fun stories

so in korea you get in to some very interesting situations and you dont know how you got in to them, and how you can get out of them because you are a foreigner, and there is that whole language barrier thing.

last week my kiddos had an english camp, where they spent three days at a hotel going to english classes and EVERYTHING being in english. it was a major thing for my school and for the kids. here are two of my favorite kiddos retelling "the princess and the pea"

one of the overnites my school graciously put tova and i up in a SUPER NICE hotel. it was a beach front hotel, and really nice . . .

it was very nice of them. the boys stayed at a hostel and the rooms looked like this:

yes, its just a floor. its a typical hostel room in korea.

my school felt like tova and i worked so much that we deserved a nicer place. we would have gladly stayed at the hostel. but were very happy with their genorosity.

so anyways . . . . on to the fun part of the story

we didnt finish teaching until 10:30 pm or so. and my co-teacher gave us a ride to the hotel.

in korea to save electricity when you get in to the hotel room you put your room key in a special slot by the door that looks like this :

the electricity ONLY works when the key is in the slot. (this is a very important detail in the upcoming story :-p )

we were exhausted (we hadnt slept much the previous nights, only 4-5 hours a night for three straight nights) so we got ready for bed and turned off the lights, and turned on the a.c. (a nice bonus when you arent the one paying for the electricity!)

we turned off hte lights around 11:30'ish . . .

then at 12:27, right when we were really starting to fall in to that deep sleep . . .

ALL THE LIGHTS IN THE HOTEL TURNED ON!

first this woke us both up

second . . . it scared the EVERYTHING out of us!

we both looked at each other and tried to figure out what was going on.

i got up and looked around the room, and to my delight no intruders were in. but EVERY light in the hotel was on. we were even more exhausted. so i tried to turn off the lights and go back to bed . . .

i gots nothin'! seriously, i tried to turn off the lights and the switches werent doing anything!

i tried for about 10 minutes and nothing.

at this point i thought about calling my co-teacher but decided against it cause he was so tired too, and it was for something small like a light being on.

then we thought about going to the front desk, but at one in the morning now, and with the language barrier we thought it might be more trouble then anything else. also we didnt want to be rude and just point to a light and repeat "on, on, off, off" that is really condescending and rude in our minds.

so we decided that the lights would eventually turn off, so we tried to go back to bed.

10 minutes later, i am still awake, and have a flash of genius!

why dont i take out the key from the wall? that would turn off the a.c. but at least i could have the lights off.

so i took the key out of the wall, thereby canceling ALL electricity in the hotel room, and went back to bed and waited.

again, i gots NOTHIN'!

we waited and waited and the lights and a.c. still stayed on :-(

so we decided to hunker down for the night and try to sleep with the lights on. eventually we fell asleep, close to 1:30-2:00 a.m. it was a terrible sleep cause every light was on. (seriously this hotel room had about 500 lights in it!)

then at 5:32 ALL THE LIGHTS TURNED OFF! and so did the a.c.!

that woke us up, we tried to figure out what was going on. by this point the sun was up and our room was rather bright as well. we tried to go back to sleep, but barely did.

in the end we got the worst night sleep EVER, even though the hotel was very beautiful.

we also were going to go for a walk on the beach in the morning, but with the terrible sleep that was canceled as well.

all in all another experience for us in korea!

(the only reason that we came up with for the lights being on is that the hotel forgot that the room was booked and turned on some hotel lights to make the hotel look fuller and more inviting. other than that the second best option is that aliens were coming to invade and if your room lights were on they would ignore your room and move on to someone elses room :-p )