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The Band Concert

Ever Evolving Primate: Travel, photography, food, cooking, and just about anything else.: The Band Concert

Saturday, March 5, 2011

The Band Concert

So on the first day of school my co-teacher told us that there was a wind orchestra concert, and I thought it might a) be really interesting, b) get us some goodwill, and c) be some free entertainment, so I committed. Babehoney got off work and we headed over to my school to meet the co-teacher and ride over to the performing arts center. We stopped for dinner at a Korean-Italian Fusion restaurant, which was surprisingly good. Much better than our last experience with that combination. Then we headed into the concert hall.

The concert hall is housed in a monumental performing arts center. I wish I would have purchased the fisheye add-on for my camera before I left the U.S. The band was pretty good. Interestingly there was a section with 3 drum corps style snare drums and one bass drum doing the same kind of tricks I used to see at the DCI I&E contests. They were pretty good, especially considering that Korea doesn't seem to have a drum corps circuit like the US does. If the kids learned simply by watching videos (which is totally possible with these kids) it's really astounding. Here's where it gets interesting. The 2nd to last tune the band played was a medley of ABBA tunes from the MAMMA MIA! movie. The crowd went wild. They were clapping, singing along, and cheering. I had heard that the Koreans love their ABBA, but this was over the top. It was interesting to watch the crowd go from staunch, buttoned up, serious looking folks to smiling, joyful, singing, clapping, and rhythmically bouncing people. This is the kind of experience you can't get from a place just by visiting.


After the concert we went downtown to an expat bar. It was pretty cool and now we know where to go if we just absolutely need to be surrounded by English speakers. We caught one of the later trains home and on the way a bunch of my students showed up and said "Charlie! Charlie! We go to Daejin middle school!" I introduced them to Babehoney and they all commented on how handsome I was and how beautiful she is. Then one of them told me that when I talk to the other teachers I should tell them that he helped us find our way home because he is a good guy. It was super cute.

Today we're sitting in the coffee shop downloading american TV shows from iTunes because we're missing TV the most from home. Hopefully we'll have plenty of options to watch in just a bit.

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