Night Two: Chaos! Then calm…
So the room confinement didn’t go over very well. Now we have Korean hall monitors roaming about, doing the occasional room checks. Still, we go out, mingle, and fight for reception on the one wi-fi signal that actually works in this entire building. All the other internet connections mysteriously stopped working today and they’ve been extremely apathetic about fixing it. ”We look into it,” with a bored nod.
Frankly, I don’t think the Korean CDC has any clue what they’re doing. We’ve been told we’re under arrest, detention, that we’re “not guests here”, and one of the higher ups (you can tell they’re higher ups in Korea because everyone underneath them nods when they say something), even said: “What you want, cigarettes, beer? That make you happy?”
I think they missed the memo that we actually wanted a way to talk to the outside world (friends, family), some daily exercise, and not being talked to like prisoners, children, or child-prisoners. Of course, like a former teacher of mine said about Korea: “Think about where you are, then think about what makes sense…now do the opposite!”
I think peoples spirits tonight are about as low as they’ve been in the last 72 hours. The general community sense is that of animosity now; we understand the situation, we’re not going to go running into the hills infecting children with a new pig-virus, but those actually holding us here appear to have been replaced with some hardliners high up at the Ministry of Health who’s butts are so tight that when they fart only dogs can hear it.
Good news is most of us have contacted our respective embassies and with any luck there’ll be a representive by tomorrow who can assess the situation before the ‘inmates’ start rioting prison style, throwing flaming toiler paper rolls off the balconies and flinging poo at the health workers.
