Tae-lae-bi-jun

Did we tell you we bought a TV?  My sweet husband was going to write a post about it, but he's been busy watching it and hasn't had time, hehe.  Our new tae-lae-bi-jun is a monster--a fifty-two inch screen that now dominates my living room.  Happy birthday, handsome husband!

 I've used it to watch a movie or two, but I hadn't really sat down to flip through the Korean cable channels until tonight; I'm not working today but I'm on a night-shift schedule, so I had a few hours to kill while my handsome husband was asleep.

Three a.m. TV offerings in Korea appear to be similar to those in the U.S.--a few home shopping channels, old movies, and (this one was a tad surprising) what appeared to be Asian porn.  There are multiple Australian channels as well as one in Japanese and one in Chinese.  And at least three showing Anime.

Two channels have Western cartoons--one in English, and one dubbed in Korean.  Funny to see a Johny Quest-looking cartoon character bust out some fierce Korean.  A whole lot of channels are dedicated to several flavors of Korean drama--the modern melodramatic drama, the historical amazing costume drama, and the man-with-straw-in-his-hair drama (this one may be historical, not sure).  There are at least three golf channels, and no fewer than five soccer games showing on different sports channels.  There are also entire channels dedicated to showing video games.  I'm not much of a gamer myself, so I couldn't tell you what game was being played, but I find it interesting that there are enough people who want to sit in front of their TVs and watch the screen shots of other people playing video games to support entire channels.

There were also multiple educational options.  There were history and science channels, as well as classroom-style teaching shows.  One program featured a Korean guy teaching English.  Blackboard and everything!  I'm not sure why the vocabulary tonight was "shrew mouse" (pronounced "shuh-rlue mou-suh")--I can't think of a single occasion before writing this post in which, as an English speaker, I've ever needed to know the word "shrew mouse", but I think it's fantastic that people can sit in front of their TV and learn English.  I wish we had similar foreign language shows in the States!  Oh, there was also a show with a white girl teaching Chinese.  Hmm.

Language lessons were not the only educational offering, however--there was also a show with a very attractive young lady teaching calculus.  No wonder Asians are the smartest!