KPOP FRIDAY

Happy Friday!

I have a couple of great things on my plate for this weekend. Tonight I am going into Gangnam with the gang to meet my friend Olivia's Dad who is visiting her in Korea! (Hint Mom and Dad you should come visit me!)

Tomorrow I am going to head into Seoul on a "tour bus" with some teachers and parents of students of my school. I believe we are going hiking and maybe visiting the President's house. I was invited to go on this outing by my Vice Principal; however, our communication that day was spotty. I was told to wear comfortable clothes but bring my ID card for police to check and he said something about the White House. So, I am not really sure what I am getting myself into!

For this Friday's KPOP I am going to leave you a song called "With U" by Big Bang. Big Bang is one of the most popular boy groups in Korea. I recently purchased a pair of socks with a member of Big Bang on them.

Enjoy "With U" by Big Bang. Happy Friday!

Stills From Field Day

Here are some pictures I took on Field Day, during the two day Festival extravaganza at Bugok Middle School. I hope you enjoy them!

Ajumma's Take on Korean Halloween

Many people have been asking me if Korean's celebrate Halloween. The answer is no; however, I did see a very small number Korean's dressed up in costume on the Saturday night of Halloween weekend. But the foreigners living in Korea celebrate Halloween together. We ventured into Hongdae (the foreigner/Korean club district in Seoul) on Saturday night to check out the Halloween scene and go to a foreigner Halloween party at a club called Soundaholic. Hongdae's streets are always packed with "party people" from 10 pm straight until 6 am. It is a great environment to spend your weekends in; especially if it is Halloween. Since the area is full of foreigners the streets were littered with costumes. It even had the same feeling of Halloween on State Street (which made our Wisco crew so happy!)

For costumes, (thanks to Quinn's brilliant idea) most of my friends and I dressed up as AJUMMA'S. An ajumma is a older married Korean women. They are characterized as short women, with short permed hair. They always are wearing massive visors and ridiculously patterned and colored pants, shirts and vests (many ajummas also love to rock rhinestones). Ajumma's are also notorious for their feisty attitude. They are the ones to start fights on the streets and push people out of the way in order to get a seat on the subway. Overall, the ajumma's of Korean are a "hoot" (dana erdmann) and we thought it would be halairous to dress as them for Halloween. Here are some pictures I found online of Korean Ajumma's.
We were alittle nervous our costumes would possible offend some Koreans; but in the contrary, they were a HUGE hit. It was like having the best costume on State Street. Every two Koreans that would pass our large group of ajumma's would want to take a picture of us or with us. I felt like a celebrity. It was a blast and one of my favorite nights I have had in Korea! Check out some of the pictures from my Korean Halloween as an ajumma.Here is a short video of my friends Eric and Quinn (men dressed as ajumma's) dancing like celebrities in the streets of Hongdae.

KPOP FRIDAY and Pepero Day!

Happy Friday! and Pepero Day! (well Pepero Day was yesterday.)

Pepero Day is on November 11th each year. It is a holiday created by Lotte (a massive company in Korea). On Pepero Day you exchange Pepero's (chocolate covered pretzel candy made by Lotte) with people you like or love. Therefore, it has grown to be a mini Valentines Day in Korea. Pepero Day in school was awesome. Since I am still the only white girl in school, everyone still thinks I am beautiful and amazing. So pretty much all of the kids still love me and gave me Pepero. I think I may have eaten upwards or 15 boxes of Pepero and by the end of the day I was completely Pepero'd out. Overall, completely commercial holiday, but who can hate on a candy holiday. Pepero Day gets a thumbs up from me.

As for KPOP Friday, I want to leave you with a good weekend song from 2NE1. The song is called "Can't Nobody." It is extremely popular and even made its way into my middle school's talent show (check out my Bugok Middle School Festival video here.) I have been loving on 2NE1 since I got here and I can't wait from them to come out with some new stuff soon.

Please enjoy 2NE1 "Can't Nobody." Have a great weekend!

Bugok Middle School Festival 2010

I have spent the last week or so editing the video and photos I took at the Bugok Middle School Festival a couple of weeks ago and created a video with the highlights. The video is a compilation of the footage from both the talent show and field day. It is pretty entertaining and a good example of the kind of things I see everyday as the English teacher at this middle school.

I had some trouble exporting the video from imovie, so it is unfortunately lower quality than I had hoped for. I will post some of the photo's in the video separately in high quality so you can see them better!

I hope you enjoy the video!

2010 Bugok Middle School Festival from Chris Bailey on Vimeo.

A Day in the Life of a Bugok Middle School Student

At the school's festival (the glorified talent show I described earlier) last week the telecom/broadcast class played a video that they had made for the school. The video was titled "The Day in the Life of a Bugok Middle School Student." It picked and joked at their daily lives as a student at the middle school I am teaching at in Korea.

It is all in Korean; however, you an easily pick up on some jokes. I was lucky to have an English teacher sitting next to me while it played, so I had some of it translated to me.

When you watch the video take note of a few things. There are a bunch of kids doing push ups in the beginning of the video. Push ups are a very common form of punishment for students in school, along with kneeing in the front of the classroom and squats. Also you will see a clip of one of my English classes. If you look closely you can see that I am teaching my kids about American Football, using clips from the game when University of Wisconsin beat Ohio State (GO BADGERS). Then the voice says something along the lines of "English class is so hard. I can't even understand a word she is saying. It is just like blah blah blah all day long." Ha great to know I am making a difference, right? The last thing I would like you to notice is the school lunch. You can see the Korean food I eat everyday for lunch. The video is making fun of how all the students hate when the school serves whole fish (it is actually disgusting).

I asked the broadcast teacher if I could have a copy and she happily put it on my USB. So, without further ado, please enjoy "A Day in the Life of a Bugok Middle School Student."

KPOP (tuesday)

Hello Everyone!

Lots to catch up with! Last week at school we had our Annual Festival and Exercising Day. They are pretty much a glorified talent show and a field day; however, two of my favorite days at school so far. If you can only imagine how amazing it was being the only white/non-Korean at an Asian middle school talent show. I am going to put together a short video with the pictures and video footage I captured over the two days of middle school bliss.

As a teaser I am going to show you a clip of a student performance of a very popular Korean girl jam call "Bad Girl, Good Girl" by Miss A. This song is everywhere in Korea right now, even at Bugok Middle School's Festival. First check out the student's rendition and then watch the Miss A video for "Bad Girl, Good Girl."

Please enjoy Miss A "Bad Girl, Good Girl."