school elections and 회식

I can't wait until I get some pictures from this...

Yesterday were the elections for class president at my high school. The girls were absolutely HILARIOUS. One of the ones running for 3rd grade president (current 2nd grader) is in my advanced lunchtime English class. She's very smart! Anyway, each of the girls started out with a (semi-) serious speech, which inevitably devolved into music and dance and screaming. The first girl did the "Nobody" dance (currently the most popular song and dance in this country, I swear, check it out if you haven't seen it: http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=OC7-y2LK50k&feature=related ) with four of her classmates backing her up. The second girl, Jung-mi (the one in my class), danced to a trot song and was actually quite impressive! She's always acting so flustered, fanning herself with embarrassment whenever she's put on the spot, I wouldn't have expected it of her!

Then came the first graders, who were just silly. The first girl was one from my 1-8 class (mentioned before in the "big poop" episode...see below) who got together a posse of girls to put on a hilarious skit complaining about all the problems of the school. The problems were (from what I can remember): the bad food in the cafeteria, the bad smell in the bathroom, people using the computer lab for gaming during study time, and missing the bus when kept late by demanding teachers- at that point, when the poor girl was throwing herself after the bus, they started playing "가지마!" (Don't go!), which is a sappy love ballad that I once watched my friends sing at noraebang, and i totally burst out laughing along with everyone else. I'm really starting to appreciate it when I can understand jokes here...I missed some of the other ones though! Someday...Anyway, the whole skit involved a lot of screaming and freeze frames during which the candidate would (I presume) outline her proposed solution to the problem. The second candidate didn't have something quite so elaborate planned. Instead, she actually gave a real speech, during which the students quickly grew bored and started talking. My co-teacher turned to me and started telling me what a shame it was because she was giving such a good speech and nobody was paying attention, but that quickly changed when her friends ran on stage and poured 3 buckets of water on her head. She then proclaimed that she would sacrifice her body to serve the school.

I guess elections in Korea are really no different from those at home.


Later on, I went out to dinner with all the teachers. I ate a lot of meat and other deliciousness, and enjoyed entertainment from several drunk co-workers, including one of my co-teachers and my host father. Lots of singing, telling jokes, being warned by my co-teacher that he turns almost purple-red when he gets drunk- oh! and made a new discovery. The famous ASIAN GLOW is not only red! Some Koreans turn white as a sheet when they drink! News to me! Guess you learn something new every day...

Countdown to going home: only 5 days left...and my anti-jetlag pills arrived today! A-Ssssa!