Soccer Fans!

The past weekend was a little crazy, what with the World Cup on. I've never been a big soccer fan before but, to quote Seinfeld, "I enjoy any sporting event where nations get involved."

I like the egalitarian nature of soccer, though. Watching the Winter Olympics opening ceremony, it's a little depressing to notice the huge disparity between the nations' sports programs - a gap usually based in wealth. Especially in the winter olympics, many sports are impossible to be competitive in without significant financial backing. Though we think of the Olympics as this great opportunity for countries to compete, there isn't actually much  equal footing.

Soccer, on the other hand, has always had little financial barrier to entry. Granted, I'm sure at the international level, soccer teams are pretty monetarily well-supported, but it's still heartening to see that Paraguay and Honduras are among the qualifying 32 teams and America is still kind of sucking it up.

On Friday, I went out with some South African friends to watch the opening ceremony and the opening game, South Africa vs. Mexico. Since South Africa is hosting and they are also the first African country ever to host a World Cup, my South African friends are pretty excited. To promote the games, South Africa has produced some pretty cool pop songs in collaboration with American artists, actually. My favorite is Shakira's cover of "Waka Waka."

I'm curious if this is popular in the U.S. considering that the World Cup itself usually seems to pass by without much notice.

Anyway, soccer is a big deal in Korea too, even if South Korea's prospects look grim. There's even an official song for the World Cup by the very popular 13-member Korean boy band, Super Junior, called "Victory Korea."

Daehan Minguk = "Republic of Korea" 

I think it's hilarious that most of this video was filmed in Paju English Village, the fakest place in Korea. I hope they weren't trying to make people think that this is what Korea looks like.

Saturday was the South Korea vs. Greece game. Even though it was pouring rain, some friends and I made it out to City Hall to watch the game.

Yay, ponchos!

It was pretty exciting to be out there watching as Korea beat Greece 2-0. 

Afterward, we took a cab over to Itaewon to watch the US vs. England match at 3:30 A.M. Unfortunately, I couldn't quite stay up for it. I ended up sleeping through three-fourths of the game, including the kick off and a bar fight. Fail.

Snakes, Pigs and Male Virility

Korean schools have school festivals a few times a year, where the entire school decorates, kids compete in games and show off their various non-academic talents. They usually look something like this:
This is not my school but you get the idea.

My co-teacher had mentioned a few weeks ago that our school festival was coming up and asked if I wanted to perform. I chuckled heartily to myself and set her straight on the facts. The facts being:
a). I don't even sing in the shower, much less in public (usually - thanks for the emotional scarring from that one night, Eric), and
b). people tell me that while dancing I am dangerous to wander near as one of my awkwardly flailing arms might sock them in the face.

Maybe I should have explained all this at the time but I just went with "haha, no."

This past Monday, the week of the festival, my co-teacher approached me and said "you need to end your after school class early today."

"Why?" I asked, thinking I was going to score some extra lesson planning time.

"We have festival dance rehearsal after school."

"What? That's a bad idea. I can't do that," I told her.

"I think you, uh" she hesitated, as if trying to find the right word, "you must do it. You must do it."

And what song and dance were we practicing? Well, I just happen to have this music video.



As my fellow teachers/dancers explained (or from what I understood, anyway) the song is about a girl who finds a bunch of snakes. Koreans traditionally believe that eating snake will increase a man's stamina and virility. So, the girl sings that she will take them home to her father and he will be so happy.

Since the band, Kara, wears school uniforms in the dance, the other teachers thought we could all just wear some old student school uniforms left by graduates. I love my school.

In all seriousness, though, I wasn't at all sold on performing, even after I saw the music video. But if I get to wear a cute school uniform, hells yeah, I'll dance and sing my ass off.

(This last comment may have sounded creepy. Please understand, getting to wear a school uniform was a childhood dream of mine.)

Oh, Sailormoon brainwashing.

(I'm not sure that explanation made me come off as less creepy...)


Anyway, just when I was really beginning to get into it (I'd finally memorized the opening lines I was supposed to sing!), they cancelled the festival because a few kids are sick. Swine flu, you ruin everything.