Life in a theme park

Oh, the sweet joy of waking up in English Village! Not for us the intrusive sounds of angry traffic! Nor must we endure the twittering of birds in the hills surrounding our houses. For the powers that be, and oh how I thank them every day, have seen fit to install a speaker outside Jupiter Building, on a streetlight so that it's just at the level of my room. Through this speaker come such treasures!

This morning for instance, it was "If you're happy and you know it". Yesterday we had "I like doughnuts! I love doughnuts! They make me happy!" (we're apparently on a mission to turn kids from the healthy Asians they are into tubby Westerners...)

Anything, though, anything at all, is better than the theme song.

"Welcome to English Village.... I like speaking English..... it's greeeeaaaaat, it's fun, it's English Village!"

I told you in one of my first posts about losing half my class when they saw a celebrity wandering the streets of EV. Film crews, musicians and soap-stars are common here, the scenery as exotic to Koreans as the hanok villages are to us westerners. A few weeks ago, a music video was shot in the Village. I took the picture below from the teachers' room of the male singer with his backing dancers. Later, we emerged from our Friday closing ceremony with the kids to find the main route to the cafeteria blocked by the film crew, and our cries of "No running!" went completely ignored as 400 teenagers ran screaming for the barriers. My coteachers and I found ourselves physically holding students back as the two main singers tried to hide behind props! It was like being in an old Beatles video! Eventually, the female singer, her head hidden beneath a blanket, was rushed to a van with darkened windows and then we were able to start ushering the students to the cafeteria for their lunch. A surreal experience. I found out from one of the girls (almost fainting with excitement) that the female singer was one half of Davichi, a popular girlband.

The video is sweet, funny, and very typically Korean. You can watch it here: "If You Pretend" It's full of subtext and references and insider jokes for Korean teenagers. Right at the end, as the girl sinks onto his shoulder, he wonders "Who should I score next? Hyori?" - Hyori is a beautiful very famous actress-singer - the highest paid in Korea :)