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Week 2 (Mar 12th to Mar 18th) |
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Monday March 13th,Now that I'm seeing my students for the second time,
I'm getting a much better sense of their abilities.
Some of them are better than I initially thought.
Some of them are worse. I do wish that they were more
advanced, and more into jazz (I let them choose one
song as well, and all except one brought in a pop
song), but I guess that's why I'm needed so badly!
After work, I didn't want to get on the subway in rush
hour, so I went to the Coex mall, close to my school.
It's huge! There's a really big bookstore with a huge
English selection, which I was thrilled about. But
even better . . . the CD shop! It's mostly Western
music, but not only that, but good Western music,
including a huge and well-stocked jazz section. I
found a really rare triple Azimuth album, and a Kate
McGarry album that also probably would have been
difficult to find at home.
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Tuesday March 14th, Okay, I can sense that I might have some problems with
the vocal jaz ensembles . . . I only see each ensemble
for 50 minutes a week, and that is clearly not going
to be enough, as I don't think ANY of them have ever
listened to jazz, much less sang in any kind of a jazz
choir. I've definitly got my work cut out for me.
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Thursday March 16th, Today I had my first full-fledged improv classes. I
came in with a detailed handout about blues scatting,
and I was really nervous, but I think that they
actually understood! (Well, most of them anyway) I
gave them lots of examples, and some of them even got
up to try it in front of their peers. I guess I'll
find out next week if they really understood or not:
I've divided each class into 4 performance groups, so
that over the course of the month, everyone will have
to perform in front of the whole class at least once.
This is how I'll mark them (there's no chance in hell
of me remembering 150 Korean names!)
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Saturday March 18th,Today there was a last minute meeting for all the
teachers of Paekche. Kenji and I went, just to be
present, even though the whole damn thing was in
Korean. It was really tense, weird vibes all around.
With what little information Kenji and I were given,
all I can gather is that some of the other teachers
were complaining about their pay, probably rightfully
so. The other instructors, from what I've heard,
don't make very much money at all, and none of them
are full-time (similar to U of T instructors). I make
the big bucks, and get professor status mostly because
I'm a foreigner, and because it's the only way that I
would be granted a visa. So I can understand the
upset. But here's the especially weird part--
afterwards the 8 other vocal teachers introduced
themselves to me, and informed me that I'm their boss,
because I'm a professor. That kind of freaked me out.
If they have problems, they want to tell me, to tell
Jae. I felt especially strange about this when it
became apparent that I'm by far the youngest of the
vocal teachers, and of course with Koreans, hierarchy
is based on age and job title. So what to do with me?
I'm the youngest, but I'm the highest as far as job
positions go. I just hope that they don't actually
have any complaints that I'm supposed to tell Jae,
cause I so don't want to get into that!
Tonight, I went out with Eoghan, and a couple of our
friends came up from Daegu. What with St. Patricks
Day yesterday, there was a big to-do at an Irish bar
called O'Kim's in the Westin Chosun Hotel. Usually
this place is very expensive, but for the occasion,
they were putting on a $60 all you can drink and eat
thing. It was packed, needless to say. I've never
seen so many Irish people in the same place . . . I've
also discovered that I really really don't like
Guinness-- not really news to me, but now I know that
I don't ever want to be forced to drink it again!
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