MT a.k.a. Membership Training (161113)

MT 시작!

Weeks before heading off to my first MT experience, I was told that at MT's you do not sleep, you drink until the sun rises. If you do sleep you will get your face drawn on.
Unfortuantely for my experience we didn't get to drink till the sun rose, neither did anyone get their face grafittied.

Prior to meeting up at Anam Station Exit 3 at 12.30pm on 16th November, me and 2 other friends (L & F) who were going went to eat soondae, cheese ramyun, udon, and tuna kimbap. This was a bad move for me because soondae does not settle well with my stomach when it's going on a 4hr+ coach ride - I have motion sickness. I ordered it purely out of craving, although I ate it the night before in Myeongdong.
I've been put off soondae since this day...

We didn't really set off until about 1pm something. We were waiting for the others to arrive as well as the coach. Around 50 people in total came for the MT, including the Korean buddies.

Rest stops in Korea

2 rest stops were made during the journey. At the first stop me and F went to buy mini churros and chicken bites, all served in cups.
The former was cold when we got it. The funny thing about rest stops is that when you order 'street food'-type foods that are sold outside of the building you are made to say what you want to order and pay at a separate kiosk first. They will then hand you a receipt in which you then walk to the stall that sells the food that you want, give them the receipt and receive your food.

Because we setted off late and there was traffic, to my dismay the sheep farm visit was cancelled. It was getting dark at 4pm when we were told that. One of the reasons why I chose to go to the MT than the Grandline Concert was because I wanted to take pictures with sheep. So I was terribly disappointed (and sick).

We arrived at Kyungpo Dae at around 6pm. Spent a good 30 minutes or so on the coach whilst the driver was looking for a good place to park at. This only made me feel sicker and at one point I thought I was going to hurl, but luckily managed to hold it in.

Upon arrival we dropped our stuff off in the bedrooms.
The pension have 3 floors in total, the boys were to room on the 1st floor (ground floor) and the girls took the remaining two. In order to get the the 2nd floor you had to take the stairs outside.
The toilet on the 3rd floor was tiny and horrible, there wasn't even real space for you to put your feet properly inside. Your knees basically touched the wall when you sat and the 'sink' was a tiny tap close to the floor, hence why you must wear slippers when you get in because the floor is found to be wet.
The 1st and 2nd floor both had spacious Korean-style bathrooms, plus a kitchen area and living room. 3rd floor was purely just a bedroom with a toilet cubicle.

Kyungpo Dae

We were instructed to wander around Kyungpo Dae while the others remained in the pension to set up the BBQ. Everyone took this opportunity to walk along the beach that was just minutes away from our pension, take pictures, shoot off fireworks, dip their feet into the cold waters, and so forth.
The sand at Kyungpo Dae is pretty much made up of fine soft sand with no rocks or pebbles in sight. That night there were a full moon, one of the KUBA buddies joked that there are 5 moons at Kyungpo Dae: 1 in the sky, 1 in the sea, 1 in your drink, and 2 in your lover's eyes *cringes*

Later we returned to eat BBQ with beer. The meat was cooked at an incredibly slow pace, so my table pretty much ate side dishes most of the time. With the meat, we had kimchi, pickled radish, gochujang, and a 'variety' of rice.
Why variety? Well, the first bowl of rice was almost properly cooked, second was almost like congee but hard on the inside, and the third bowl was the only rice that tasted like properly cooked rice. I do recall seeing them pour soju into the first batch of rice in the rice cooker...
Whenever a plate of freshly cooked meat came, the meat would be gone within seconds since people from other table came over to steal some as well. Because it took so long to cook a batch of meat, we ended up eating too much of the other food and never really got our money's worth of meat. Though I did notice the increase of fat on the meat with every batch cooked...

We went back inside to celebrate our KUBA group's 100th day with cake, sat in a circle, sang some songs along with the guitar.
The drinking games came, this is when the real MT started. Organised into 4 teams, we played 2 games: charades and arm wrestling. Losing team had to down 2 bottles of soju per game. Our team lost in the arm wrestling round, but I passed on the soju because I didn't feel too well.

The beginning and end haha;;

After going outside for some fresh air, I felt a lot better. Upon returning inside, the teams had disbanded, and now there were 3 randomly formed groups playing their own drinking games.
The things that happened after were kind of a blur. I do recall seeing someone bring in a large box of soju bottles and endless snacks. We played a bunch of Korean drinking games and called out people's names to do shots just to get more people drunk. Stuff like "Welcome Shot!", "Idiot Shot!" and "Hansol Shot!". At one point late into the night we were in a large circle again, singing.

Unfortunately, when it was around 3am we were told to go to sleep. Although we were ushered onto the 3rd floor for some rest, me and another friend (E) felt that we didn't drink enough. So we attempted to sneak back down to the 1st floor to grab some soju bottles.
Unkuckily at the 2nd floor doorway we bumped into a KUBA buddy who told us to go back up. In response, E - who was already tipsy, said "fuck you [insert KUBA buddy name here]" before heading back up. E's Korean KUBA buddy later came up to scold us for saying "fuck you" to the KUBA buddy downstairs earlier, apparently telling someone "fuck you" is incredibly offensive in Korea. I immediately said that I said nothing in response but instead went back upstairs after the second time I was told to go back up and sleep.
We were then told not to even think about drinking anymore because the neighbours had complained about our noise levels, hence why everyone was sent to bed.

The heated floors were incredibly hot and hard to sleep on, but I somehow managed despite having 2 snorers in the room. Before I went to sleep I set the alarm for 6.45am after confirming with 2 other friends to see the sun rise at the beach. After all, the activity was in the itenary. 
We went out at 6.50am in our groggy states, expecting to bump into others who had the willpower to get up to see the sunrise. In the end we didn't.

6.50am view of the beach, 20 minutes away from actual
sun rise...

It was freezing at the beach, and I only had 3 layers on. My outer layer was the KU varsity jacket, it did a decent job at keeping me warm, but my legs and feet were another story. While we waited on a swing bench, we saw 4 military soldiers walking down the beach towards us with large weaponary in their hands. I got slightly freaked out by this, but they walked past and paid no attention to us, guess they were on some sort of early morning patrol..?
We gave up at around 7am and returned to the pension disappointed and cold. The sky was already bright when we came out, and the sky looked fairly foggy. So we assumed that the sun had already risen and we couldn't see it due to the slight haze. But we were wrong...

The pension and Kyungpo Dae neighbourhood

Everyone was woken up at around 9am to get ready to leave for the coach to head back to Anam. Almost everyone looked like a mess.
I got on the coach feeling parched and tired, so I quickly jumped off to grab a bottle of water at the convenience store nearby.
We arrived back in Anam at around 3pm, again I felt sick from the journey although I slept through most of it. After being handed pots of Shin ramen that were were supposed to eat at the MT, everyone either walked back home or headed for a place to eat at. Feeling too sick to eat anything, I chose to head back to shower and sleep.

Upon arriving back I received a Kakato Talk message in the group chat, someone uploaded a picture of the sunrise. Turns out we weren't the only ones who went to see it. A couple of other guys came out later than we did and saw the run rise perhaps 10 minutes after we left.
Damnit!

Despite not being able to chase sheep around a farm, see the sun rise, and drink all night long, I still enjoyed my first MT experience, though it wasn't quite what I expected. Would I do it again next semester? Perhaps. It all really depends on the people I am grouped with next year, if there are conflicting schedules, and the MT's itenary.
I do highly recommend attending an MT in Korea, it's a very fun way to get closer with people.