I survived my first Membership Training (which they call something else here) with at least semi-flying colors. The good news, from my perspective, is that these students are extremely high-level; I’d say up there with The Best Class Evar at BPU.

I got up to BPU2 and, as is Korean (and I should say expected), everything was running a bit late. This was ok as it gave me time to add some bits to my speech. While I was doing this another waeguk popped his head in. This turned out to be James, who will be one of the two professors I am replacing. This was a priceless chance to get some inside info, so I had him sit down and pumped him for information. His basic story was that the University was a good one to work for, the kids were all good students, and I was lucky to have been introduced through Kim Soonyoung. In a bit, Mrs. Kim came back with some pizza that was surprisingly good. Then, about 1.5 hours late, we set off into the Friday evening traffic (jam) in Seoul. The bus was tricked out to be a Norae-bus (That's that picture at the top, which is swiped from David, here), with multicolored lighting, a sound system, and a microphone that reached to the back of the bus. This feature, thank God, was never taken advantage of. We crawled through Seoul, then out of town for a bit and into Icheon.

At a certain point the bus-driver stopped the bus and said he could go no further. This was a bit weird as the road he assured us he could not drive on had SUVs of all description whizzing over it. So we all shouldered our stuff and started walking through a dark landscape of gutted rice fields, stalks shorn to near the ground, occasional houses (each with requisite yapping dog), puddles of water, and occasional precipitous drops at the side of the road. We walked for 20 minutes or so, and then started up a hill. This road turned to a dirt one, and we trudged up that.

On the right we heard an enormous clamor. There was (what the next day’s light revealed as) a dog-farm, and every single dog went absolutely fucking insane.We arrived at the pension. It was nice. A bit funky, but Jim and I, as Waeguk, shared one hanok to ourselves. It had a partitioned off kitchen and we quickly decided to treat that as a sedond bedroom.

Then it was up the hill to three metal barbeque pits where the boys started to prepare something that sounded like “mackerel” but was in fact some delicious sliced chicken breasts (So probably, the word began with “Ttak”) which were cooked and then sliced into pieces. While this was being prepared, our host whipped up an incredibly smoky delicacy… rice that was pressed thin and then scorched on one side.

Sounds not so grand, but it was great, since it was hot and the outside was freezing. Meat came off the barbeque, straight onto a plate, and the little bits were snatched up and eaten. One group of boys had trouble with their barbeque – it frequently flared up, in fact once several pieces of chicken caught on fire. This flambé approach to the chicken had the effect you might expect – it arrived on the plate done on the outside, but raw enough on the inside to be seen by the dull outside lights. Thankfully the girl in charge of the cutting did catch them and send them back to the grill.

Just when Jim and I were fearing that we would stand outside and eat dinner in individual pieces, we were gathered inside for a traditional sit-down dinner. With the conspicuous absence of one very Korean tradition; there was not a drop of alcohol to be seen. As my internal cursing at the Buddhist swine began to be overtaken by the first symptoms of Delerium Tremens, we were hustled off, five-by-five to make pieces of pottery. This was, after all, Icheon, home of Korea’s finest ceramics and rice.

Jim turned out to have a little knowledge and it was, proverbially, dangerous. He got a big, “Whaaaaaaaaa” (the Korean “Wow!”) when he was able to form his clay into a tall tower. The Whaaaaaaaaas got even louder when he started to dig down into the middle of this to create the inside of a vase. About halfway down everything went a bit queer. Jim put too much strength into one hand and pulled out a deforming bulge on the lip of the thing. With the wheel spinning at full speed, it only took a minute for the whole thing to go spinning off the wheel. Ah well, the old pro slapped it back on the wheel and quickly formed it back into a vase.

After the ceramics was done, it was time for my big speech, which was all about useful approaches and tips for translators. After forgetting to introduce my own name(!), I asked them how many planned to be literary translators.

Dead silence in the room.

I then asked how many of them planned to be any kind of translators?

Again, crickets chirped (and were quickly collected boiled, and dipped in bean-paste and soy-sauce, as a snack).

So, I said, alright, I’m going to go off script here and spend my time trying to persuade you all that you should be translators. Then it was 25 minutes of my normal song and dance, mixing the role of translation with the Korean international marketing problem, and we were away. I made them laugh, I made them cry, I made them wish they’d brought their whole family (“my family number is five, my mother, my father….”).

Then it was off to a room filled with Soju. I sat down and nearly had my heart stopped when a student immediately, and I mean rather sharpish, hopped down across the table from me and started asking me questions in English. This scenario was repeated all night, through a round of toasts, drinking games, and general bonhomie. These students not only wanted to learn English, they wanted to do it right then and there. Above and beyond the usual tonic effect of Soju, this was warming. Even better, when I intentionally tested them with some extremely fast talk, they could all follow it. The Instructional Assistants were also quite cool – Amy was born in the US and Golden Flower (the literal translation of her name) was born in China. They were inseparable over the two days, but also fun to talk to. Golden Flower has visited Pyongyang, so we talked a bit about that.

This may end up being a lot more work, but it also seems it will be so much more fun.

At a certain point, Kim Soonyoung snuck off (she later said that Jim and I had been doing so well that she felt safe leaving) and by the time Jim and I tottered back (in the rain) to the Hanock, we were shocked to discover it was 3 AM. The kids, we learned the next day, kept going until 7 AM or so.