Day 3 of the Winter Sangmo Intensive

February 9th, 2011
It stayed warm all night. Or should I say seriously hot. But the good news was that in the morning the video camera was working properly. I really think it just hates to get cold. I was able to shoot the entire morning class.

We began class on time, with me leading the beginning exercises, then practiced on our own stuff until the teacher arrived (all in all, though, this teacher is much more prompt than most of the teachers I have had here). He had everyone who could do 양사위 yangsaui do 150, but at just past 100 there was a mistake and he made us start again. So we certainly got a work out. Then I was assigned to walk and do 나비사 nabisa at the same time!!!!!!!!! Wow! And I was able to do it (with sort of tentative steps at first but I got better). That was great.

In the afternoon, as usual on Wednesdays, we had a game day. I was in team 8, and each team began by making a name and a song/chant. We named ourselves 원래 골찌 "have always been last" more or less. I could probably translate that better if I spent time thinking about it. I think in Korean, so I don't always know how to translate things. Anyway, it was a joke about how the team I've been on has always been last every time I've done one of these camps at 필봉 Pilbong. And the song was pretty funny, too. It went more or less "There's no denying I'm always last, that 막걸리 makgeolli over there won't be mine, even coming here four times, always last, this time I'm sure to be last again." We had four rounds of games. First we played a charades type game, where you relayed the acting through the whole team (pair by pair) and the first person in line had to guess what it was. We lost totally unfairly because the other teams subject was movies, and all the movies were major blockbusters, then our subject was animals and the animals were like "water skater beetle" and "gray bearded baboon" and things like that. Really hard to guess! Two times our team just had to pass the animals because the first guy had no idea what they were. The only one that compared with Titanic and Matrix was giraffe. The second round was the best. Totally fun. We had to lock our arms to our legs and then scoot on our butts and knock over the other team with our feet until we got their queen. I was a total killer. It was great. We won twice and so there wasn't a third game. Which almost made me sad we had won both times. The third round was horrible. We had to do three legged races to the 장구 janggu and then one person played each side of the janggu. After you'd randomly drawn the name of a 장단 jangdan (rhythmic pattern). Of course I don't really remember any of the jangdan names, so I was a total handicap to the team. We lost royally, because it was a race to get through all our pairs before the other team did, and they won by miles. The last round was actually four games, we won the first and third, but then the judges said the first game was a practice game. Game one was where you say a number and the people on the other team stand up or not. If the same number stand up as was named, then the team loses. Game two was a really complex Korean rhythmic syllabic game and I bowed out. You had to say a four syllable word or phrase four times, accenting a different syllable each time, as fast as you could. Then the next person did it but they couldn't go in the same order as you. The third game was another speed game with guessing the word, but this time the person who knew the word described it to the next person in line. We had to get through as many people as we could in the allotted time. We got through nine people, I did fine. Our subject was "bathroom" I had to guess "plunger" and had to describe "bidet." The other team drew the subject "Korean TV stars" so if we'd had that then my team would have been screwed. The final game was a game of true or false, the last team with players who were right would win. It was so sad, it ended up me against two girls from the other team and on the last question I went true, with one of them, the other went false. It was false. So close…

Then we all reassembled and my team had come in seventh (out of eight). We got 4 bottles of makgeolli as our prize, but then there was a big true or false game and my team was the last standing and we won 5 more bottles.

Photos of our team:




After dinner we had sangmo practice again. Everyone was doing well, except 의영 Uiyeong still can't really spin even once. This guy 진용 Jinyong who was with me in Week 3 arrived the evening of the 8th to do sangmo, too. In the morning he wasn't able to do nabisa and worked with 정화 Jeonghwa, but by the evening he exploded into really doing it well, which sort of frustrated me.

The 뒤풀이 duipuli for the night was according to the teams of the day. We had our 9 bottles, with 8 people, but we were having fun and decided to go begging off other groups. We got one from our neighbors, then three from one group by doing my arm trick, and three from another group by using my braid like a sangmo ribbon. So we all ended up with at least two bottles each. I was sitting next to 문형 Munhyeong, another individual participant, and 형진 Hyeongjin, a future acupuncturist. It was a lot of fun, especially when we started playing this huge selection of games. I'm almost getting good at those with so much practice. Fry pan game, strawberry game, image game, makondo, one where you have to do the multiplication tables, etc. I went to bed at three after two and a half bottles.