Rest and No Rest at Sangnok
Trip Start
Aug 30, 2005
1
11
49
Trip End
Aug 29, 2006
Sangnok Resort,
Korea Rep.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
For several days we toiled in a room with no air conditioning, trying to keep from baking under the fluorescent lights. Material ranged from the interesting to the mundane, overall it really was vital for developing contacts with teachers witin Chungnam province. However, there were some excellent presentations regarding trying to learn a foreign language (in this case a Botsawanan dialect) and details about the culture within Korean public school. There was one strange presentation where I felt like standing up and saying "AMEN! Praise be JESUS!", it was about love and he was pumping the crowd to respond. It turned out this black-american fellow, turned teacher, used to be a preacher! So I was right about my assessment in the first 2 minutes - I thought "This guy looks like a preacher!". We also watched a particularly graphic representation of the Korean war, which was extremely interesting: two brothers seperated by war, one North, one South and alot of torn allegiances between family & country. It is a great allegory of the cultural situation of the time - Koreans are a very tight-knit people.
Then, Oh Those Summer nights...
Following the 70/80 club on Monday night, we made a brief appearance (7 bottles of soju and 4 people) on Tuesday night and then proceeded to the nuri-pang - or more widely known in the west as kareoke. If you have never experienced a Korean night of signing you should - it was wild and we weren't even in a major city! Nuri-pang ing major city centres is quite the event I understand. However we managed just fine, the Kiwi started off with a representation of the Mauree (New Zealand native peoples) war dance. I must say that was entertaining, apparently the New Zealand All Black (Rugby team) perform one of these before each game. Then the part which I personally dreaded was... the singing.
Needless to say that the event lead to bleeding ear all around, as often you cannot hear yourself over the noise of drink and talk in the room. However, I cannot claim this as my only reason for causing trauma to the middle ear - it is that I am also a crappy singer. I plowed through, with the aid of booze, to accomplish completion of several slow, monotone songs to the utter horror of those in the room. Actually no one noticed after 7 bottles of soju.
Wednesday was recovery night, before we planned to go out on Thursday - our last night at the resort. Now Danny, I know your thinking "you pussy!" but I had to account for the old people in the group and the fact that I had lost my voice. In addition I was corraled to finish a lesson plan we needed for a class presentation. However after arriving back at the resort, I ate pizza at their house and did the lesson plan there, I proceeded directly to the 70/80 Club in true party fashion. Fortunately I was not the only rebel of the group joining 5 others there. It was a relatively quiet night with 5 bottles of soju and a couple jugs of beer provided by our kind Korean hosts.
Thursday night was all out night. Following, of all things, a campfire (this is just not something I associated with Korea) we threw out rationale and partied till 4 AM. 70/80 club till close then nuri-pang till they literally threw us out. I must admit it was rather indiscreet, they just disconnected the power and acted innocently as we schuffled (sometimes crawled) out the door to find our beds.
Now that's good times....
