Last week, during one of my speaking classes, we were talking about dancing. One of the types of dance in my power point was “hip hop.” This morning, before class started, some of the students were practicing for their upcoming acting activity, and others were dancing a bit. As I looked over, I saw one of the students in the back of the room doing some kind of hip-hop dance move. I decided that I couldn’t just let the moment pass, so I ran to get my camera phone and insisted that he pose in mid-hop.

I’m learning that people over here are a bit more familiar with certain western cultural things than I originally thought (I mean, he clearly didn’t just learn this in one week after seeing my PowerPoint presentation and sample dance videos). Although when I went over some western music, most of them only recognized a select few artists (Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber), and only a couple of people recognized Avril Lavigne (who apparently is a spokesperson for some kind of drink that is popular here), and one kid recognized Madonna.