Fun Fun Party

Hello friends and family!

This post is about what I spent part of this past weekend doing -  I attended an IV3F MT (Members' Training) event called "Fun Fun Party".  I tried to communicate to my Korean friends how ridiculous the name of this retreat is, but apparently they have been using it for years and since nobody speaks English well enough to know how ridiculous it sounds, it has stuck.  MT is a beginning of year activity which almost every club here at Korea University has to build community and initiate freshman into their group.  The name is a bit of a misnomer as there is no actual training involved, but for most clubs typically involves a lot of drinking (a bit part of Korean university culture).

We went to a retreat centre (it's not as luxurious as I'm making it sound) and started of the evening with korean BBQ served by the older members of the club.  This was followed by ice breaking games, which were really creatively designed.  The first one we played involved a volunteer being given a secret characteristic - he or she then had to select 3 people from the group who identified most closely with said trait (for example, most likely to get married young) as the rest of the group tries to guess what the common thread is.

After a few more games we went outside for cheering.   I feel like the word cheering really doesn't convey the experience of what happened though - Korea University is pretty big on cheers (we had a 5 hour cheering rally at the beginning of the school year where we learned how to taunt our rival university, Yonsei).  There is an entire playlist of songs all with actions - a few people led us in the cheering but basically it was ridiculous as my university life in Canada really has nothing similar (the freshman rally really paled in comparison to this). I feel like the craziness of the school spirit has long ago surpassed cult-level, but perhaps that is just normal here.  I wanted to post a video, but apparently the uploader is not working right now, so you will just have to imagine it.

After this, we headed up to the main room again, where some of the leaders had turned off the lights and set up candles in the shape of a heart.  The new people went into the middle and other senior members were on the outside singing a song of blessing and love with ukulele accompaniment.  They even had a verse sung for each new person.  It's interesting to think about how different this was than most other MTs - IVF has a culture that really seeks to riase up, honour and bless those who are newest to the club, and the dedication that the more senior members do this with is really outstanding.

This was followed by basically staying up all night playing games (mafia etc.).  I believe I got an hour or two of sleep somewhere between 3 and 5 am.   Here is a photo of us the next morning!