Field Trip!

This is what a child who has been eating nothing but sugar for 6 hours looks like...

As a teacher, you are often required to accompany kids on field trips. I've done shopping trips to Toronto (um, I mean, a museum visit....), ski trips in Quebec, the school band in Montreal, camping trips, and so on, and I've enjoyed them all. I was pretty excited when I learned earlier this week that my school would be going on a field trip to the Hampyeong Butterfly Festival. I was picturing flowers and gardens and butterflies and maybe even a few unicorns nibbling honeysuckle or something.

When I arrived at school this morning, it seemed like every single student was outside, chasing every other student through the parking lot. I was greeted with multitudes of dirty hands giving me candy. Hmm, these children had started off their day by eating pure sugar. Some kind soul had bestowed either a plastic sword, an exploding foam rubber ice cream cone projectile thing or a paper whippy coily thing upon each child, giving them a weapon with which to threaten, torment or attack their friends with.

I went into school where all the teachers had barricaded themselves in the staffroom, and waited until I was summoned to get into a car (YAY... not the bus with all the sugar-soaked howling brats), and off we went to Hampyeong. Approaching the site of the Butterfly Festival, I noticed tons of fun things - purple flowers coated every hillside, butterfly symbols had been worked into every bridge, bus stop, streetlight and mural in town.... further along, I could see a ferris wheel and tons of pavillions. The sky was blue, birds were singing, unicorns frolicking etc...

The only butterfly sighting of the whole day

We arrived in the middle of a dusty parking lot and began the TREK to the actual festival site. The crowd of eleventy billion was made up of 75% elementary school children, each armed with a bag of junk food and a weapon of some sort, 5% adult supervisors of the afore-mentioned children, and 4 trillion old women aka ajummas. Now, for those of you who have never experienced a pack? pride? gaggle? of Korean ajummas, they are a bit like a steel plated tank armed with a battering ram: They move for nobody, and woe betide thee who may get in their way, as you will be either knocked out of the way or trampled underfoot. Oh, and they are ALL nearsighted (and I am really not kidding), and skilled with a shoulder check that would put even the best hockey player to shame.

Kindergarten kids

I had allied myself with Mrs Myeong, the kindergarten teacher, figuring that she would need the most help with her pack of 6 tiny wandering children. Our first stop was... um... a sort of indoor business expo. Right. No butterflies here. Also, NOTHING OF INTEREST FOR A 4-YEAR OLD. From there, we dragged the kids off to a greenhouse. With visions of the Butterfly garden in Niagara Falls, I entered, wondering when I'd be able to see these wingéd jewels...

The greenhouse was NOT full of butterflies, but full of vegetables. Jostled by throngs of ajummas on a mission, I bravely mustered all the enthusiasm I could and pointed at things for the children. "Look!", I said, "Tomatoes!". I was rewarded with a junk food-induced, "Wow!", and soldiered bravely on, defending my wee charges from the onslaught of hips, purses and elbows that threatened them from all sides (We did end up misplacing a few children, one boy burst into tears and squealed for a full 5 minutes right next to me - thanks, as if I wasn't already being stared at enough for being the only foreigner - but we all survived our 15 minutes in the greenhouse).

"Where do we go now?" I asked Mrs Myeong. She wiped the sweat from her brow and smiled, "Lunchee time".

Lunch? It was barely 11 o'clock and we'd pretty much just arrived - and walked through a greenhouse. From out of nowhere, all the parents that belonged to the kindy and 1st graders appeared and dragged us off to a pagoda to feed everyone. I alternated between lurking in the background and setting off to explore on my own - not that there was really much to see or do, I had been trying to find a bathroom that didn't have 400 7-year olds or old ladies lined up for it for the whole morning, but to no avail (although I did find some stag beetle larvae) and I soon grew tired of fighting my way through crowds and crowds of people.

Stag beetle larva... ewww

At one point, one of the parents motioned to me to go to a different picnic spot, where the teachers' lunch was being set up (I will say this about Koreans, they have the best, longest, most food-filled picnics). Spying the plates of raw fish that were being set out, I decided to continue my foolish butterfly quest, and I was soon surrounded by my older students (who had wolfed down their lunches, then eaten their way through ice cream, chips, chocolate, cookies and candy), who were all bored as hell.

Because no Korean school outing is complete without the torture of small animals, several of the children had bought themselves hamsters and goldfish, which they joyously showed off to me, when they weren't stuffing me full of whatever they were eating (yay for the food-sharing culture). I wandered off in the direction of some faint music, with a few children in tow and we stumbled happily upon a group of Peruvian flautists who were giving a performance. With their "waygook radars" working in full force, they all smiled or waved at me (the only person who dared dance). I had some fun showing some of their instruments to my 5th grade girls. Once again, however, no butterflies.

Peruvian flautists

With the two-hour lunch break finally over, all the filthy children (each clutching a bag of chips or a hamster) were lined up and marched off in different directions. I escaped from kindergarten land and headed off with the older kids, with promises of seeing bats (actually, I was told "golden flying mouse", but figured it out for myself). We hiked up a hill, and while we all waited 15 minutes for 2 students to go to the bathroom, a few of the braver 6th grade girls staked their claim on a few of the taller 6th grade boys (as in the girls grabbed the boys' arms with their nails sinking into their skin and declared, "I am wife!", while the boys looked away, blushed or screamed, "NO! You clazy!").

A happy couple...

We walked into the "bat cave", where we were thrilled and entertained with.... drawings of bats, model bats, fake stalagmites and stalagtites and, well, not much else.

We continued dragging our asses up the hill, until we reached the top, which was full of NOTHING. Not even butterflies or unicorns. Have you ever listened to a 6th grader whine that they are hot? or tired? or bored? Right, multiply that by 50 billion. Eventually, we reached a playground, where I found a) a man dressed like a bee and b) the loveliest, cleanest, public washrooms I've ever seen in the world, complete with soap, toilet paper and hot water.

Me and the Bee man

By this point, both the 5th and 6th grade teachers were looking glassy-eyed and like they really needed a good stiff drink. When a girl fell in a fountain and soaked her jeans, leading her to scream and cry like the world was ending, we all just shrugged at each other and opened our cell phones to check the time.

We gathered everyone together for group pictures (showing just how much fun everyone had at the Butterfly-free Butterfly Festival) then hustled the gang off to the bus. Of course, as it was the end of the day, all 7 billion other children were all heading off to their buses too. Oh, and yes, all Korean children look EXACTLY the same.

Eventually, everyone found themselves on the correct bus home, where the children continued to eat junk food, until they fell asleep, entertained by a constantly looped blaring advertisement for the Busan Aquarium.

Saving the world from a giant stag beetle....