New Schedule and I am Kidnapped

Last weekend I went to the karaoke place with a group of co-workers. We were apparently celebrating someone's birthday, but it gradually degraded into a celebration of ridiculous behavior and Neil Diamond. There were a few stops along the way, naturally. Dinner involved a big pot of chicken and rice cakes in a red sauce, and there were the inevitable drinking stops. At the karaoke place however, something out of the ordinary happened.

As I returned from the bathroom toward my group's karaoke room, I stumbled over a drunken Korean man. He was very excited to have been stumbled over and we spent about ten minutes saying the same things to one another:

Him: "Where are you from?"

Me: "USA!"

Him: "USA!"

Me: "Where I you from?"

Him: "KOREA!"

Rinse, repeat.

We decided we liked each other, so he took me back to his group's karaoke room. Unlike in the States where most karaoke bars are one big hall where you have to wait your turn while rednecks sing "Shout at the Devil" again and again, the "noraebang" of Korea gives everybody their own zone. The Korean man's room was full of Korean people. Our earlier conversation represents more English than the rest of group combined was capable of. He dragged me into the room with a flourish that said "Lookie here gang, I got me one of them Americans! Now dance boy!" And dance I did...

To some people, being kidnapped by drunk Koreans would seem frightening. I was thrilled by the cross-cultural learning this experience provided. For example, there is a K-Pop song called "4 Minute Girl" with a chorus of English words. Two of them. "Hot issue, Hot issue, Hot issue" and then the title "4 Minute Girl!" Then I sang Sweet Caroline for the party for the second time that night.

Back on Planet Sober, Knox School is starting a new semester next week. I have gotten a new schedule with some exciting additions. I still have the same youngsters in the morning and the same first graders in the early afternoon, but now I also get to teach reading and writing to advanced third and fourth graders every afternoon. This is great because, although I'll be grading tons of writing portfolios, reading and writing are lots of fun to teach. I am thinking about bringing in a few supplemental selections. Kafka's The Penal Colony or The Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition players handbook, for example.