In the petri dish

This whole situation is actually really freaking me out. I couldn't sleep at all last night and still feel like I want to hyperventilate or something. It is very un-nerving that they are going to have a meeting about what to do with us without any US representation. I just really hope they send us home. This is, for lack of a better term, bullshit and I want to leave right now. I feel like they are not treating us fairly (they wouldn't even let us in the HOSPITAL yesterday) and more than anything I want to cry for the way that Christine is being forced to stay in a room with 2 very sick people when she probably just has a cold. I hate this place. My friend Susan just called the US embassy and is trying to get more people aware of what is going on but since it is Sunday here there is almost no one working. Sigh. More info to come as we get it...

My blog should be called Michelle's F--ed up journey to Korea

They are making us stay in quarantine because we have 3 "confirmed" cases of swine flu here. One of them is my friend Christine. They are making us all wear face masks and there is a good chance that they will send us home. They are going to cancel the first camp. If I have to stay in quarantine I would much rather go home. Christine is not allowed to leave her room even though she feels fine (she has a slight cough).Quarantine in quarantine...it gets worse but I am too angry to explain it all right now. Please send us your good wishes...keep them coming and maybe my situation will improve.

Quarantine Day 6 and 7: Put a fork in it

Yesterday we got our scripts for the skits we will do with our middle school groups. Mine is a very different version of Cinderella, it goes like this: Cinderella begs the fairy to make her a pretty dress and ends up bribing her with a nice bottle of aged whiskey. The drunken fairy then proceeds to sing an awful song in a singing contest and Cinderella wins a dance with the prince. It was very surprising. Apparently that is ok here.
On the downside, quarantine has progressed into feeling like an episode of Real World: South Korea. Being cooped up with a group of people will inevitably cause some people to behave in ways they wouldn't normally. Basically we had some interesting confrontations with people as they became frustrated with us for various reasons. It was brought to our attention that some people were upset (for lack of a better word...maybe disappointed is better) because they didn't get to eat any of my birthday cake. I actually felt really bad about it on the night of my birthday because it was a very small cake and there are over 70 people here so we decided to share with the people who have to stay at camp Wando (since isn't the best in terms of facilities). Anyway, after much discussion we decided that the best way to express our feelings is in a short monologue about how ridiculous this whole situation is. Hopefully I can figure out how to post a video on my blog so you all can see it. Tonight the Koreans are buying us pizza and beer and the americans are going to put on a talent show. After the skit we are going to pass out the cake in the Korean style which is to give everyone a fork and put a large slice of cake on each table so that everyone has a chance to get at least a bite. sigh. I am not goin to apologize though. This whole situation is rather ridiculous and childish so I won't waste any more time talking about it. Last night was fun, Aly and Susan and I stayed up talking and giggling like a real sleepover.

Today has been the weirdest so far. Christine and several of the camp members began to feel ill today (uh-oh). 6 people either felt ill or were running a temperature this morning so they informed them that they would all need to go to the hospital to ensure that their illness is not of the H1N1 variety. Christine was very upset, needless to say, so I offered to go along and be a cheerleader since it is such a weird, silly situation. Foreign hospitals can be scary places, after all. SO we all piled into a van and drove into the actual town of Wando. On the way there we discussed how odd it is that they all suddenly got sick on the same day. Someone pointed out how yesterday we volunteered to help clean the nasty building and were all doing things like stirring up dust and cleaning black scary mold off of walls and windows. Have I mentioned that this place is DISGUSTING? This is the perfect environment to ensure that all of us get sick. I think that was their master plan.
Anyway we all had to put on face masks and they wouldn't even let us stay inside the hospital. We had to sit outside while they asked the sick people questions and swabbed their throats. We waited for quite a while so that they could write prescriptions and I don't know what else. Our Korean hosts were very nice and still don't feel the need to wear face masks around us and agree that this whole thing is silly. One of those people is Ethan (that's his "american name"), he drove us around the city of Wando (which is big and busy to our surprise!). We got to go into the grocery store (does anyone else see the irony that only the sick people got to go out into the city to explore?) and buy candy and soda. Then we went to a little store called a "Moon-goo" which I was told basically means "stationary store." It was like a really cute little dollar tree. I bought some cute little notebooks and laughed at all the funny English words and phrases on the front: "A loveful scheduler," for example. After walking around in the streets for a few minutes we piled back into the van to head back to camp. It was really fun to explore and I was really glad I went. Looking around was exciting because I could tell that we are in another country and not just some weird dirty detention center.
We missed lunch and part of our orientation so we ate quickly and split into groups to present our lessons. I think mine was really bad and they are probably wondering how it's possible that I have taught English for 2 years...oh well.
Now they are making all the sick people wear face masks. This is all such a weird experience. I sortof feel like this is a bad dream and am really hoping that the teaching aspect of this whole experience makes my trip worth while. I hope tonight's talent show and pizza make everything and everyone better :( I hope Christine feels better soon.

Birthday in quarantine (Day 4)

So that none of you will ever have to wonder what a birthday in quarantine feels like I will explain in depth. It's kinda awesome that since we are a day ahead here I get to have my birthday in Korea a day ahead and then all of you can wish me happy birthday today. So I get 2 days of birthdays. The day started the same as they all have with some special bday hot dogs and toast. It is rainy and stormy and people are starting to get a little stir crazy being stuck here with nothing to do. Some new instructors came to help us with the curriculum. One of them is a Canadian lady who was extremely upset with the facilities. She gave them an earfull and magically a whole bunch of workers showed up to finish with construction. So we get to be extra careful when changing now since there are guys on scaffolding outside our windows and random workers running around the building.
After breakfast we met with our fellow campers to decide which subjects we will be teaching. I pulled the birthday card and they let me have the art booth for the middle school and for elementary school Marty and I played rock, paper, scissors to see who was going to teach the hospital booth. I won. I picked it because we teach them to say really funny things like "I got ink in my eye," and "I suntanned for one hour." Nice.
After that we broke into groups to dissect our lessons. I know what you're thinking: "What an EXCITING day!" At lunch I got to see Ian and Mango with the webcam and then it was back to orientation where the Canadian teacher, Andrea, discovered that one of the Korean directors had stolen her entire powerpoint and she was presenting it to us for the 2nd time. MY favorite quote from her, "Well, that's why *Su Sang* SUCKS."
After lunch I was feeling really bored and lazy but Christine made me get up to go do something. We decided to walk down the hill to see what the beach is like here. I wish I had something exciting to say about it. There were a lot of fast little crabs everywhere but other than that it was really slimy. There is no sand, only rocks and the water looked to be full of nets and slimy seaweed. On our way down a large group of Korean workers got really excited and started screaming "HI!!"and waving frantically.
No terribly exciting meals today. At dinner, to my extreme embarrassment, Christine stood up and announced that it was my 26th birthday and made everyone sing to me. The Koreans bought me a cake and to all of our surprise it was a really, really nice fancy chocolate cake. Soooo yummy. Unfortunately it was rather small and all 70 campers started to stare at me and random people began to hover around it. People who have never talked to me started smiling at me and wishing me happy birthday. Christine had a great idea to share with the people who have to stay at camp Wando...we got a few boos but oh well.
Margaret went to the store for us and bought us a big bag of snickers, beer, and soju so Christine, Susan, Shannon and I went back to Christine's room to start drinking. They mix beer and soju here (which is good because the beer here is like 2%).
Marty brought a guitar so we had a big sing along and moved along to the auditorium after quiet hours. By this time many of us had a lot of soju in our systems and someone noticed that the karaoke machine was still here. We sang some more bad songs which evolved into a big dance party. We danced like crazy people to hip hop songs and stumbled drunkenly to our rooms at 2am and passed out. Needless to say I am not feeling 100% today. This morning I thought I was going to throw up my toast and my head was going to explode. Soju makes bad things happen to your head.
Yeah. So bday in quarantine 2009 didn't turn out so bad. I've had worse...Today is even stormier than yesterday and they are going to make us practice our lessons in front of our groups. NOT COOL. I don't like teaching to adults. For those of you still reading, even though Mercury is the planet closest to the sun, Venus is the hottest due to the clouds that act as a coat to trap in the heat.
The end

*Names have been changed to protect people's identity...actually I just have no capability to remember Korean names so I made one up.

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...

Quarantine: Day 2

Alright, so not a whole lot has happened since yesterday but this is the only thing to do in quarantine. I really thought they were kidding when they told us that the first week of orientation we would be quarantined from everyone. I am almost used to the time change, I hope it is this easy to adjust when I go back home. Today we got up around 7, had another breakfast of fried eggs and hot dogs with toast (we decided they taste more like soy dogs though), then had our first meeting for orientation.
We learned a lot about Korean history and culture today. We also got our English curriculum books for the camps. Everyone is really nice...that's the only good thing about quarantine is we all have nothing to do together so we've been forced to get to know each other. It was very stormy today...but still incredibly humid. It's like breathing in water. We're still waiting for them to bring back our beer. That would help.
Christine had to go to sleep early since she's been staying up all night talking with our new Korean friend Margaret (that's her "English name"). The only sad thing about going to Mokpo is that Margaret has to stay here. I can't even tell you how excited I am that I don't have to stay here the whole time though, I have had enough of the island experience.
Nothing ever dries here, it is just constantly damp/soaking wet. I did some laundry today but there are no driers so I am thinking I might have to blow dry all of my clothes. Since nothing ever dries that also means that this whole building is covered in mold. I think they are trying to fix up the building but it still feels very dilapidated and in disrepair.
I have been taking pictures of all the big creepy bugs. Oh, and Ian, I found a really cool mushroom, it was orange and had three arms that met at the top. It was crazy looking.
The mosquitoes are starting to get me. I need to go coat my legs in DEET.
Ok, now I am going to tell you the most exciting news of all: Our puppy was born last night!! She's a one pound healthy little perfect girl. Pictures to come! We're getting a Bernese Mountain Dog...we can pick her up in 8 weeks. Yay!

We made it!

Here are some lovely pictures of my first day in Korea. The food shown was a traditional Korean lunch but we had a very interesting breakfast of hot dogs, rice, and salad.
We are currently in the small remote southern island of Wando. It has been constantly shrouded in a mysterious blanket of fog so I honestly can't say what Korea looks like. We are staying in a run down provincial building used for camps and meetings (final picture). It kinda looks like a prison, huh?
As you can also see from the masked woman taking my temperature, they are extremely worried about the swine flu and among numerous pamphlets and questionnares asking us to name any possible symptoms they have decided to quarantine us from the general population for the whole first week. What you can't see in the picture is that the local news crew was filming our health check to pacify the locals. Our rules are that we are allowed to wander around but we're not to get to close to the civilians and we definetely shouldn't approach them in large groups as it is too intimidating. It feels like we've been here a lot longer than a day. It's also weird to think we lost a day (it's 16 hours ahead here).
Getting here was took over 24 hours. We flew to Seattle and had a layover. Then flew Asiana airlines (which was awesome-touch screens with games and movies) 11 hours to Seoul. We were then almost immediately taken to a bus and were forced to sit still again for another 5 hours. It was so surreal because it felt almost exactly like a trip to Mexico...only I can't read any of the signs here. It smells like fish here. Actually, it doesn't I just wanted to see if you were still reading.
It is very hot and sweaty here. When I got up from sitting on the stone steps you could clearly see my cheek prints. It was very unsettling. We hiked to a temple this morning which sounds a lot cooler than it actually was. Most of the day was spent wondering what we were supposed to do. The highlight of the day was that Christine and I were able to find someone who was willing to switch camps. It was between staying here and another (much bigger) city of Mokpo. We won the coin toss so we'll be going together to Mokpo for the teaching aspect of the trip. For those of you who didn't know, we were placed in separate camps and told that we might not be able to switch. Yay! The Koreans are being very accommodating under the circumstances, they really want us to be comfortable here and are even going on a beer/soju run for us!
Much love to you all!
Annyong hi-ka-say-oh!...or something like that....