Market Day goes Turtle Boat

For our third field trip of the year we went to HomePlus, the local super store, for something called Market Day. The idea behind Market Day was to educate the students on how to navigate the grocery store using English words and phrases. Those of you who know me, know that I love everything about grocery stores, whether it be bargin hunting or just walking around looking at the packaging. Let me tell you, it is completely different when you are trying to watch and corral little kids.

All things considered it went reasonably alright, and since it didn't take the whole day we made our way to the local Ship Building Museum across the island. It was a nice place that I would need not return to unless traveling through with Annabelle. Out front they had a little park where we ate our lunch. We also ended up find some ants and giving them enough food to keep them through the winter.

After we had finished eating we made our way in to the museum, the one building had this great big play structure that was built to vaguely resemble a ship yard. The kids loved it almost as much as the teachers did. It gave us a bit of a break part of which I used to relieve myself. Upon entering the stall I notice a keypad with buttons beside the seat this made me very curious but I restrained myself until the job was done. To my disappointment the buttons brought no response, or so I though...

As I was exiting the stall there was a mechanical whir and I turned around to see a tube extending in to it's function as a bidet. I dove to the side just in time to miss the surprisingly large fountain. I kid you not it sprayed almost to my eye level, thankfully it was a solid stream and I didn't get myself embarrassingly wet.

After that experience I thought my day would be bland... Little did I know that a brand new turtle boat was being delivered to the docks outside at that very moment. While we were still in the museum one of the employees came and said something to one of the other teachers, I had no idea what he had said but she immediately told everyone to follow her.

Far out in the bay we could see what the "excitement" was all about, a brand new turtle boat was coming in to port and we were the first people to see it. There was a camera crew out and at least 25 other people so I knew it was an important event in the history of Korea. It was actually pretty good, the students got in to it with some yelling and chanting which got every one in the mood.

The excitement continued to build the closer it got. The boat looked fantastic and everything was going well until the person in the turtle boat threw the rope to the tug that was guiding it in to the sea.

The guy had one chance to throw a rope to the dock and save it but he shanked and threw it straight in to the water. As a result they ended up missing the dock.

From here things got really excited which is a little unfortunate as it was also time for us to go home. You can see all the people on the boat wondering what to do next. Had we stayed I might be able to share some Korean sailor talk as there was plenty to go around and tell you how the story ended.

This is how we left it, drifting towards a boat.