강화도 - 로얄 호텔에서

After dinner, we headed straight for Royal Hotel where we lodged for the night. Four persons were allocated to one ondol room. We reached our destination slightly after 7pm. We went to our room, put down our belongings, change our clothing and before 8pm, we met again at the Royal Ballroom for recreational games. This segment of activity was probably the highlight of our 2 days 1 night field trip. We enjoyed ourselves very much as a class.

'Royal treatment' at Royal Hotel. I was pleasantly surprised that our school actually lodged us in a hotel.

A notice put up in the hotel for our stay. Recreation is held at level 1 Royal Ballroom and breakfast next morning is at level 3 Ceyanne cafeteria.

Teachers discussing about the night programme inside the ballroom.

The first game for the night was team cheers. Among our class, we came out with a simple cheers that included the word '천하무적' (天下無敵) which means something like invincible. However, when it came to our turn to shout our cheers, we could not get our act together and despite doing two tries, couldn't execute our cheers properly. I guess the greatest enemy is still ourselves. As it was, our class started the night quite badly.

Teacher cheering her class on while they were executing their cheers. The games MC for the night was Park Seongsaengnim (behind blue balloon), my last semester's Korean teacher.

While some classes chose to do their cheers seated, others chose to stand. Our class chose to stand as well but the effect didn't turn out quite well.

The next game was 'grouping by number' (I don't know the exact name of the game). To play the game, we are supposed to dance in circle along with the music played. By the end of our dance, a number will be called by the game MC and we are supposed to form a group that matches the number called. The people who cannot find a group to join will be eliminated.

The first two numbers called were 5 and 10. As our class size for that day was 10, we managed to go pass the first two rounds without anyone being eliminated. In the third round, the number called was 15. Our class first formed our group of 10 which was of course not enough. Just then, a group of 5 people suddenly broke away from another group and squatted beside us. Apparently, someone in the group thought it was number 5 being called. So we just 'pounced' on them and made the number 15.

The fourth round was challenging as number 25 was quite a big number to form. Nevertheless, I thought our class did extremely well in this situation. First, we persuaded smaller groups to merge with us. When we found that we still needed a few more people, we sweet-talked to individuals to join us instead of others. The instinct to survive was quite apparent during this moment of truth. People defected to our group because we were seemed to be a much 'stronger' group. We managed to make the number eventually after some aggressive soliciting.

After the fourth round, not many people were left standing and our class were left with only 8 persons. In the fifth and final round, coincidentally, 8 was the number called and we immediately grouped ourselves together and emerged as the class with the most number of people remaining. It was a strong comeback for us after our initial dismay performance.

Teachers formed up in circle, showing us how to play 'Grouping by Number'.

Next, we played the passing of onion rings. After a strong showing in the earlier game, we hit the rock again and sunk. Despite that we had a lot of fun cheering our class on.

I guess our class is better at eating onion rings than passing them.

The last two items for the night were 'Newspaper Model' and dancing contest and our class did extremely well in these two contests. 'Newspaper Model' is quite a nice name to call for what is actually a 'Drag Queen' contest. In this contest, guy was required dressed up like a woman and wooed the crowd by performing feminine acts. In the dancing contest, our big-size American classmate represented our class and did some break dancing moves. He left everyone in awe when he hit the floor and flip like a dolphin (perhaps whale may be a better term). Anyways, he was among the winner of the contest.

The overall champion for the night was the Korean Studies class.

After everything ended at the ballroom, each class were given a bag of tidbits and drinks for our individual class gathering. We gathered in one of the rooms, ate the tidbits, drank the drinks and chit-chatted for about one hour before calling it a day.

After our room lights were switched off, I could still hear the sound of laughter reverberating through the corridor. It seemed like party was still on for some classes. It is a waste to sleep when the night is still young.