Norebang! Norebang!

Norebang ( nor-eh-bang): a Korean Karaoke Bar. If there is one thing in the world that I am truly bad at... it's singing. I can barely carry a tune and let's not even talk about how I virtually make up the words to the most popular songs...

Norebang is the thing to do around here. The Koreans love it. Here’s the thing: they can do it without even the teeniest drop of alcohol. Where I’m from unless we’ve had significant amounts of alcohol to loosen us up- belting out the tunes just isn’t happening. But the Koreans marvel in it and can do it for hours. The crowd claps away, tapping their feet to the beats. The tambourines come out and well, there’s a party happening before you know it.


A few weeks ago, my school went for dinner to close the school year. Apparently, here in Korea they swap dessert for singing. As one after another took center stage, I was shocked, they were good. Really good, in fact. Not that I truly had any idea if they were even in tune or what they were saying...

I of course, was dragged up on stage and was told to pick a song. Let me remind you that 99% of the songs are Korean and therefore the selections are mostly from the late sixties to the early nineties. I was mortified. There was nothing worse than standing up in front of 40 or so of my Korean colleagues singing an outdated English song that no one had ever even heard of. I completely destroyed the song.  They smiled and clapped along of course, but I think they were just being kind.

I'm told we're gathering up again next week to hit the Karaoke bar.  I've already planned to have a nasty sore throat preventing me from participating in any sort of singing.