An Unexpected Concert

I was so glad that yesterday was Friday. It's been a pretty long, pretty busy week because of all of the midterm stuff going on at school. I was tired, and it was one of those days where I really didn't want to be in Korea. One of my friends was also having a similar day, so we decided that we should go get dinner and make a "no talking about work or complaining about Korea" rule. She and I live about 90 minutes apart from each other, so we decided to meet somewhere in the middle.

I got to the subway station where we were going to meet before my friend did. It was a large station, where two major lines meet, in a part of town I've never visited before. I actually got lost in the subway station, and I couldn't figure out how to get out of it. I wandered around for awhile, and finally found a place where I could get out of the station. I walked through the gates to leave the station, and there was a group of older men and women with a bunch of saxophones, and some chairs sitting in front of them. I wasn't sure exactly what was going on, but it looked interesting, so I decided to wait for a minute. 

It turns out, it was a music academy, and they were having a small student recital in the subway station. I don't know why it was in the subway station, but there we have it. Just after I arrived, the concert started, so I stuck around to listen for a minute. I wasn't planning on staying very long, but after the first song was over, the director got up and announced to the entire subway station that a foreigner was watching his concert. He got very excited about it, and he and another man in the band tried really, really hard to speak enough English to communicate. He was so excited to see me that he decided he was going to interrupt the normal flow of the concert and play a song just for me. Of course, I recorded it, so here is my Saxophone Serenade! I think he said the song was called "Autumn Leaves". 

After that, I took a seat and decided to wait there for my friend. After each student played a piece, he would ask them how long they had played the saxophone. I was able to understand most of those conversations. He would also ask me how I was feeling and if I had any requests in between each song. For some reason, he was really, really happy that I was there. He was really sweet, and tried his best to translate everything into English for me. Between the little bit of English he spoke, and my little bit of Korean, we were able to communicate pretty well. 

It was a nice antidote to my "I don't want to be in Korea" day, for sure. Sometimes, it's easy to focus on all of the stupid things I have to do at work, or the frustrations of not understanding everything that's going on around me. People can be really rude sometimes, especially since I'm a foreign woman. But randomly, in that subway station, there was a group of people who went above and beyond any expectation I might have had to make me feel welcome and comfortable. It also made me really happy to see a group of Koreans doing something for fun, and doing it in public when most of them have only played for a year or so. If you would have asked me if I thought that was possible 24 hours ago, I would have said no. So yeah... It made me happy, and it made the end of the day much happier than the beginning!