Meghan's Adventures in Korea: May 2-4

after the bike ride

so back when we first got here in november or so, justine mentioned to the special class (not the special you think, they're the highest level at our school and can speak english really well) we teach about this holiday in canada called may 2-4 (aka victoria day). and also may have mentioned how it involved beer drinking. so anyway way back then they were like 'party may 2-4' and we just kinda went along with it. until...dundundun. 6months later, its may 2-4! and they remembered! so we said we would have a party type thing for them and they could come over and hang out on the roof (since theres really no living room in the apt.) and we would have a fun pop and chip party with the 12 yr olds haha. but then we decided it might be kinda strange having them over even though our director had no problem with it and their parents didnt seem to mind either. so instead we planned this fun day in ilsan. we met at the school and then headed to ilsan to play! first up was riding the bikes (obviously necessary due to the amount of fun they create). after some setbacks involving running into curbs and poles, we got rid of some bikes and we were off. erica rode with justine, lucy was with me and jake (the only boy in special class) took lucy's 9 year old sister julie. in retrospect, probably not the best idea to have the youngest ride with the crazy 12 year old boy but she only survived with only a few minors scratches ;).
so we biked around this park called Big Lake Park which was lots of fun and we got to see a lot too. even though ilsan is so close to wondang these kids dont go anywhere beyond the city unless it a special special occassion so they were pretty happy to be there. after a few near heart attacks from being behind jake as he also hit about 15 people, we made it back to the shope. next up we made an ice cream stop at Baskin Robbins. it was sooo nice out that day so we were really lucky with the weather (especially for the next part of the plan for the day). so as they ate their ice cream we headed down to the park again for a lil surprise. a lil background info before: the kids here have this slight obsession with water guns (maybe cause of the ridiculous) heat but they tend to bring them to school on those hot days and play with them. this usually ends with me taking them and then squirting them in class to get them to pay attention. jake likes to bring his in and then both justine and i end up taking it from him in each class (i teach them first and then justine after me) and then he goes outside fills up some water from the water cooler and threatens to throw water at me so i give it back to him. so payback was in order. so i picked up some water guns fri night and hid them in my bag until we got to the park. then we told the girls to follow us into the bathrooom and showed them the guns and the plan was to fill them up and ambush jake. too bad he saw us through the glass doors so we ended up giving him one and the plan was to have team orange and team yellow (the guns were those colours). this is what actually happened: they attacked me and justine. like ridiculously soaked us. first me cause justine was holding the camera and then i had to surrender because i was so wet and my teammates had turned on me. so i became camera girl and justine got even more soaked than me. sooo fun though. and it was probably at least 30degrees out so obviously the perfect day for a water fight. everyone ended up getting soaked though and it was super fun. we had a hard time dragging them out of the park and getting them to stop filling up their guns but somehow finally managed. then we cabbed it home cause it was faster than subway'ing and then walking to the school.... and we dropped them off in the cab on the way home! best teachers ever or what hahah. so that was may 2-4 day.

the night we met up with some friends in hongdae area and had some drinks at this place called HO Bar (only slightly offensive) and then headed to a Norebong (kareoke bar) and then to a dancy bar for a bit. Lots of fun, the Norebong was insane. It had 2 floors so you could climb up to the loft and sing and dance up there. ALSO, it had this huuge window that looked out onto the main street so everyone could see us singing! soo fun. also, the friends we met. one from manhattan! and went to princeton. another is from liverpool england (so cool) and another one from the states. lots and lots of fun meeting people from all over the world.

i'll put up some pictures from the celebrations of this momentus canadian holiday in korea :)

xoxo

at the dancy bar after the norebong