Independence Hall

Friday we went on a fieldtrip to the outskirts of Cheonan to see this huge hall that was built to remind Koreans how badly they were fucked by Japan. I mostly ate ice cream and tried to keep my students from fighting groups of Japanese tourists. I don't know how to post pictures in chronological order:

Read her shirt. I don't get it.




These are middle school girls. They made me feel like a celebrity and a pedophile.






These little kids were getting fed like baby birds. Mr. Kim tried to get in on it.



I think this is my favorite picture of the day. I'm not sure who took it.


The other teachers kept asking him if he thought he was going on a safari.


They're playing rock paper scissors to see who gets thrown in the Japanese prison chamber. There is no best out of three in Korea.

They threw my co-teacher in too.

She was appalled. But I explained that water torture is technically only an advanced interrogation technique.



The kid in the gray sweater gets really angry when you say he looks like a North Korean.

These fish are huge. They come to the surface and open their mouths when people clap.

They're always hitting eachother. The one that gets hit usually doesn't retaliate.


The hall is in the mountains. When we got there it was too foggy to see anything.

This monument is supposed to have been inspired by the image of two hands touching palm to palm. I don't know what that has to do with liberation.


This kid is my favorite. After him and his friends followed a group of Japanese high school students around for a while, they went out to the parking lot and called my co-teacher to say that they were cooking some pork that they brought from home. I think that was a lie. But they ate something and got in a fight. My co-teacher says she's going to beat them on Monday.