Field Trip! - "Orientation"

The last two days here have been spent in field trip land. All of us piled in a bus to Gyeongju city for "orientation." Although, from my point of view, it was really quite DISorienting. Texting my friend later tonight, I called it "mass chaos always on the verge of catastrophe."

The two main lessons for this weekend are thus:

1) 400 human beings should not be kept in such proximity for such legths of time. (and you thought cons were bad...)

2) Buses should absolutely NEVER make U-turns.

I have to admit it was kind of cool to see everyone from the program together, just to see the scale of it. There was an informational/introductory set of presentations. We had some cool drum and dance performances. But after enough time, keeping that many people focused--particularly when many, if not most, have to concentrate to understand what's being said--will break down. The attention span of even the brightest and most disciplined has it limits.

I'm not going to go into the details of trying to find our hotel rooms and how we came to the conclusion that our staff member is secretly related to Harry Houdini. It just isn't worth revisiting and words wouldn't do it justice anyway. *sigh*

also, obnoxious yellow shirts. Mandatory obnoxiously yellow shirts.

Dinner was really nice. Lots of different kinds of food. And a nice talent show, too, but again, attention span decreases exponentially as the number of people in a room increases.

After that, a number of us went out because many of us were convinced 9:30 is too early for bed. This, of course, led to many complaints about the midnight curfew at our dorm. It's a sour topic and I'll leave it at that for now. It was fun exploring and eventually drinking with everyone, but differences in expectations hung tension and confusion in the air. (it's all about expectations.)

Anyway, today was field trip day. you know, more fun things. cultural things, not lectures. Except field trips tend to only work in smaller groups. if you have a lot of people that need to go on a field trip, you break them up into smaller groups. simple intheory and attempted in this situation. but it's difficult to stay in small groups when all of the groups are going to the same place at the same time.

The most frustrating endeavor of the day was going to a city hall and then commandeering elevators for over 400 people to go to the 15th floor to have lunch in a cafeteria. And i had no idea until we got there that that was all we were there for. I about jumped off that 15th floor. Well, we were actually there for some welcoming ceremony, but that was outside. I have no effing clue why we had to go to some 15th floor cafeteria for lunch with 400+ students.

I think the best stop was a tour of POSCO steel plant. It, of course, was much more organized. they are used to large groups and good at keeping them organized. The plant was also really cool and we also got to see the steel get rolled flat and then get coiled into giant rolls. a giant slab in minutes. Awesome.

I think by the end of it, I was just crabby from the number of people and the mass chaos. I really can't stand disorganized events and massive numbers of people. Looking back, I could have, and maybe should have, enjoyed it. But i'm tired and it's done.

Now we have two days to recover. There is a placement test on Monday morning, which I will not be participating in since I am undoubtedly a "beginner" in Korean language and we will meet again in the afternoon to fill out forms and submit photos for our alien cards and school IDs. Sometime this weekend, I have to go get my picture taken... again. I should just have them print a sheet of 30. And I thought Asians believe that photographs steal your soul. Maybe they want to steal our souls. It's all a ploy.

Also, still no hide nor hair of a roommate. my guess is that she's Korean. it would explain why there was no onle else on the arrival list with my room number.