Danny's House

Last Sunday I went to the home of one of my students, as his parents gave me an open invitation a few weeks ago. Danny and his friend Michelle have been getting private lessons with me every Tuesday for a year, since the other three students in their class go to other hagwons on Tuesdays. Recently, Michelle stopped coming to the private lesson for some reason, and Danny's parents requested an extra private class on Thursdays, so now Danny and I have a lot of quality time together. I imagine he says good things to his parents, as they have been pretty nice to me in the past. They've only met me in passing at school or when we crossed paths near the movie theatre, but they're very generous. On several occasions, Danny's mother has sent him in with coffee, snacks, and once even a full supper for me, and his dad bought a birthday cake for our class when I had my birthday party at school. They also got me quite a nice gift for Teachers' Day last year.

Their place is like a palace. It's a huge apartment, and my impression when I walked in was that the whole place was made of marble. Everything is all smooth and shiny and clean and spacious. They have a living room with a couch and an entertainment center with a huge flat screen TV, and no other furniture. The apartment has a veranda alongside the whole outer wall, with a chair to match the couch (leather), as well as plants and Danny's toybox, table, game cupboard, etc. Danny has a bedroom with I think just a bed and dresser in it, and a small library of his own. It's crazy. The room is only 8 by 8 feet, but one whole wall is recessed shelving, filled with books--mostly textbooks and workbooks, I imagine. I didn't see the whole apartment, but it seems like there are two or three more rooms that could be bedrooms, in addition to the standard kitchen, dining room, laundry room, and at least two bathrooms.

I was surprised to find that Danny's parents speak English pretty well. Danny's dad has traveled all over the world, and I assume he has to speak a lot of English in foreign countries. He's not fluent, but he gets by well enough--he called it "survival English." I had assumed his mother spoke better English because Danny forced me onto the phone with her to plan, but once I got there, she seemed more reserved and didn't speak much. Michelle's parents also spoke pretty good English. The fathers want me to come back and have a drinking party with them sometime. Danny's dad asked if I wanted to drink today, but I said not on a school night. These Koreans can get pretty outrageous with the drinking, so I didn't want to have to keep up and regret it tomorrow.

Despite meeting me a couple times and inviting me over, Danny's parents followed the peculiar Korean habit of not telling me their names. They obviously know my name from Danny, but I don't know what to call them. Michelle and her parents came over for dinner, as well, and they did the same thing. I don't get it.

Beyond that, it was a pretty interesting time. Danny was very excited to have me, because he likes to play with me during our lessons, and I think he was really into just being able to play, without having to study. Before Michelle got there, Danny showed me all his photo albums. Then we all played badminton and street hockey with the racquets and a plastic bottle outside, I taught them how to throw cards into a hat (sort of), we played with an erector set, and started to play a war game. Danny and Michelle gathered bags full of weapons and Danny donned his bicycle helmet. When I went to get my camera to take pictures of them, the war game was abandoned in favor of making videos, of course.

We're reading a story called "Respectfully Yours, Eve Bunting," which is an interview with an Irish-American writer, and they wanted to act it out. Danny's dad is a producer at UBC, a major station in Korea, so Danny loves to play TV reporter. Danny mostly did his intros in Korean, so I don't know exactly what he's saying. The couple takes we did in English are boring, so I won't put them up.

After the first couple videos we did, the zoom got pushed in, and Danny was continuing regardless, which is pretty funny. Half the time he didn't even turn the viewscreen to see himself, so he leaves frame or does extreme closeups a lot:

Here he starts talking about Ulsan Grand Park, which you can see from his window. I don't know how that relates to what we were doing before, but he was still being a reporter. I got worried he would drop my camera 13 stories when he opened the screen on the balcony and jammed the camera between the security bars, but he held onto it.


After we made those videos, Danny and Michelle made a special video while I had a snack with the parents. They brought it back and told me to watch it at home, but the adults wanted to see, so we watched while the kids hid. This was their first take:

This was their second take. The zoom is still tight. I'm not sure if they left it recording on purpose, or forgot to stop while they prepared. I feel like it's the former, though, since they keep saying "wait a minute" and kind of talking to me even while they're not in the frame.

It makes me feel pretty bad leaving, especially now that work's gotten so bad that I'm probably not coming back to the same job. But I gotta look out for Number One.