Students experience Korean immersion
GUNPO, South Korea — There is no substitute for experience.
All through the months of preparation the ambassadors were told of the tastes, smells, wonders, challenges and joys that lay ahead of them in Korea. However, mental knowledge of something changes with each experience to a knowledge of the heart and being.
Last year's ambassadors loved attending school here in Gunpo. This year's ambassadors knew that. What they didn't know was why.
As we approached the five-story building in the early morning hours, the sound of traffic was drowned out by the shouts and screams of Korean students hanging out of windows waving "hello." When we entered the school, crowds of students followed along behind us, talking in quick breathless tones and hiding their faces in their hands if we turned to look at them.
"At first I was kinda bugged," Spencer Graham told us later, "but then I thought, 'Wow! This is amazing!'"
The ambassadors were split into two groups. Brittany Milligan, Spencer Graham and Brendan Brooks went to Cultural Studies and were treated to Korean student performances of traditional drums, flute, fan dances and food. As they ate, the Suri High students asked them questions and got to know them. Marshall Kirkpatrick, Hanna Green, Matt Kottong, Christopher Paul and Cari Cortez went to English class. The students taught them Korean phrases, they played guessing games where they were rewarded with candy and then were served homemade "teenage" snacks.
When classes were dismissed the infatuation of the students grew loud once again as we walked the halls and were stopped to "take one pictures" with them on their phones. Christopher was stopped so many times by throngs of delightful squealing girls that one of the Korean chaperones had to escort him so he wouldn't get lost as he got separated from our group. Taking him by the arm to lead him safely through she said it was because he was "a so handsome guy."
Arriving back at our bus, Christopher commented, "That was incredible! I wish every day could start like that!"
"Yeah," Marshall Kirkpatrick agreed, "Do we have another free day? I want to go back!"
"I knew they would love it," Deea Paul whispered to Carol Green.
"What is amazing to me is that they come here complete strangers, but by the time we leave 2 hours later they are exchanging e-mails," Carol said.
Before coming ambassadors had been told of the strange tastes and textures of the food, of the mugginess of the weather, of the challenges in communicating and about how much they would fall in love with the people. But until you are served seafood noodle soup when what you are dying for is a Quarter Pounder with cheese and "the noodles taste like fish flavored gummy worms," as Marshall pointed out Monday evening, you don't know the extent of strange.
Until you play basketball for 5 minutes while waiting for the bus and you "feel sticky and gross beyond belief" like Brittany Milligan, the mugginess doesn't really hit home.
Before spending a day with just your host family with no one to interpret for you and no other American to talk to, you don't understand what is meant by "challenge." And until you see them go out of their way to make you comfortable, live with them for weeks, ride busses with them for hours, laugh with them and see them do the Macarena, you cannot grasp just how hard it is going to be to leave them at the end of your time here.
"I can't thank you enough for this opportunity," Brendan Brooks wrote to chaperone Deea Paul. "I know it may sound strange, but I feel like a Park(the surname of his host family)."
The ambassadors are having their cake and eating it too. Experience isn't simply the eating of the cake, however. It is adding all the ingredients together, taking the time to mix them, letting the heat raise it to perfection, frosting it and savoring the fruit with each bite, knowing you created it.
Deea Paul summed it up this way, "I have personally taken 14 kids through this program. I have yet to see one walk away unchanged by the experience."