hello, my friends!!! i hope you are all doing well.
last week, i participated in a little thing the koreans like to call, 'sports day'. i'm not sure who came up with this idea. more importantly, who decided this was fun? don't get me wrong, i'm a pretty athletic person so i don't think it had to do with me not being able to complete the activities. so, let us delve into the insane world that was sports day.we arrived at the school at 7:20 because we had to practice the song and dance we were told we needed to perform... the day before. we sang three korean songs and 'everybody was kung fu fighting'. we got all ready and it was good. we took all of our junk downstairs to wait for the bus that was supposed to come at 7:30. needless to say, we did not depart until 8:15. oh, korea. lol.
when we got on the bus it was super tiny for all these grown adults, except for lena, the little korean girl whose mom works with us. the whole way there we listened to some insanely, ridiculous indian/korean/asian music that seemed to be on an endless loop. (i know you all wish you could have been there. lol)
we arrived at palgongsan (the mountain) and our boss was bus sick. but she was ok, so we went to the opening ceremony. many people talked but it was all in korean, so who really knows what was going on? they played the korean national anthem and sang some song.
when we finished this ceremony, we went up the mountain to be tied together. oh yes, i did say TIED together. we had to climb palgongsan tied to everyone else. everyone in our group has very different athletic abilities and we had a person who is about the same size as my dad. picture him next to me, you do the math. 
so, we started climbing the mountain (which was absolutely beautiful) and we made it to the first stop. at the stop, we had to do leap frog, the human knot (which we blatantly cheated at), and our cheer. we made it through and continued to the top of the mountain. at the top it was like you could see for days. so amazing.
we went back down to stop where we had to say a korean word with emphasis on a different syllable each time. thankfully, kris cheated and told us to pick #7. it happened to be macaulay culkin written in hangeul. hahaha. thank god for koreans and their obsessive cheating. :) the koreans were very impressed when we made it through, perhaps they don't know we know that guy. we did our cheer again, which had korean in it, and the koreans went nuts cheering for us.back down the mountain. we ate some lunch. after lunch, we got some beers and practiced 'kick your shoe in that box way over there'. some koreans were pumped that i got my shoe in twice.
afterwards, we went up to this parking lot looking thing with gravel strewn about everywhere. this was the place we were supposed to do relay races. good idea, right? well, we started off with some jumping rope which was fine but moved to 'carry the soccer ball with your partner back to back'. meg and eric from the school upstairs went together, went too fast, and meg fell down. meg had to go to the hospital for 13 stitches.... gravel + running people = maybe NOT such a good idea? haha.
then, the worst thing...
'catching the piggy' was cancelled. instead, 'catching the delicate, docile chickens' took its place. we thought maybe one person from each team would participate in this. oh no, every single person there was asked to catch the chickens. there were only five of them. so, they set these chickens out and everybody goes nuts running for them (i refused to participate in this, by the way). needless to say, two koreans managed to rip one of the chickens apart. there were blood and feathers, everywhere. disgusting. however, the chicken got her revenge. one of the koreans had to get 18 stitches in his face because his glasses broke trying to catch her and he had some more stitches in his knee. karma? (i do feel bad he had to get stitches, though.)
after, the drawing and quartering, we went to go eat some dinner. at dinner, we had to perform our song and dance. however, because we are foreigners, apparently we are tap dancing monkeys. when we got called up to perform, we were also given interviews. i was asked, 'do you have any more piercings and do you have a boyfriend.' how nice. haha. we performed our song and the koreans got a big kick out of it. we all took a massive shot of soju after that. haha.
we finally got to go home. what an exhausting 13 hour day. oh man, only in korea. oh, and i did forget to mention that if you came in last place for any of the teams, you had to drink a large quantity of beer in front of the crowd. oh, korea, what will i do with you?
much love from this side of the world.
lacey
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