about the semester being over, though possibly not as much as my students. Bounding in and out of the English room, crowding around me, asking for the millionth time about the photos by my desk, wanting to play UNO, and sneaking up on/scaring the bejeezus out of me.

 

Teacher Outing: CATS

With the end of the semester finally here, the Doam teachers headed to Seoul to see CATS the musical. My co-teacher SK kept telling me that she heard it was going to be the Original Broadway version, and I didn't realize that meant the musical would be in English. That discovery when the lights went down, the music started, and the first words were sung was so nice.

Having never seen, knowingly heard any of the music from, or read anything pertaining to Andrew Lloyd Webber's CATS, I have never liked CATS. I have never gotten a good vibe from it. I would see stills of the Broadway actors in costume and I would quite consciously screw my nose up. Even pop culture references, such as on Modern Family, couldn't convince me to want to see it. But I was very happy to have the experience in Korea, with Korean actors and surrounded by a Korean audience. 

"Do you feel the cold?"

NPR's "Pop Culture Happy Hour" podcast first perked my ears up to seeing Disney's animated film Frozen. By the time my sister posted the YouTube video of  "Let It Go" on my facebook timeline, I knew it was my destiny to see it. Desk-warming* in the middle of winter vacation in a foreign country, I quite literally related to the lyrics of the song. Kingdom of isolation, freezing cold, but I like the cold -- come on.

*Desk-warming: No classes and no students but required to come to school to "work" for eight hours a day, forty hours a week. It gets lonely and cold in the winter (the school turns off the heat).

So I was right there with my students when their excitement turned obsession turned adoration for the film - for the song "Let It Go" in particular - became part of every day conversation. I lost count of how many screen shots of Anna, Elsa, and Olaf I saw, how many renditions of "Let It Go" I heard in the hallways, and how many times the fifth grade boys imitated Elsa slamming her foot down, because I was lost in the fandom, too. I was just as ecstatic as my students when Moonee put the movie in for the last day of class. I still haven't seen the last half of the movie, but I have seen what it has done to Korea.

It's amazing to me what an impact it has had here. One of my favorite stories from the native English teacher group of "Frozen stories" is one that involves "Do you want to build a snowman?" being written in huge letters spanning across the board of the teacher's room. And "It doesn't have to be a snowman," written beneath it. It's a strange phenomenon, one I've talked plenty about with other teachers. The language is easy to say and the meaning straight forward. The conversation never quite hits the right note for me, however, and I've felt too much that my thoughts about it would be lost.

My thoughts: this song, "Let It Go," has done exactly what ideally my school wants me to do with the English language. It has made English fun. Sure, "let it go" might not be the most useful English phrase, but the students all know it and know what it means. They're expressing a feeling and a hope when they sing those words. They're imagining something when they hear, listen to, and sing along with the music. They are experiencing and relating to another language, a huge accomplishment they've done completely on their own.

That's why Korea hires native-speaking English teachers. Language is about communication but it is also about expression. There are intricacies in every language that captures the human spirit in ever so slightly a different way. Personally, I have my doubts about whether my presence or teaching can come close to touching that, but I do believe that, in its shiny Disney package, Frozen has brought a small part of that joy to Korea. 

That's why I haven't gotten "sick of" or "annoyed at" hearing the songs from Frozen. The premise is simply too delightful to me. Film is a powerful thing and people too often forget the role it can play. It's sometimes as simple as making pancakes for breakfast after watching America's favorite serial killer make them for his kids. Other times it causes people on opposite ends of the world to sing the same song, it seems, in perfect unison. 

"Do you feel the cold?" Moonee asked me one day. My boasting about Wisconsin winters seems to have given the Doam teachers an impression about me. I realize in talking with my parents that maybe that's not such a far-fetched question after all, because "cold" is relative. The fascination with Frozen in Korea is relative to what the filmmakers and animators perhaps wanted for this movie. It is relative to American and global reception. And isn't that the beauty. "Yes, I feel the cold," I told her.
  

--

I was cleaning up my classroom after a day of winter camp, jamming out to some Miley Cyrus Internet radio, when I heard the English door open. In comes a woman and her little daughter. The little girl was maybe two years old and she walks right up to me and asks,"How are you?" I was shocked. The mother clearly didn't know any English, but I knelt down and said, "I'm good, how are you?" She laughed, grabbed my hand and said, "Let's go together!" She starts walking towards the door, tugging me along. I say, "Oh I have to clean up." She looks at me and starts bounding around the classroom repeating, "Let's go together! Let's go together!" 

Soon they said goodbye and left. I felt flabbergasted; what exactly happened here? I was touched by the random visit in a way that made me laugh. She spoke English to me. She knew not only what she was saying but how to say it. She understood the etiquette. I sort of let my thoughts about how she learned it float up into the air, because it's obvious she wasn't hitting English language books, studying for hours on end. She was only maybe two years old. 

Korean Performances

I was incredibly excited to see my second Korean musical, December: The Unfinished Song, which happened to star one of K-pop's biggest stars, Kim Jun Su! I was sudo-fan girling, because I'm not going to pretend that I know anything about k-pop, but that boy can move his hips haha. My friend has been following his career very closely and was completely freaking out with the rest of the Korean peninsula when he appeared on stage. It was such a fun day.

The musical was good... I was pretty confused the entire time, though my friend and I pieced together the basic narrative afterwards. It wasn't just that it was all in Korean but that it was a crazy, Korean narrative, compete with flashbacks, flashforwards, and imagined memories - every angle was explored. It was a love story; there were these great outdoor balcony scenes (essential in any good love story) and scenes of school life, working in the office, street riots, drinking soju into the wee hours of the morning, and this fantastic army scene.

One of my favorite parts of the musical, three soldiers are goofing off as they patrol a fenced area. One of them moves forward as the other two lag behind, still laughing and joking. The first soldier calls back to the two jokesters, his tone different. I've seen The Hurt Locker enough times to prepare myself, but his shouts as his clueless friend carelessly treads forward coupled with the immediate explosion created a riveting, emotional moment. The special effects were amazing, the timing of the sounds and lighting spot on. And from the pitch black stage, a spot light appears as one of the soldiers, standing center stage, belts out this song that ends with this incredible high note. His voice fades as he falls backwards, the spot light stripping the stage of light seconds before he hits the ground. It was well done.

My experiences thus far in Korean theater is that it fittingly uses a lot of technology - video and artificial sound are prominent. Koreans love their screens, and the fact that the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts' theater seats are outfitted with small TV screens just reiterates that. Used throughout the December performance as year markers (that's how we figured all the time changes), the screens would flash on and off throughout the three-hour performance. I'm not sure I liked it, but it was an interesting aspect of the show.

On stage, too, video was projected, showing the silhouettes of the lovers dissolving into flying birds and so on. The first musical I saw in Korea, The Hunchback of Notre Dame: The Musical, was supported by a computerized orchestra and the Cookin' Nanta show I went to, though excellent, disappointed me a smidge with the overwhelming use of electronic medleys when they were drumming.

It's all so Korean -- I love it, truly. The flashiness, over-stimulation, and utilization of technology speaks to the earnestness and perfection that define Korean work ethic. And it makes for performances are that uniquely different from any I've ever seen before. There is a style and knack, or art, for putting on a show that I absolutely respect and continuously crave to see more of.