GnB Fun-Day!

The retarded looking guy in the center wearing the red is the official GnB cameraman, the retarded guy in the white t-shirt off to the far left is me.


I've tried to write this blog three times now, but I've either been too tired or too drunk (sorry ma, but its true - and yes Dad, its true!).

So heres how the weekend went down. Friday, after a full day at work I went home and got a few hours of sleep before waking up just before 3am to meet everyone from my work to take a few taxis to our big bus, parked somewhere far far away in this, the land of the morning calm.



Deciding that my baggy blue pants might not be as appreciated here as they are in Canada, and knowing that I had to wear khakis to look like I belonged to my team (people have yet to notice that I am not Korean) I over-packed for my one day trip substantially. I can still recall the mocking laughs when I pulled out 2 sweatshirts and a sports jacket. Since the bus went from hot to cold the girls did appreciate having sweatshirts (and sports jackets) to wear, even though I got stuck with using my balled up extra pair of jeans as a pillow (you never know when you may crap yourself!).



So the bus was quite wide and the seats substantially bigger than most other buses I've ridden on (usually the small yellow ones with other like-minded folk named Corky and Georgie) so I managed to curl into the fetal position and fall asleep for a few hours. We left Busan at around 3:30am and arrived somewhere far north by 10:15am or so. This yearly event is only for the company-owned schools, and not the dirty franchisees (about 25 schools are company and 1,800 are private).

Half-way there, this particualr rest stop had the most beautiful bathrooms I've ever peed in (there were large fish like you see in the Mandarin restaurants happily swimming inside right near the flower-scented urinals)


One of only 7 white people there I was immediately approached by a Korean guy handing out name tags and given the sticker "James" to proudly wear on my red jersey. I guess the Korean guy felt the name "Ken" was more Korean than James, and being the only white guy (so far) to arrive I was given this new name. Obviously I didn't understand what the nametag meant (I thought his name was James and this would identify him as my Captain or something). It took the heavy "Oh Ken, what have you done now?" sighs of my co-workers to realize my error. They kindly escorted me back to my area (as I had wandered off) like I was a lost 6-year old and got me the correct name tag.

This is Yulienna, 'nuff said.


We were separated into 4 teams (Green, Blue, Red, and light Blue) and started off by doing a warm up taught by some hired cheerleaders who looked hungover and not happy to be spending the day with us. Since they didn't think a translation for so few non-Koreans was necessary I just watched everyone else, not understanding a word. This non-translation thing was difficult during certain games - like when you listened to a question (from the MC who I am sure was funny) and had to run to either a 'yes' or a 'no' side. I miraculously stayed on for a long time by running with others until I felt the questions were becoming trick ones and would stay away from the majority. I eventually lost on a question that went something like, "If a woman has extensive plastic surgery to her face does she have to pay for a new drivers license?." I believe the correct answer was "No."

These mountains surrounded us


Another game we played was my team versus the blue team (than the winner from our match would play the other winner) where you started at opposite ends of the soccer field we were playing on and had to make a mad dash for the center where there were red or blue plates (plastic ones, not dinner plates). Though the instructions seemed simple in theory (we were red, so basically we had to make sure there were more red plates than blue facing up when the timer went). It took 2 Korean girls yelling "Anio!!!" at me to realize I was flipping over the wrong ones in my excitement at team-building. We lost. The other team kept cheating though, so my team was angry at them (quickly forgetting my little significant error).

There were other games like tug of war, soccer, and running events (I elected not to run, still scarred from my devastating and humiliating attempt at the 100 meter dash in grade 7). In one game where you had to spin around 3 times, piggy-back a randomly chosen partner to a balloon, blow up the balloon where she would then use a plastic hammer to pop it (while you sat on it), finally piggy-backing her to the end of the field where she had to eat some Korean slop without using her hands - my partner and I got stuck at the balloons where after she yelled angrily "Blow! Blow!" in my ear (just in case I tried to eat it instead) I couldn't tie the balloon due to my innocent, child-like fingers. So instead I just held onto it while she managed to miss the balloon several times with the hard plastic hammer hitting me in the back and now bloody child-like hands. We lost.

The prizes they were offering were pretty nuts. First prize for MVP (there was no prize for the LVP - Least Valuable Player) was a large plasma screen TV, 2nd prize was a trip to Singapore, 3rd prize was something electronic, etc. I didn't win anything. At one point after lunch (fatty bacon and rice wine) there was a big "find-a-piece-of-GnB-paper-and-win-a-prize" where I was sure to win something. So there I was for an hour scouring the surrounding garbage-littered field (opening up old soggy cigarette packs, lifting old pieces of mildewed wood and shrieking loudly after a frog jumped on my leg) feeling very much like Charlie looking for his golden ticket (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). Charlie though, unlike me, knew when there was only 1 ticket left - for due to my lack of Korean, I continued to search by myself long after the tickets were found and prizes distributed. I was up in a tree when someone finally noticed me all disheveled (holding my pet frog and eating old cigarette butts) and rescued me.

By the time the dance contest rolled around our team (Team Haeundae) was quite drunk and cheering everyone (especially the old lady/ajumma who kept bringing us more rice wine). We were the frat party of the day, which was nice. Our director Brian was hammered by the time we got up to do our dance - and since we were the 10th of the 15 teams to go up, people had grown tired of the dancing but were not yet drunk enough to cheer anyways - so we kind of got the bad lull in the middle. We still did good though.



After that we got right back on the bus where the suicidal driver got us back home fast, many times speeding past 150km/h (there is a safety 'beep beep' that alerts him to his excessive speed, but I guess only I could hear it). Since Kyle and I were the only ones awake at this point, we prayed together for our safe arrival. I guess the bus driver wanted to get home too, as he managed to turn a 7 hour bus ride into a 4 1/2 hour one.

I may be entirely wrong how far away we were from Seoul, but I know we were North of it.


So thats that. I get this Thursday off. Hurrah!