Chapter Thirty-Five: Rehearsal

Tomorrow is the end of the year performance, so expect a ton of photos and videos from that. Here are a few days of rehearsal. Above, Mars and Pluto dance to "Winter Wonderland."

Same group, again, on Tuesday.

"In the lane, snow is glistening..."

I just love this shirt, that's the only reason for this photo.

I know, I have posted a ridiculous amount about "Super Troupers" but it is my favorite performance and the dance is so freakin' cute. They start off in their rockstar poses.



In this video, you can see their excellent new "Super Trouper" head wear. Watch the kid with his in the style of a pirate stash. Rocco reminds me of Napoleon dynamite. He is completely off beat, has no idea what is going on, but is still trying his best. It's kind of how he goes through life.

Meanwhile, Uranus is waiting for their turn. Abba is contagious. They need to see what is going on.

In this video, there are a lot of technical difficulties. They try to roll with it, but they make the cutest confused faces when things don't go as they expected. "Ehhhh?"

See, it's irresistible. You gotta' dance to Abba.

Then all of the graduating kindergarteners will get their diplomas. The practiced walking and bowing, which was apparently hilarious.

I love Lynn's face here.

I have no idea what is so funny because they are speaking mostly in Korean.

Bowing, bowing, bowing.

Dustin just bowed every direction, to ensure he had covered all of his bases. It's what I would have done too.

And then everyone got together to sing our "Little Genius" school song.

Chapter Thirty-Four: Insert Soul/Seoul Pun Here

More about this weekend in Seoul! On Saturday, after we went to the palace, we decided to go to Insadong where we could go Christmas shopping and get some lunch. We got directions to somewhere with Western food, but it was so cold that we couldn't handle wandering around looking for it. We settled for burger king and enjoyed our first french fries in a long time.
Here Layna enjoys the BK.

The view of Insadong from Burger King. I love that pretty much no matter where you go in Korea, there's a mountain in the background--even in a touristy shopping district, as viewed from a Burger King.


After we were fed and warmed, we headed back into the cold for shopping. On the way, we met two groups of Free Huggers, who unfortunately do not exist in Daegu. Here, Layna gets a hug.


This might be my new favorite photo of all time. Because it is a Western tourist district, this guy totally expected us to take photos--excellent!


Just a shot of Insadong shopping. There were so many Westerners in Seoul that I was having a bit of culture shock. I'm used to actually going out for hours at a time and not seeing another Westerner the whole time--but in Seoul, they're everywhere!

This guy just looked so content with his fish frying stand. I took the picture because I realized that I had no photos of all the little food stands that are everywhere in Korea. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of how Maureen Ryan described Rome during the end of the Republic.

This was the other Free Hugger. She spoke English and after giving us hugs, asked me to sign something. She was incredibly impressed when I wrote my name in Hangul. She asked me where I was from and, as it turns out, she has lived on Long Island! She lived in Manhassett, which makes me wonder...what on earth would cause someone to go from Korea to Nassau?


At night, we tried to get to Namsan Tower, but got lost on the way. Here's one of the shots I got of Seoul at night from the very wrong path. It was better, though, because we were exhausted and ready to go back to Layna's apartment and roast chestnuts!

The next day, when we went out, it was snowing! It's hard to tell here, but there's definitely snow. Daegu had our first snow on Friday, so this was all so exciting. Apparently, we even got snow before NoHo.

Snowy park near Layna's apartment.

All and all, it was an excellent weekend! I'm so glad I got to go to Seoul before I leave. Layna was a wonderful host, as well.