"What characters? It was just a bunch of little kids dressed up in animal costumes."

That quote from the Royal Tennenbaums sums up the musical the kindergarten kids put on last night. Maybe its my four years of theatre school and just being very desenitized to seeing things on stage but it really wasn't all that good. It was another day that I had to show up on a Saturday, although this one (christmas musical) was mentioned in my contract. I think I've got this and one picnic in the summer as my required saturday 'work'. Which really wasn't work. I had to show up in a suit and greet the parents as they come in. I got a lot of compliments on my suit, the pinstripe one i bought for $2 at a thrift store years ago that was apparently customed taliored for someone my exact build. Weird thing about Korean culture is that even guys would come up to me and just randomly say 'you're handsome' and walk on. And no they weren't gay. Gay people don't exist in Korea, thats the story and they're sticking to it. So basically the kids have been working on this musical since before I came to the school, which has been great for me b/c it has led to two spare periods in the week. Which will now sadly dissapear next week.

So after greeting the parents Nick sat in the audience and I snuck into the sound booth and hung out there for the 2.5 hour show where I could hang out with Rocky and apparently look really bored as I dozed on the lighting board. The show was basically the kids memorizing bunch of little skits and signing and dancing. Alot of the words were far beyond thier level of vocabulary or comprehension, it was more of just a show for the parents. To show them that thier money hadn't been wasted at the school. On that note one of my elementary students was there to see her little brother and when she was talking to Patrick before the show her mother kept on telling her to 'talk to him in English', little did she know that hello and goodbye was about all the functional English this kid has. I've been drilling the 'how are you today' => 'fine thank you' with this kid for three weeks and when I asked her it she just started blankly at me. Good to know I'm making a difference.

They told Patrick Nick and I that they would like it if we could do a little presentation for the parents too. Foreign teachers are usually there to impress parents, so they wanted to show us off as much as possible. Of course we had no time to prepare so we decided to sing theme song to Fresh Prince of Belair, do some freestyle breakdancing (or in my case jazz dancing) and finish off with individual raps (My choice was 'Turtle Power!', the only rap I know). In any case we got bumped when the director made an impromtu speech. Which was fine with me cause after almost three hours of childrens stories in a language that they don't understand the parents were not looking interested in anything performing that didn't come from thier own loins, and even then you'd better be damned inmpressive.

So it finished and all the kids were really excited, which was cool. I do like the kids and there was some joy in seeing them all in sparkly kimonos doing a rendition of Peter Pan that included a sound clip of "I will always Love you" by Whitney Houston. Everyone thanked me for all my hard work afterwards, which I made sure to tell them consisted of absolutely no contribution whatsoever.

Anyway I better get going I have to pack a bit for my possible move tomorrow, which will be tough considering I have no boxes or any idea where to get some.