Sports Day

Brady: Nowhere in my contract did it say I would be obligated to dance like a moron.

Greg: Brady, you work in a kindergarten.

Brady: Point of fact: I do not work in a kindergarten.

Greg: Good point.

I don't want to linger too long on Sports Day, because I have little good to say about the experience. The aftermath, however, was pretty fun.

I'll start by telling you all a little about the owner or Beyond Advanced. Her English name is *****. I presume she is about fourty five, but it's hard to tell with all the cosmetic surgery. If she is forty five, then she is fourty five going on sixteen. She dresses like a sixteen year old, and is known to wear scandalously high skirts on occasion.

Long story short, I felt like the whole purpose of Sports Day was one half publicity for the school and one half private party for *****. Sports Day is for the kindergarten students. I, by the way, do not work in the kindergarten, neither do most of my foreigner colleagues. And yet we were all asked to wake up early on a Sunday, so we could spend our day watching kindergarten students and their parents doing sports-type competitive activities. Occasionally, we would by ushered up to dance like buffoons.

As an aside, most of my colleagues were super-excited to do the dances. Which is fine, but I don't like dancing, especially cute little kiddy dances, and their unexpected enthusiasm made me look like a hard ass.

The skinny is, we were props, brought in to legitimize the school as an English academy. We were made to dance for the kids and parents, and bow to them, as they came and went from the venue. We had to endure six hours of Korean pop music blaring out of PA speakers, interspersed with *****. incomprehensibly yammering into a microphone, and every so often blowing a whistle very loudly, DIRECTLY INTO THE MIC. We did not compete in all but one of the activities, and we cleaned up afterwards. We were not paid. Which comes on the heels of us all donating money for a huge flower display for Jennifer on Teacher's Day. In the past, I am told, teachers have been given a hundred thousand won bonus on Teacher's Day. We received nothing.

Also, I was sick.

So, what is my final word on Sports Day?  N E V E R  A G A I N.

The good part of the day, was that we got taken out for dinner afterward at a Korean barbecue, and on top of hanging out with our regular colleagues, we got to hang out and drink with all the cute kindergarten teachers.

We all were a bit tipsy after dinner, and everyone was in a good mood, so most of us headed out to the norae bang (kareoke room). There, the Korean teachers sang Korean songs, and us westerners sang English songs. A good time was had by all. I even danced like a moron voluntarily.

The evening dragged on and some of us lonely English guys were hitting it off with the Korean kindergarten teachers. My advances toward one of the kindergarten teachers were largely deflected by one of my Korean speaking colleagues, but Morgan and Ben did all right.