노래방!

I had my first 노래방 experience last night. Norebang is Korean-style karaoke. My host mom happened to notice that I was feeling slightly blue yesterday, so she hopped up and said, "Norebang!" We slipped on some heels and trotted a few feet away from her apartment in the Hongdae district (home to Hongik University, Korea's premier art university. Needless to say it's a hoppin' college town). By the way, my host mom is 35, nearly the same age as my sister, and our relationship resembles that of two college girlfriends rather than mother-daughter. But I still call her my host mom out of habit :) Before we left the house, her husband warned me that my host mom is notorious for jumping on the couch during these sessions. So she did, and of course I had to join her!

After being ushered into a small, dark room with a disco ball and a couple of couches, I gave my host mom the honour of rifling through the 38475983 pages of Hangeul to pick songs. Turns out there were a couple of Korean songs that I was familiar with, one of them being this song about a woman who sings about geese and dreams that I heard in my Korean class at Stanford. So we alternated between weepy Korean pop songs and English songs - notably Michael Jackson (of course!), ABBA, and, um, Celine Dion - and managed to sound terrible at both. I guess the norebang owners must have found our singing entertaining, as they gave us an extra 30 minutes to croak out more pop songs, with tambourines in hand (oh yes, tambourines are conveniently placed near the couches should one feel the need to complement the screeching with jangling bells). By the end of the night my voice was long gone - but so were my low spirits!

I need to figure out a way to spend my entire life here.