Hello friends,

I realized I haven’t told the story of our new endeavor the “You Po Young Project” with Professor Jay (Yoon Jay Young) 윤재웅. We have been working on this since the end of January until now. It has been quite the road getting here. And honestly, it is what has eaten up a lot of our time and energy. Eric wrote about this in his last family letter - if you read, you’re in the know.

Professor Jay is technically our boss. He’s a goofy guy, to say the least, some of the teachers have had issues with his brash personality, I’ve skirted this so far. He studied in the United States for a year or two (Poetry) and because of his Ph.D., he insists on being called Professor Jay.
Professor Jay was dreaming of a character named Tabby the Tiger, inspired by Yeungjin University (our parent org)’s mascot. Tabby was going to be a rapper, because apparently Jay is a rapper, and because kids love rappers. Tabby the Tiger would appear in educational videos that Prof. Jay wants to create with us foreign teachers. They will be educational, in some form.
He pitched this idea to Eric at the end of the fall semester. He knew Eric was a writer and an editor, so he recruited him to help with the scripts. 

Jay drew Eric, Collin, and Amy in as his core three participants. Eric would serve as his editor (his ‘slave’ by his own utterance to one of our teachers, which was the beginning of what was disconcerting about all this; he says it’s all jokes and backtracks, but the joke gets awful thin awful quick, obviously, Collin would be ‘Collin the Viking’ who loves to eat cake, is addicted to video games, and who teaches Tabby whenever Tabby doesn’t know anything (Collin is a big man, so the caricature bordered on nasty), and Amy would be ‘Amy the Undisputed Beauty in the World’.

Suffice to say that Jay’s caricatures were based on Jay’s interpretations of us as people. Guest stars would be Trystan aka ‘Trystan the Undisputed Handsomest in the World’ who was labeled in the script as an idiotic narcissist, yikes.
From Eric’s words “Jay seemed nonplussed and entirely surprised” when Eric told him this had to change. He continued to push his ideas. That’s when Amy removed herself and Eric had a heart-to-heart about what needed to happen moving forward. Jay made Eric “Project Coordinator” so that communications to foreign staff would go through Eric not Jay - disentangle him from making more of a mess of the relationships here. 

So she left, and as I’m writing about this, you can guess: I was approached for her role. 

The good side: There’s been a lot of self-realization on Jay’s part since those first bumpy starts, thanks to Eric talking with him, and Amy pushing back made him realize his actions were hurtful.

We filmed our 11th skit this last week, in front of a green screen. Tabby the Tiger has gone from Tabby the Tiger to ‘Teacher D’, aka Teacher Dream, because the only mask that could be found for Tabby the Tiger made him look horrifying and very odd, so luckily that was dropped. 
To give you an idea: our first episode ‘I’m from Texas’ a stranger comes to ‘DGEV Land’, where ‘Heidi the Undisputed Beauty’ and ‘Harold the Viking’ played by Collin, learn that he is from Texas, and Teacher D(ream) eavesdrops on their conversation, becomes increasingly upset as he doesn’t know what ‘I’m from Texas’ means, but ultimately, after explanation from the compassionate Viking hearts, gleans an understanding and explains it to the kids in his clumsy way.
He does not rap.

I wear a German folk dress with a cape and a tiara and Collin wears a Viking horn helmet with a red hoodie. We try to act. The scripts are really short and always include a key English sentence that we are teaching Teacher Dream.
Jay is proving more congenial, more malleable, and less domineering than rumored to be. He is very friendly, I understand that we’re getting a corrected version … regardless, it did work out, and that is probably in large part to Amy speaking up and walking away - so we thank her for that. I do wonder if there would have been a way to navigate the project better from the get-go? 

We’ve all approached this with a dose of Collin’s attitude: I’m going into a green room to have fun with my friends for a couple of hours.

I will say I was pretty nervous about the whole thing: acting and being on camera, that has never been my thing, I hated the small amount of theater that I did in middle school. But it has turned out to be quite the (fun) experience. I’m learning to be vulnerable, watch myself with compassion, not get upset or too discouraged, you just move on with a new take. I’m more accepting of critiques and I see myself as a teacher on screen, learn how to speak slowly (it’s actually very hard) and clearly to children. Also facial expressions - wow - weird to think about and do on cue. 

It’s been really great. And Collin’s attitude has come to fruition - we have a wonderful time together in the broadcasting room. Looking at these screenshots and the bloopers we have, it has been A LOT of fun, many laughs have been had. Prof. Jay has been sincere in his acting and really leaning into being goofy along with us all trying the same. 

This last week we finished the last 8 scripts, as our whole school week got canceled - plans were for a big group STEAM trip to Uljin, South Korea again, but there were forest fires around the area (by a nuclear power plant) that shut those plans down. Thank god. I think the fires are under control. ?

Well, here we are plugging away at our roles as Heidi, Harold, and Teacher Dream. Guest actors are all DGEV teachers and props we have in our broadcasting room. These are some of our favorite scenes so far. Please enjoy all of our cringe-worthy acting and scripts. From all of us working so hard on the “You Po Young Project” for random Korean students to view someday ~~