Natural back, Cool Joe!

For Christmas the primary children will be singing a medley of "Samuel Tells of Baby Jesus" and "Star Bright" that Miriam arranged. This week I worked with the kids on the variation to the tune of "Samuel Tells," which lowers the part a bit for the primary boys and young men to sing more easily. And then we turned our attention to "Star Bright." 

We have three little Korean boys in our primary and they knew that we'd be learning a Korean part for the song (we're doing English, Spanish, and Korean), so they started chanting, "Korean first! Korean first!"

How could I not do Korean first then? 

I introduced the kids to the Korean words a couple of weeks ago and it was...rough. 

So this week I listened and listened and listened to the Korean (thank you, Google translate) and paired sounds of the Korean with similar sounding words in English...like this:

당신은 밤을 (Dancing 'n pummel)
낮으로 바꾸죠 (Natural back, Cool Joe!)

I was a little nervous about sharing the slide with our primary because...well...I don't speak Korean very well at all (or at all) and am embarrassed to try in front of the (Korean) parents. I was worried that I might have gotten it wrong (and I did get plenty of other things wrong), or that it would be offensive, but when I got to this slide the dad (who is one of our primary teachers) busted up laughing. 

"That does sound like Korean!" he wheezed. "You did a good job!"

So, if ever you wanted to say "you turned the night into the day" in Korean, all you have to say is, "dancing 'n pummel, natural back, Cool Joe!"

He came up to take a picture of this slide after primary so he can share it with his friends. 

And those little boys are so excited to (1) sing this song in Korean (2) with their friends.

I had another girl in our ward (who moved to the US about ten years ago when she was a primary child; she's now a freshman in college) translate the chorus into Korean for us as a bit of a surprise for them. She did such a fabulous job that when the words first came on the screen a couple of weeks ago those three boys were able to just start singing to the tune! And they were seriously so excited about this!

I'm going to see what songs are already available in Korean for next year so we can learn some in verses in Korean (without making Jessica translate for us; Star Bright hasn't been translated into Korean officially, but we're lucky enough to have such willing Korean speakers to help us out).