Big Nose

The other day some of the younger children came into my office. I don't teach them because they are in a really basic class, but they like to come in and talk to me.

They typically come in to say 'hello' and exchange a few of the English phrases they have memorized before heading off to their class. If I am completely honest after about five or ten minutes I am ready for peace and quite and an opportunity to get back to my book, but most days they are unassailable cute. They smile, jump around, and generally make a ruckus.

I don't know what was different about today. I don't know if they learned new words or if they were in a playful mood, but things did not follow their normal routine. After the customary 'hello' and 'how are you today?' they said, "Teacher has a big nose." This was followed by a chorus of 'big nose'.

I have never been been self continuous, at least not about my nose, but after this episode I checked my nose out in a mirror. It is a little big, at least by Korean standards. The kids who made the comments had freakishly small noses. (I thought about making fun of their small noses, but decided against it. It would be a little immature to make fun of some kindergarteners because they called me mean names.)

Yesterday, some of my high school students told me I had I 'high nose', and compared my nose with a shark fin. I think I need to get out of this country before I develop a complex.

Culture Shock

Teaching English in Korea exposes you to a lot of interesting cross cultural experiences. Most of the kids who are learning English have at least a little bit of knowledge about American culture. What is fun is seeing American culture expressed by Koreans.

For example, a couple months back there was a huge cultural festival, here in Gimhea, that celebrated the ancient kingdom that was based in Gimhea. There is a very interesting story about an Indian princess who saw the founder of this kingdom in a dream, and went on a journey to find him. Together they founded this kingdom.

What was particularly interesting about this festival was the pageant that accompanied it. It followed the story of this king and his queen, but not in the way I expected. It opened with traditional Korean music, introduced the characters, ect. Then all of a sudden, out comes a power ballad and I have been transported form ancient Korea to modern MTV.

It is not just the music and the singing (Oh yes there was singing a plenty. Koreans love to sing!). What really got me was the dancing. All you needed was a blond haired girl in a catholic school girl outfit and you would have had a Brittany Spears music video. As soon as I got my bearings and accepted that all of this was happening, they started rapping. Yes rapping, with all the customary dancing and jumping around that comes with that genre of music.

The show continued like this moving without warning from one musical style to another and proceeded to unfold the history of this ancient and important Korean kingdom.

I could not help but wonder what the older members of the audience thought about this. Some of them were probably around during the Korean War, and have seen their country move from war ravaged wreck, to developing economy, to an increasingly cosmopolitan and international culture. I could not help but wonder what they think about all of this change.