Culture Shock
Both of my sons were born in Korea but they were never prepared for the culture shock of Korean Water Park. The only water parks they have been to up to this point have been in America. Sure water parks look fun in the picture, but you can’t see the thousand or more elementary and middle school kids who were there at the same time as well as the hundreds of moms and dads and hundreds of life guards.
First the kids were spooked out by life guards every ten feet watching their every move. My son told me directly, “Dad, I’m scared of the life guards.” The life guards do look scary. The lazy river is an outdoor ride and even though the water temperature is 38 Celsius the air temperature is below freezing. These life guards are stationed outside wearing long padding walking back and forth. I don’t blame them but felt sorry for them while we were splashing in the water they were freezing inside.
Fortunately the life guards were efficient and kind and spoke English so after going down a few water slides my sons became very comfortable running around the place. After a few times around the lazy river and the tube rides they were ready to go what they called “skeleton” where you take off your shirt and slide skin down the tube. My son said he felt like the Blank Panther because he had to fold his arms, cross his feet and put his neck up a little to get into position. The tubes are all black and when you get to the bottom there is a big splash and almost everyone drinks the pool water on the first try.
The kids enjoyed the two man tube ride the most because it was the fastest. After a few times they were hungry and ate some hamburgers and were charged up again for the rest of the afternoon. They avoided the wave pool as it was filled with a field trip of a hundred boy scouts. Everyone in there wore life jackets and the life guards were like hawks so it was not only crowded there but difficult to have much fun.
The kids spent every minute of their time on the water slides either tubing or going “Blank Panther” style. Their mom was in the spa and the relax room getting a tan and massage. The kids liked following her around from hot tub to sauna but they said it was boring and wanted to try the diving pool and go on a few more slides. Their mom said it was an hour to closing time and we had better get out before the rush. The kids insisted on staying until closing time that is 5pm during the winter.
Staying till closing time was the biggest mistake we made. I thought because we took the bus there we didn’t have to worry about traffic so we can stay later. The kids enjoyed going on rides with less lines and it was fun to get extra attention from the life guards around closing time. Then at 4:55 we decided to hit the lockers. We had all our winter coats and our towels and street clothes stuffed in two lockers. We couldn’t choose the locker location, but somehow our locker corner was so stuffed with naked teenagers that my son said, “I’m not going in there.” The showers were worse. There are no dividers between showers and half of the one thousand swimmers were trying to get a shower in there. We couldn’t get back to our lockers to get our towels and so we went to the drying room. My oldest son refused to take off his trunks to dry. He said there was a girl in the room. He was right. There was a five year old girl with her dad. I think it’s bad enough getting stuck in there with two boys but being there with a five year old girl is tragedy to her little eyes.
We put all our clothes in a plastic bag except for my son’s swim pants and then headed for the lockers. Luckily a lot of the teenagers had scattered from that area and we could open our locker. My son too his trunks off there and then tried to scramble to find his street clothes. Finally he got all his clothes together and I looked up to here, “Excuse me sir?” It was the life guard from the relax room where my wife spent the day. He said, “Your wife is outside wondering what is taking you guys so long.” My son looks down and his swim trunks were gone. In their place was another pair that was too big for him. He cried, “Dad somebody took my swim trunks.”
On the way home we ended up eating corn dogs. My youngest son said, “I don’t want to see another sausage again!” My oldest son took his corn dog and dunked it into the bowl with the red paste. He thought it was ketchup. Then he yelled, “Water!” “Somebody get me water!” He had dunked his corndog into Korean red pepper paste instead of ketchup.
He said he never wanted to go to another water park again in his life. He said, “Why can’t they make showers like American showers and give people some privacy?” My youngest son answered, “Then they wouldn’t have any Goju jjang (hot pepper paste).” In Korean Goju means pepper and also means well you can guess.
We spent the next day together designing our own water park on paper and making sure there were some diving walls in the shower.
I want to nominate 
Peace
