Day 7 – Friday
I picked up my parents at the Best Motel and we walked to my
school, which is only about a 5 minute walk.
They had a great sense of humor about staying in a motel with red
lighting in the hallways and a velour couch.
Bow chicka...awkward.
At Brighton, they got to meet my co-teachers and the other foreign
teachers and finally got to meet my students!
They’d heard a lot about them over the past few months, so it was nice
for them to put faces with the names they knew (Henry.... Luis...... David...
Edward... Olivia and Victoria!)
My first class every day is Florida Class. They’re the highest level and have been
studying English since they were 4 years old (which is western 3, remember), so
they’re pretty quick on the uptake. I
usually clap a rhythm to get my classes attention when they’re being noisy, and
then they clap it back to me, but with Florida, we’d been practicing something
special. The kids didn’t know why, but I
had been preparing them to surprise my parents.
So during class (we were learning about “How to Build a Sandwich”), the
kids started to get a little rowdy, so I called them to attention with a couple
of clap-backs... then clapped out “Hullabaloo Canek Canek” and they clapped it
back while shouting “Hullabaloo! Canek! Canek! WHOOP!!!” with their little
hands up in a Fightin’ Texas Aggie Senior wildcat and everything! I’d trained them well :):) I looked over at my parents, grinning of
course, and they were DYING laughing!
Caught them completely off guard!
Gig’em! Hahahaha :)
[For you non-Aggies out there who are confused: hullabaloo canek canek is a military
cadence/beat that starts off Texas A&M’s war hymn (aka fight song) that we
sing all the time. You hear this
specific cadence any time Aggies are around, i.e., knocking on the door,
honking their car horn, tapping their pencil on the desk... I swear I heard a
bird call “hullabaloo canek canek” once while I was walking across campus. Anyway, any time you hear it, those who are
upperclassmen or graduated yell out, “whoop,” in response, which is a reserved
privilege. This happens, seriously, all
the time. It’s a big deal.]
Anyway, Florida class “whooped,” my parents died laughing (Dad
turned at least 3 shades of red from cracking up).
After the lesson, the kids got to ask my parents a ton of questions,
like “what’s your favorite food?” and “how old are you” and “what’s your
favorite color?” and “what’s your favorite state?” (Texas, duh) and “what’s
your favorite [insert any other category]?” My parents brought Texas pencils
and small bottles of bubbles for each class and they had a great time blowing
bubbles at each other! My parents really
enjoyed getting to see my students and my students really enjoyed meeting them
too.
After school, we ran to Lotte Outlets so that Dad could buy long
pants to wear to the DMZ. The dress code
for the tour wasn’t very clear: we were told that we had to cover knees,
shoulders, and toes for the tour, but it turned out that the shorts he brought
were long enough... oh well, better safe than sorry. Now he’s got new fishing pants, so he scored
an unexpected souvenir!
We made it to the train station to head back to Seoul, this time we had plenty of
time to spare (unlike when we were on our way to Busan – yikes) and we made it
to Seoul around 9 pm. The guesthouse
that we stayed at, The Yellow Submarine, was a little (ok, a lot) more hippie-ish
than the first weekend, even though they’re owned by the same management. I’ve stayed at the first one so many times
that I’d forgotten how “young” the Yellow Submarine was! We went out looking for dinner cause the guy
at the desk told us about a good Jeju pork restaurant, but we didn’t find it
and ended up having a delicious pork roast dinner somewhere else. They even gave my parents forks! Bless them.
My parents were getting good at chopsticks at that point, so they used
the forks for a little while to be polite, but you know what they say, “when in
Rome, do as the Romans do,” so they switched back to chopsticks before too
long.
A guy sat at the table next to us who was a Korean-American, a
little younger than me, I think, born and raised in L.A. He talked to us forever, then his friends
left, and still he kept talking to us.
He was a hoot! He offered to pay
for our dinner but my parents didn’t let him.
After dinner, we went to Family Mart. Family Mart is like 7-eleven and they’re
everywhere over here. It’s quite common
to see people sitting at plastic tables outside any convenience store drinking
a beer (or soju), so my parents got to check that off their Korea-to-do list
too! It’s such a Korea thing! Why go to a bar when you can buy a beer for a
buck and just sit right on the street?
Keepin’ it classy in Korea :)
It’s how we do!
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