A birthday in quarantine?? Sounds pretty horrible for Michelle, but we did our best to make sure she had fun.
The day started as usual. Hot dogs and salad for breakfast and then wandering the building until the orientation started. I decided it would be a great time to wash my clothes. I'd already washed some of my clothes by hand, but didn't really feel like they were getting that clean. Susan and I decided we would try the laundry facilities in this building. We gathered some of our clothes and then found that the laundry room had a giant puddle of water in the middle of the room. Plaster and dust from the walls (keep in mind this wonderful resort is under construction) had collected on the washing machines and piles of both wet and dirty clothes were everywhere. We started to pull some other people's clothes out of the washer to put our load in, then opted out of using the machines all together. The idea of some of the guys from this camp pulling my personal items from the washer grossed me out a little and I headed back to my room to hand wash. I started my normal routine of using Woolite and washing my clothes under the shower head. By the time I was finished my outfit for the day (which happened to be a cute green top matched with some long athletic boy shorts. I like to keep it classy.) was soaking wet. I didn't really care about my outfit being wet until I walked out to the hallway and Michelle met me at the stars. "Where have you been?? We started our meeting a LONG time ago!! Why are you all wet?" I arrived at my meeting late and soaking wet. Awesome.
In the afternoon, Michelle, Shannon and I went for a LONG walk down the hill, through the town of Wando, to the beach. It was a very interesting walk because we were paranoid of running into Koreans and then scaring them since we were told to stay far away from them. To our pleasant surprise, a large group of Korean workers spotted us and excitedly waved and smiled at us. It was quite a treat to feel welcomed into their town. When we made it to the rocky beach, there were tiny crabs EVERYWHERE. As we tiptoed through the rocks (so that we didn't crush the poor things) crabs crawled out in every direction. So cool.
When dinner time rolled around I, to Michelle's extreme embarrassment, stood up in the cafeteria and announced to everyone it was her birthday. We all sang her happy birthday and cut a cake that the camp staff bought for us. We were so happy the cake turned out to be a delicious and rich chocolate. There wasn't enough cake to give to all of the campers so we decided to give cake to the people who have to stay in Wando. They were pretty happy with us for about a minute. It's amazing how excited people who are in quarantine become over something like cake.
After dinner, Michelle, Shannon, Susan and I picked up our soju, soda and snickers that we asked Yu-Son to get for us. We took it up to our room and had our own little party. We sat in a circle and told grade school jokes and stories while enjoying our soju.
After a while we wandered around and found Marty, Carl and Jeff sitting around with Marty's guitar. This was the highlight of my night because we passed the guitar around and played songs we loved. We had so much fun with our soju and loud sing alongs. Our voices echoed through the hallways...I'm sure the other campers appreciated us. I could have done it all night but we had to move the party to a different area of the building since it was approaching 10:00 (quiet hours).
We moved to the auditorium, laughed as Carl played I'm On A Boat and cried tears of joy as Jeff played Maggie Mae. Yu-Son surprised us and hooked up the karaoke for everyone. Michelle and I sang quite a few songs (horribly) and then proceeded to be background dancers for all of the other singers. Everyone finished singing...but the party didn't stop there!
Suddenly, a huge group of people piled into the auditorium to join us for a dance party on the stage. People were getting all crazy up in here! Yeah, I just said that. The camp staff turned on stage lights and blasted American Hip Hop music. Campers were bumping and grinding up on each other within the conservative Korean culture...it was really entertaining to watch people go crazy. This is what happens when people in quarantine drink soju.
P.S. We found a giant spider and some crazy girl decided to pick it up and let it crawl all over her arm. I took advantage of the situation and snapped some photos.
