Korean Game Show

I wanted to give you all a little time to process the Seoul post because it's so ridiculously long, but as it's been a few days, I feel we need to write about the Korean game show Gianni and I appeared on. We will, hopefully, have the video of it by next week when it airs.

I received a somewhat mysterious text from Mr. Hwang, our taekwondo instructor, when we were in Seoul, saying things like "indoor photographing," "singing," and "dancing." Needless to say, I was immediately nervous about the prospect of having to sing, and I had no idea what "indoor photographing" was. Anyway, I texted another foreigner at the gym who had gleaned the same thing from the text that I had: there is some sort of competition, involving singing and dancing and physical challenges, that we would be one of the teams for (foreigners team!).

Needless to say, we had no idea what to expect when we showed up for our second taekwondo class on Monday. Serena and Max (the other foreigners at the gym who have been here for about 6 months) picked us up at Daegu Station, and we all headed to the gym together. We arrive and are immediately accosted by a small girl who seems as though she has is the Korean version of me at my old job as a producer! It was kind of funny to watch her and think about going back to my TV career. We were then asked by three different people if we spoke Korean. They seemed to think we did and were disappointed when we couldn't. Then, we had to choose songs from a karaoke machine to perform. The main gym room, which isn't very large, had 3 cameras and a jib no less!!! I couldn't believe it. We were actually going to be singing and dancing on television! UGH! Worst nightmare!

So we taped a few of the segments for the show with no idea what was going on, basically just being shepherded around the gym. Then it was time for the first competition: singing. We had to sing two songs and Serena went first with "I Love Rock and Roll." I stepped in to help her, and at least the entire team was allowed to stand together. Then it was my turn to sing. I did "Dancing Queen" because it was one of the first ones I saw in the machine. When the other team sang, there was a little boy who started dancing with the, which was really adorable. It turns out the little boy is Mr. Hwang's son. Cute! The hosts of the show gave the boy a massive bag of cabbage as a prize for being such a good dancer. It turns out that we tied in the singing competition!

The second competition was a dance contest. First, they had both teams dance at the same time. Then, we had to dance-battle another member of the other team by ourselves! Mind you that the other team were all black belts in taekwondo! Still, a few of them barely danced at all, so Serena, Max, and Gianni definitely beat their competition. The guy I had to dance-battle was crazy though! He was an excellent dancer and had tons of moves. I couldn't even compete! Oh well. I still think we won that round, not sure though.

The last round was a small obstacle course that they put together right there in the gym on the spot, using the gym equipment. First, we had to hold hands and pass a hula hoop around us, down the line. The person at the end then had to hula hoop 10 times. Then, two people had to jump rope 10 times while the other 2 people spun the rope. Then, one team member had to break 4 plastic boards (they have a seam in the middle, so if you hit them right, they break by themselves). Lastly, one team member had to get at least 1 ring to land around a cone. Max hula hooped and broke the boards. Gianni and I jumped rope, and Gianni tried the ring toss. The other team went first and did the obstacle course perfectly! Then, we did ours and things seemed to be going really well...until we got to the ring toss. Gianni could not manage to land a ring! If you made a mistake, you had to start from the beginning again, so we did it more quickly through one more time. Even on the second try, he couldn't land a ring on the cone! We had the male host assigned to be our team leader. He was hysterical! He kept saying "John" in a really disappointed voice after that. He and the female host were talking about Gianni because that was the only word we understood from what they were saying. It was hilarious though. We all started saying "John" with the same tone the rest of the night. Turns out, we didn't win that round, so we lost the game :( . Oh well, they gave us a consolation prize anyway. We all got massive bags of cabbage!!! More cabbage than anyone could ever eat before it went bad. We tried to pawn some off on some of the other people at the gym, but no one wanted it! I finally gave one bag away to a co-teacher this morning.

After the game, Mr. Hwang was nice enough to take us all out to Daegu Chicken for dinner. We got beer and big plates of fried chicken. We both still have to get used to eating meat with bones using chopsticks. It's a bit complicated. It was delicious chicken though. After dinner, since it was too late for the subway, Serena and Max drove us home again, which was really nice of them.

It was definitely a fun evening. The show is set to air sometime next week, and I really hope my students can't watch it! Mr. Hwang is going to download it for us. It was probably the most ridiculous evening I've ever had! More pictures, and possibly a video, to follow.