Camp

This weekend Jessie and I volunteered at a camp in Nam-Yang province (or maybe Nam-Yang county. Who knows!). It was a cross-cultural awareness program that was set up by UNESCO in Korea, a UN organization. It sounds really impressive, but it was just a camp.
Anyways, we were told to prepare for three hours of activities with our groups, preferrably having something educational to do with them. Jessie and I both decided to make scrap books with our groups, and play cards for the rest of the time (TEACH them a card game. hahaha).
Other than for those three hours, and some other random times, we could do whatever we wanted, which mostly consisted of sitting on the steps and drinking coffee.
The camp was pretty thrown together, but luckily there was enough teacher-keenness to pick up the slack where planning failed. Every camp game ever played was brought out at one point, from duck duck goose to about four different versions of wink-murderer.
All-in-all it was a pretty great time. The foreigners from countries other than Canada were all really great people, graduate students studying at universities in Kwangju. Many were hard-core computer programmers and networking types, but surprisingly, not boring.
After the kiddies went to bed, the foreigners would retire to the cafeteria, which would have been outfitted with a fine spread of fried chicken, clementines, beer, and soju, the korean rice-wine/bathroom cleanser. Then we would sit up and drink way too much with the camp's director. The other foreigners would head to bed around eleven thirty, and the Canadians would remain behind much later. Eventually, no fresh soju would be brought out, and people would take the hint and go to bed.
On Saturday, the afternoon was taken up with a rather lame activity. It was a dance that involved saying "Hello, Nice to meet you, Hope to meet again, I am happy" while doing a little jig of handshakes with those around you. This could have been fun. Could have been, but wasn't, because the man holding the microphone and counting off the steps had no rhythm at all.
Then, we did it to music. Surely, this would bring some improvement, we thought.
It did not. The music was too fast for what we were trying to do, and the man with the microphone continued to count off steps to the beat of another drummer only he heard, while people tripped and stalled all around him trying to match either him or the song, inevitably making the choice that put them out of step with their partners.
The activity took much too long, and wound up eating into the time we had to plan for. So, no time for cards. A scrap book was thrown together in half an hour, and then a rushed attempt was made at a capture the flag game was made, and it ultimately failed. Thank God for my being a don, I managed to pull a few games out of my ass and salvage the whole affair.
After that, we had a campfire, which was cancelled and moved inside as a talent night due to rain. I played "Such a Simple Way", "Shine", "I Will Survive", and, an encore (!) of "Firecracker" by Ryan Adams. It was really surreal, as I've never had a response like that before. At the end of "Such a Simple Way", the auditorium literally erupted with applause, about a 60% standing ovation eventually developing. At the end of the second song, Korean students started chanting "Encore! Encore!". And then one of the organizers, who had previously asked if I wouldn't mind not performing at all to save time wound up asking me to play another song.
Korean girls do this thing with their hands held up in front of their face so that they are looking through their hands in a heart shape. I'd never seen it, in spite of the fact that I kept hearing about it, but I almost started laughing in the middle of "Shine", because I looked up and saw about twenty of them scattered around the place. It was quite a change from playing the Callander Tavern, let me tell you.
After my performance, three of the other Canadian teachers got up to do some campfire songs, and after that, all of the foreigners left for the caf. We played Korean trivia for a while, which was really frustrating, because you had to either ignore the conversation to play the game or ignore the game to participate in the conversation, and either way, you missed about half of what was going on. Mr Park, the camp organizer, poured me a wicked meksu (half beer, or "mekju" and half soju, or "soju") which I for some reason chugged. It hit me all at once about 20 minutes later.
After the trivia game was over, I took the guitar back out for some sing-alongs, which was no good. I forgot that I didn't know any popular songs. Once we had exhausted my repertoire of Blue Rodeo and Brown-Eyed Girl, I basically became just background, which was fine for me at the time, as I was just loving playing as a consequence of the alcohol. Luckily for those in audience, Jessie had had enough to be less inhibited also, and wound up throwing in some really nice harmonies out of the blue.
So, all in all it was a really good, very social, and highly laid-back weekend. Not relaxing at all, in fact, I am still a little tired, but really good.
There were a few points that made me a little ashamed to be associated with the other Canadian teachers:

1. Hearing the Indian volunteer, Sooraj, being referred to as "Akbar".
2. Having half of the floor woken up at three in the morning by a fire-extinguisher fight.
3. Being woken up twice by one specific teacher pissing on the tiny balcony when the bathroom was physically closer.

Other than that, I had a really good time, and was glad to have participated. Anyways, more later.