Korea is a silly place episode 1: Attack of the Recorders

In between the last two classes I teach at my main school, my co-teacher and I go and sit in the music room. It happens to be on the same floor as the 5th graders that we teach and at that point in the morning we are too tired to walk down all the stairs to our office.

The other day, however, instead of coming in and sitting to stare at the kids who are cleaning up her classroom during the 10 minute passing period (child labor builds character!) we walked in to find the music teacher seated on a piano bench while two students were taking turns smacking her back and shoulders. At first I was completely shocked, but the look on the music teachers face made it pretty clear that she was actually enjoying getting beat on by her students.

My co-teacher later explained to me that she was getting a massage. I guess she had had a rough morning and needed some TLC ...

After about 5 minutes of non-stop back slapping, the boys were clearly tired (smacking your teacher is hard work, yo). They grabbed their books and their recorders and started to head out the door.

But then their eyes locked and they slowly glanced down at the recorders they had in their hands and (I'm not even kidding) both their heads swiveled, horror movie style, back to their teacher, who was still sitting on the piano bench waiting for more of her "massage". They grinned at each other as one of the boys walked over and tapped the music teacher to see how she'd react. When she didn't say anything, both of the boys started to wail on her (and I mean wail) with their recorders.

And she was smiling. She actually looked relaxed.

And that's when I almost fell out of my tiny, Korean desk chair crying from laughter.