Road Safety

The most significant part of today was the most significant part of any school day I experienced as a child: a field trip day.

This was far from the Magic School Bus though, and I need to level up many more times until I can even aspire to be Ms. Frizzle. The field trip today was all about road safety.

Now much like the health centre field trip from my first day, this facility appears to exist for the sole purpose of field trips. I recall road safety being part of say, a police station tour. This was an educational facility for school children about road safety, period. Nothing else happens at this building.

The children were first ushered into a movie theatre for ...well, I have no idea. It was in Korean so the other foreign teachers and I left the theatre (apparently this was what happens every year). We actually found little racing pods like you would find at an arcade. Each one running Gran Turismo 4
 for Playstation 2. How will that teach road safety? All the cars are set to move insanely slow. The fastest mine got up to was 104 km/h, but mostly they drop at 60-70km/h. The kids exited only to catch a row of foreign teachers getting frustrated at slow virtual cars.

They practiced exciting activity like: crossing the road, looking both ways, exiting a bus, wearing a helmet. But none were as exciting as watching them learn to call emergency numbers (119, 112). I'm sure right now, in an apartment in Ansan one of them is speaking to the operator about how their brother pushed them. The translated dialogue goes something like this:
Student: Hello
Operator: Hello, what is your emergency
Student: My friend is hurt
Operator: Where is he hurt?
Student: On the knee
Operator: Where are you?
Student: The park
Operator: We're on our way
The park. You know, the park. THE park. That one. Yeah, come check on his knee.

My students were not sure whether their favourite part was the driving slow cars or the phone call. I enjoyed the whole thing in my own weird way.