Amanda Takes Off...

Sometimes I wonder how this country functions.

Yesterday I had to judge an English skit contest. Twenty-three teams were competing and I was judging for fluency, accuracy, and naturalness of the English used in the skit. The other three judges were looking at other criteria.

The skit contest was held at a beautiful school where the entire fifth floor is dedicated to English. There's a mini art-museum, a 3d movie theater (!), an extensive English-language library. Very impressive.

After sixteen skits, at noon, we were going to have lunch. I stood up, expecting we'd leave our judging sheets there, only to find all of the Koreans running around frantically tearing everything down. Signs for the contest (which, for the record, were only in Korean!), flowers, moving chairs, removing tables, taking away the lectern.

"What are they doing? There are seven skits left."

"Oh, there is an opening ceremony in this room at 1:30." Koreans love opening and closing ceremonies. I don't get the point of them.

"Where?"

"Here."

I was confused, "But we have the skit contest here."

"Yes, we will start again at 2:30."

So they double booked the room, and rather than have lunch at, say, 1 (giving them plenty of time for this ceremony and us plenty of time to finish the last few skits), we were tearing everything down.

Koreans are piss poor planners. Seriously, piss poor planners.

We had lunch, then got shuffled from room to room and floor to floor until 2:30. I won't detail it because it will make me crazy. We stood outside of the the room (where the sign for the "Opening Ceremony of English Theme Land" was...only in Korean) until 3:15, then set everything up again to watch the last seven skits. And we had to set up everything differently because someone wanted some people from the city's board of education to watch. Did they watch? Nope.

When we finished, we went to the fourth floor to score them. Of course, we were given score cards, but we weren't actually supposed to assign them points while we were judging. That wouldn't make any sense, would it? No, not in Korea. Instead we ranked them (and someone was in somebody's pocket, based on whom the three Koreans wanted to take third place) and then reverse-engineered their scores. There was one first place, three second places, and five third places.

While we were trying to do this, we were given loads of food. Jeju oranges, loads of apple and persimmon slices, four different types of rice cake, tea and coffee and chocolate. I watched my not-nice coteacher move three plates of food to three different locations eleven times. She kept loading one plate with some food, then putting it down. She'd then load another plate, move the first place, and put the second plate down. She'd then load a third plate, move the second plate to a third spot, put the third plate down, then switch the second plate and first plate spot. Repeat. I can't describe how nonsensical it was.

Then we were told we needed to go somewhere else to meet the board of education members (that we'd already seen before lunch, eaten lunch with, and seen after lunch). We walked into a room and found four tables, stacked with the same food. They made me sit at the head table with the board members. I shook their hands and the head of the board said I was the first foreigner he'd ever shaken hands with (I think in this case "waygookin" was used to mean "white person").

I drank some tea and ate while the Korean men babbled on (old men in suits can talk and talk and talk) and five minutes later the board members all left and we went back upstairs to finish grading.

On the way back upstairs I realized that I can never be a diplomat. This shuffling around, eating food, just to appear and say a few dumb words...I can't deal with it. Had they not been stupid and double booked, we could've been done with everything (including lunch) by 2:30. As it was, we didn't leave until 5:15.

Ridiculous.

And when I asked why the room was doubled booked, I was told, "Opening ceremony is only one day."

"The skit contest is only one day, too," I said.

"Yes."

That is the perfect example of klogic (Korean logic) people.

Good thing these people don't run wedding halls.

As for the skits themselves, I got to see Cinderella get drunk off of a soju, a pumpkin get plastic surgery to get huge pumpkin breasts (which other cast members then poked!), and I got to hear the line "I'm bored. Let's play with some gisaeng girls."

So weird.