Martin's South Korea Living!: FOR YOU DON’T COUNT THE DEAD WHEN GOD’S ON YOUR SIDE

What a great line. It’s from the Dylan song, “With God On Our Side”. The man was a genius. He still might be but I don’t think anyone has ever expressed the thoughts of a generation so well in song. I was obviously listening to Bobby boy and it just struck me as it has before. But this time it stuck, so I thought I’d mention it.

No post yesterday. Amazing. My reason for not posting was not depression, but rather I was busy doing other things. And usually I’m always feeling “inspired” in some ways when I do post, but when I did have time yesterday the mood didn’t strike me.

Correction here. The kids didn’t choose “Sleeping Beauty” but “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” which is even harder. I just got the names mixed up. However, the kids came into camp yesterday morning with some props, costumes, and the girl who took charge had even prepared a script. I thought we were going to do that in class but she got something off the Internet, edited and changed it a bit, and had the script in English and Korean. I was so impressed. So I made some small changes to the script (fixing grammar and sentence structure) and we discussed where we would film within the school area. It went really well. When we were talked out and it seemed prepared (we practiced reading the script) there was about 20 minutes left so I said, “what do you want to do?” Of course they answered that they wanted to play a game.

I said, “what game do you want to play?” and they said, “fry pan”. I had no idea what that was so I asked. They told me it was a Korean game. It had nothing to do with English but I was interested and doing “teaching” is for me too. A group of people sit around a table. The person who starts says one of the people’s names and a number from 1 to 4. The person whose name is called has to repeat their name the number of times of the number they were given while everyone (including them) does 4 motions. Depending on the number says at what point you say your name. With both hands you slap the table, clap, stick out one thumb and then the other. So if your name is called with the number 2 you slap the table, clap, stick out 1 thumb and say your name, then stick out the other and say your name. It’s not easy for an uncoordinated person such as I.

If you don’t do it properly you put your head on the table and your arms out and all the other players pound you on the back. I had a riot. The kids were hitting me and I would even hit the loser on the back. Of course, what I did was more of a soft love tap, but it was important that I participated as an equal. It was so neat how they explained the game to me trying to find the right words so I’d understand. And as a concession to me, they called the numbers in English. I love these things where I’m just one of the kids (albeit a slow one) who the others include and take the time to explain things to. It’s a wonderful feeling as I feel that I’m connecting with them on a personal level and as we all know, life is all about connections.

I went to the doctor yesterday to get the results of the blood work. As I’ve said I’ve felt fine physically so I was hoping and thought all my tests would be normal. I was right. Everything was within normal ranges. I was quite pleased. Actually my blood thinner isn’t doing a good job so that level was off but they just changed the dosage. It probably has to do with a change in diet since coming here. So all is well.

Even my mood is still on the positive side. It’s Thursday and it’s day 5 of a good feeling. I don’t want to jinx myself, but I do like it. Makes me feel that there is hope for me. Of course there probably is no hope, but these times of optimism are great.

Today we filmed “Snow White” and I was pleased. The only thing I did was occasionally tell some kids to be quiet during the filming, tell one girl to take off her shoes because they squeaked, and changed the battery in the camera. The kids did everything else. I think most of them had a lot of fun doing this so I did my job in provided them with a stimulating and fun activity.

Here are some of the girls because everyone loves pictures.

Here are some of the boys.

And here is almost everyone with yours truly. This picture wasn’t my idea but some of the girls wanted me to be in a picture with them. I was touched.

When we were done filming there was a bit of time to kill so I whipped out my trusty IPOD and showed them some pictures I put on it of Elana and Leah from one their hair modeling shoots where they look like glamour girls. It always blows the kids away. I then show them other pictures where they look more real life. I also had a picture of me at about the age of 4 and they all agreed I was cute. I also pointed out that I had more hair then too.

Tomorrow is baking with them and it should be fun. They talk way too much but I like them. They’re good people and that’s what is important to me.

Once again showing there is no sexism in the class, we had a boy in a dress playing Snow White along with another boy playing the prince. I have no idea why we had a boy playing Snow White as there are 11 girls and 5 boys. It was funny and love how they’ll pay no attention to sex for these movies, even with the “love” scenes.

I have some video to leave you with. We’ll start with the queen and her mirror.