Quarantine Day 3: Breakin' out

Hello lovely followers. I actually had a very entertaining day here at Wando Prison Camp. We started off the day as usual with a delicious breakfast of hot dogs and salad and then went to a Korean music class. The teacher was a woman who studied traditional Korean drums and singing so she taught us a very old Korean song and had us dancing and tapping out the rhythm with our hands and a bamboo stick she gave us. After having a short break she had us doing some chair excercises (they are apparently very popular here as we had to do them in the airplane as well). It was by far the most entertaining class I've taken in a long time. I'll post a video of our excellent singing skills.

I think the food has been one of the most interesting things I've experienced so far. After the class Christine and our new amiga Susan wandered down to the cafeteria to be greeted by a bowl of soup with an entire small bird carcass sitting in the middle. It was stuffed with rice and ginseng and is traditionally served on the hottest day of the year. I mostly ate the side dish which may or may not have been tofu. I was told later that it was fish...It was good though so I'm not going to ask too many questions.

The afternoon schedule read "walking through the forest" so we put on our hiking gear and all of us began walking. I forgot to mention that miraculously the fog cleared and the sun came out. For the first time we were able to see our surroundings...so it was a perfect day for a hike. This island is very tropical and green with huge hills and rivers everywhere. We hiked up to a lookout point where there was a large 2 story gazebo. In the distance we could see the rivers and arboretum so Christine, Shannon and I decided to go on our own hiking adventure to see if we could make it down there. The trails here are very well maintained and peaceful. There are a million dragon flies and the birds and beetles were singing on our way. We finally came out to a road, all the trees were marked with what I assume was their botanical names and we followed the river down. At first we were nervous because there were a lot of Korean people hanging out and walking around but none of them turned and ran from us so we figured it was probably Ok to be near them.

We ended up near the bottom and put our feet in the river, it felt soo good. I can't even tell you how beautiful it was. The pictures aren't quite the same. It was the first time I actually felt like I was in Korea (it helps a lot when you can see 10 feet in front of you-the fog has been so think it was difficult before). We found another trail going back up the hill and ran into an amazing wooden building that looked like a temple. It smelled like cedar and had really intricately carved doors and big trunks for the beams. Christine and I wanted to take a picture on a platform next to the temple and were patiently waiting for a man to finish taking his pictures and move out of our way. Everything was so peaceful and magical with the dragonflies flying through the air and the rushing river but as we walked up next to the man he passed by us with a loud, juicy FART! He just kept walking as though nothing had happened and the magic was broken and we couldn't stop laughing.

It was starting to feel like dinner time so we booked it up the hill. We felt so sneaky and good that we had escaped from our little detention center. We made it back in time for a delicious dinner of the Korean version of meatloaf, some kind of christmas-y smelling gravy, mayonnaise noodles, rice and of course, kimchi.

After dinner we had a break and then the Koreans managed to get us a karaoke machine so we all congregated in the auditorium and listened to bad pop songs. I sang Patsy Cline's "Crazy" because it was the only one I knew :) It was a really fun day. I passed out at about 10:30 and slept the whole night without waking up! Yay. It is the 23rd here but I guess technically since I was born in OR maybe it's not until tomorrow. Ah! Either way I hope this is my one and only birthday in quarantine. Christine is going to surprise me with a cake and I expect all of you to be singing to me at exactly 4:20 pm when I was born 26 years ago.

Much love and more quarantine updates to come...