I got on the bus to head to 안동시 (Andong) at 9:45 am to go to the camp for North Korean refugees. That is really all that had been explained to us and so none of us really know what to expect. We ended up all sleeping off and on for the 4 hour ride. I ate a lot of choco pies on the trip, which turned out to be a good thing because we were running late since we didn't actually depart at 10 am like planned, more like 10:30 am, because some people were late to showing up.
So we arrived at around 3 pm at a museum and memorial site with no idea what was going to happen. Luckily it turned out all the people we were "volunteering" with (really just hanging out with) turned out to be our age as the youngest was I think 14, most were college age, and the oldest was probably 25 or so. Anyway, we showed up and introduced ourselves while cameras filled the whole thing for whatever reason. That part was weird. So once we were in the museum, we were shown rooms where we had to dump our stuff. The rooms turned out to be where we spent the night. After we dumped our stuff, we went back out to the common area where we were told to arbitrarily break off into teams. One of the boys led me around the whole room and then back to the place we were originally standing, which was weird. None of us ever really figured out why that happened. But at the time I was already so confused because there was way too much Korean going on all at once. But we ended up getting a tour of the museum, which was a memorial of the Korean Independence Movement. Apparently, North Koreans are also taught about it as well, but with the spin that Kim Il Sung was pretty much responsible for the whole thing, so the person in charge of the trip and is a manager at the Hanawon Relocation Center in Daegu thought it was important they get a chance to see it. I quickly zoned out though because the Korean was way beyond my level of understanding. Even the Korean Americans said understanding it was difficult, so I didn't let it bother me too much. We were apparently going to be quizzed on it, so I knew that was going to be a fail. Afterwards we had a tour of buildings I assume related to the movement outside, not totally sure. Then we had a short quiz, which I knew none of the answers to unsurprisingly, but none of the Americans really did.
After that, we all headed downstairs for a brief game of trivia. Then we had dinner along with about 45 minutes of free time. Audrey, So Jung, and I chilled in the room along with 3 Korean women, but it was kind of awkward because we had no real conversation topics. We ended up just watching the Olympics for the most part together. Then we all headed downstairs for more trivia games. We had a quiz of True False, where everyone had to stand on one side if they thought it was true and on other other if they thought the statement was false. What ended up happening was that all the Americans just followed the Korean majority, meaning it took forever to get all but one person out. Ironically out of the last three people, it was me, a Korean guy on my team, and another American. I didn't even understand the questions throughout the game, but I ended up getting out on the last question. Darn. After that we went around and introduced ourselves again, only to learn that in 5 minutes we were going to be quizzed on everyone's names. I knew I was screwed from the start since I suck at names. The two other teams got to choose two people from each team, one American and one Korean. At first they were only going to choose one, but I think they realized that the Americans didn't stand a chance since we definitely couldn't memorize about twenty Korean names in five minutes. That just wasn't going to happen. So I was chosen because it was clear I had no idea about anyone's names, but every Korean they pointed to, I just turned towards my Korean teammate and hoped he knew, which most of the time he did. After that we played Taboo and the list our team was given was the medium difficulty one, meaning it was about the memorial and stuff, meaning I had no idea about any of the words. The list with easy words had words I understood, but another team lucked out with that list. After that we finally played something I could competitively compete at. I have no idea what it was called but two people stood back to back and then shoved their butts at the other member so that that person would become off balance and move their feet. I pretty much won because I was the tallest person there. Technically there was one guy there who was taller than me, but he didn't compete. Only Americans did, I assume because we felt less awkward about competing in the game coed. Thanks to that game, our team ended up coming from behind and winning first place. I've never felt so proud of my butt.
After that we headed up for 30 minutes to chill and then everyone gathered again to snack on chicken and soda (and grapes that they bought just for me). We ended up playing drinking games even though there was no alcohol, which devolved into making random people sing/dance, which then devolved into a dance party that didn't happen.
Then everyone kind of migrated back to their own rooms, but So Jung, Audrey, and I quickly got bored of that. Luckily, there were a couple people in the common area, so we joined them around 10 pm. Then people kept trickling in until we had a sizable group. We had normal conversation for several hours and then we decided to play another game, which we decided on the Korean version of 10 fingers because it seemed the easiest since both Americans and Koreans generally understood it. A Korean guy lost the game and it was decided that he would have to fulfill a punishment with a randomly selected partner. To choose the other loser, people drew numbers written on sheets of paper. One paper had K on it though for king and that person called out a number. Whoever had that number was the loser, which ended up being me. As they had already realized I'm a complete wimp, they decided to make us walk up to this traditional Korean structure outside in the middle of the night. Halfway up I screamed in surprise when I walked into a spider web, freaking out the Korean guy but I couldn't explain why I screamed since I knew neither the words for spider or web. Then I saw another guy run up to hide behind the building, but the guy didn't believe me when I told him. But when the other guy jumped out to try to scare us, I screamed back at him to try to freak him out, but everyone else assumed I was screaming in fear. Oh well. I looked like I was even more of a scaredy cat than I really am, which to be honest is hard to do. Anyway, after that I lost the next round of drawing numbers along with So Jung, so as our punishment we had to watch a scary video, which I balked at. Audrey told me that I could pick a "black knight" and ask them to do my punishment for me, but if they refused not only would I have to watch the video but I would have to sing or dance and possibly watch the video multiple times. I had no interest in that, so I honestly just started whining essentially. Audrey got sick of it thankfully and just told me she would watch the video for me. After that we chatted until about 3 am or 4 am when we were told we would have to move out of the common area so that we wouldn't disturb people sleeping. So we went to the basement and played mafia until 5 am, by which time my Korean had practically died and my English was on the verge of collapse. We all finally decided at 5 am it might be smart to go to sleep since we had to be ready at 8 am for breakfast.
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