ChasPik: The Greatest Hits

Yes, our winter concert was called "The Greatest Hits." No, we don't have any of those. That didn't stop us. Loaded with humour, choreographed dancing, costume changes, and Queen, it was indeed a concert to remember. Here are some of my favourite numbers. Check out my VK page for the full concert!

What happens in a choir practise when someone forgets the words? Obviously, the show must go on, but when four divas let their true feelings show, accusations start to fly.

ChasPik's arrangement of the classic Little Mermaid track "Kiss the Girl" has double the obnoxious seagull and all the...double bass harp playing...of the beloved children's classic.

I have no words. I can't. I just can't. Too damn funny.

The problem with speaking English is that sometimes my group assumes that I can sing all songs ever sung in English. As if the phonetics were the only thing keeping me from being Freddie Mercury. 

Розкололось серце на дві половини.

In the past month I've taught at a seminar in the capital for teachers and volunteers, and I've also begun working on a section of a team-teaching manual for all teachers in Ukraine. However, most excitingly I've joined a group of Cossack singers. They sing songs native to the Zaporozhian region of the country (the most westerly river on this map), so everything we sing is in an archaic Ukrainian dialect (yuck), but the music is very beautiful and surprisingly eastern influenced. Here's one of the songs we're working on currently, and as soon as there's video of me in full Cossack garb belting bass and shaking tambourine, I'll be sure to post it.

Edit: As promised, here's a group shot of our folk group "The Outskirts." Let's play "Guess Who's American!"

New Music Video

These past few months, my friends and I have been helping a film student build her graduation portfolio. Last week, we were filming her latest work: a music video. Though I myself am not actually in the video, I was the cross-field bed schlepper, a synchronized candle extinguisher, and the curtain skirt undulator. Despite all that, I could not have predicted how eerie the final product would be. The song was so lyrical and I only worked on the sunshine scenes. What a surprise!

Cossacks

Map time! Here we have southern Russia, western Kazakhstan, the Caucus region, and eastern Ukraine, where I live. As you can see, my little green arrow is dead in the centre of the pale yellow shape. That shape indicates the territory most heavily populated by Cossack hordes.

These nomadic horsemen once thrived in the rich steppe and river basins of this region. The Cossack people have disputed origins, but they are likely a blend of Turkish, Mongol, and Slavic peoples and gained prominence around the 15th century. They were semi-autonomous and integral to the Russian border defence for hundreds of years. However, with the mechanization of the first and second World Wars, the Cossacks (and cavalries in general) became obsolete.

No longer instrumental to the protection of the Soviet Union, the Cossack subculture fell on hard times. During the Bolshevik period and the subsequent famine, the state redistributed many of the crops grown in this region among urban centres. As a result, the Cossack population dwindled.

In recent times, Ukraine, Georgia, and even Putin's government have taken measures to increase protection of what few Cossacks remain, now mostly poor farmers or peasants. In eastern Ukraine, however, people identify closely to the Cossack heritage and keep it alive as their own. Festivals celebrating the culture, conquests, and music of the Cossack people are frequent and spirited. More than half of the collectives performing in our House of Culture are dedicated entirely to maintaining and performing Cossack folk songs.

I often hear from volunteers in western Ukraine the misconceived notion that only in their regions can you find culture and history. While it may be true that Lugansk lacks synagogues, castles, or cities older than 200 years, ours was a nomadic and oral history and is not to be discredited. It may not be as photogenic as the West, but we do have loads of this: I give you Казачья молитва, the Cossack's Prayer.

2nd Cross-Ukrainian Open Competition

My collective and I were recently featured on the town culture blog for having come in second place in a major competition in Lugansk. Google translates the page pretty well, but that one sentence pretty much covers the gist of it. We sang not in Russian but in Ukrainian. It was a traditional a capella piece called "Hermit." Enjoy!

Fine Arts Camp

With my first week of summer, I conducted a day camp for kids in my town. Tired of the same old family tree project and discussion of sport, I planned a camp that used English to teach music, skits, and dance. With the help of a few other volunteers and community members, 30 kids learned step, Elmo's song, the gingerbread man, and others. Parents were happy with the performance, it was great to have some friends in town, and the students were happy to be part of something different. Here are some performance pictures.

 Step

 Hip-hop

 The Ants Go Marching

Gingerbread Man 

 Who Will Bell the Cat?

Happy New Year

You have to skip forward a bit through the Russian, but this totally happened. This is what my life is like. Every day.

Молочные реки, кисельные берега

Mark Yankov learns to some
potato skillz at culinary club.

The Russian saying "rivers of milk, banks of kisel" is used when  everything in life is going great, which is true of my first month of working here at Lutugino's School #1. I have been granted classroom independence for 9 of my 18 classes, which gives me the freedom to teach as I see fit. Also, the classes I teach alone are comprised of a filtered group of only the most motivated students, so we really have a lot of potential for improvement over the course of this next year. I'm getting along well with teachers, staff, and neighbors, and I even have a regular cashier at the grocery store and egg lady at the bazaar with whom I routinely converse. I generally feel good about the Russian progress I've been making, and I feel that my tutor is effective. I've started a club for 11th grade boys who want to learn how to cook (a skill which this country seems to think men don't need) and I'm planning to attend a conference on methodology in two weeks with my counterpart. I feel generally that the school, personal, integration, and volunteer sectors of my life are successful and fulfilling.

7 awesome ladies and me, at the regional
performance for talented teachers

If that's not a wide enough milk river for your liking, yesterday the town itself celebrated its 115th birthday. "Day of the City" is a pretty big deal, including an all day concert, basketball tournament, horse rides, street food, flash mob, and fireworks. I spent the day supporting my performing students and spreading my circle of acquaintances and friends. Here are some of the highlight pictures from the festivities. C праздником!

Soviet dance number?

Kids were encouraged to decorate the pavement in the central square.

Inside the House of Culture was a singing competition that felt sort of like Tuesday night karaoke.

My 11th grader Natasha did very well!

Horse rides around the square

Several barbecue stands popped up around the edges.

Basketball tournament in the afternoon

The local militia performs.

The presentation of the city flag

Flash mob!

The ever-fabulous Shashlik

Our technology teacher demonstrates the proper de-skewering method.

This dude had no idea why I wanted to take a picture.

Lots of my students were in this one. It was really fun to watch!

Buddha's Birthday

Every year on the first full moon of the fourth month in the lunar calendar, millions of people gather at temples all over Asia to celebrate Buddha's Birthday. Preparations start several days in advance, with strings of lanterns popping up all over the city.  When the day finally came this year, it was a rainy Tuesday here in Seoul.  The dreariness didn't stop the festivities though.  I myself hiked up to my favorite local temple.  The street vendors were out in full force, which always adds a bit of energy to the atmosphere even in a drizzle.  Ajumas were serving up a free lunch of mixed mountain veggie bibimbab. My favorite part of the day is musical chanting of the monks, which I can hear from my window in the morning. I was able to record a sample of it.



While wandering around the vendor tents outside the temple gates, perusing the prayer candles and wooden kitchen utensils, I heard a racket. Coming from around the corner, the approaching cacophony was soon recognizable as a parade. Expecting a surfeit of men with ribbon-dancing hats, I was astonished when a barrage of 20 ajumas came barreling around the corner, skipping and drumming with big toothy smiles. Standing slack jawed at the sight of such energetic women, most of whom certainly had grandchildren, I almost became roadkill when the herd took a sharp right and stampeded right through me and into the courtyard of a house in front of which I had been standing. I followed them into the courtyard and watched with a grin as the ajumas jumped, drummed, and swayed back and forth as if they were reenacting a native american rain dance. They soon skipped on as merrily and suddenly as they had come, and when they did I followed them. This is a video of the very same troupe raising hell at their next stop, a tent full of diners.



After the scene had passed, I met up with some friends to see what was left of the weekend's lantern festival in the popular stream that cuts through the heart of the downtown area called CheonGye Cheon. The second musical surprise of the day was discovered underneath one of the bridges that pass over the stream. A seemingly impromptu rave was taking place in an small alcove, complete with boombox and the Japanese equivalent to Gatorade. Though those 10 or 12 friends weren't very impressive dancers, they did seem to be having a fair amount of fun. The most amusing part of it was the elderly couple who weren't completely undisturbed by the hooligans with their loud music. After we'd watched our fill and finished our stroll, it was time to spend the rest of our day off enjoying a microbrew and pleasant company at local pub The Table.

Coming Soon

Buddha's Birthday, two-thousand and eleven.

Alternative Angle

So far, in the three years that I've been doing this, I've shown many sides of Seoul. I've described it's history as I've come to know it. As I've walked through it's palaces, temples, and museums, you've walked with me. We've spent a great deal of time on the culinary facet of the city, from local to foreign to home-skillet. The various landscapes have been laid before you, from urban to natural. By now, you must know the transportation, noteworthy structures, and neighborhoods of the city as well as a native. We've even gone so far as to explore the cultural idiosyncrasies of Seoul, from absurd manners to the occasional lack thereof.

However, in three years of writing and photographing, I've never taken the time to show Seoul's other side: that of a modern, artistically blossoming capital with everything you need for high society, and not for my lack of experiencing this. It's time to rectify this oversight.

For months now I've been attending concerts and ballets at the expansive Seoul Arts Center, though "complex" may be a more appropriate word. SAC is a sprawling conglomeration of theatres and concert halls on the south side of the river, very near to the big-money neighbourhoods of Apgujeong and Gangnam. I've there been privilege to an excellent performance of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker, and an even better Cervantes' Don Quixote. I've also heard Mozart flute concertos, Beethoven symphonies, and various choral performances by international groups. This is truly the core the performing arts scene, which consists of more than simply the touristy, Stomp-rip-off Nanta. (As a side note, the SAC also has the most extensive sheet music store I've ever seen anywhere.)


The fun doesn't stop at tuning forks and pirouettes though. In a city that has been showing increasing promise in the architectural department, I've never quite pinned down any conventional art that was made by Koreans in the past 100 years. Yesterday, I made the discovery. The Leeum Samsung Museum features not only one wing with all the historical celadon pottery and calligraphy that other museums sport, but it also has a large wing of both paintings and installations, mostly by Korean artists. A third whole wing is currently dedicated to Korean art that reflects history, which is a nice touch after having been through the two separately.


Korea has consistently provided me with all manner of opportunities, no matter what I'm looking for. I'm therefore always surprised by the foreigners I meet who claim that Seoul is "boring" or that there's "nothing to do." This city is truly dynamic.