One of my favorite things about my job these days are the field trips that we take with kindergarten. Field trips generally mean longer lunch breaks, no kindergarten classes, goof off time with the kids, some level of chaos, and an amusing destination to remind me that there is a world outside of my hagwon on weekdays.
Sometimes field trips are fun and work out well, sometimes they are a bit of a mess, and sometimes they are a little bit on the... odd side. I thought that things were pretty weird when we took the kids to the transportation museum where we talked about all the various ways they could get hit by a car and watched a Korean equivalent to Red Asphalt (fyi, if you weren't forced to go through that traumatizing movie in a driver's ed class, it's an intensely bloody movie about car accidents). I mean, I enjoyed our safety video with the little magical fairy man showing the children in the movie how they could have horribly died ten times in the course of their normal day, but really, I think this could have been a bit much for 3, 4, and 5 year olds. I have to admit, I was really entertained by the miniature intersections they had set up where the tour guides for the museum showed our kids how to raise their hands when they crossed the street and had us practice about 15 times.
But, by and large, things are normally pretty good. So when I heard that we were going to the "Fun, fun science museum", I was amused by the name, but not unduly concerned. That changed fairly quickly when we got to the place.
Now, I'd been expecting a building dedicated to teaching kids about science. Which isn't that weird... I've been to plenty of children's science museums back home, and they're all pretty legit. Most of our field trips thus far had been to real places, I had no reason to suspect otherwise. So when we pulled up to jankety three story building in a somewhat sketchy part of town, I figured that the bus driver had just gotten lost again (they rely way too heavily on their GPS units and will actually ignore you if you try to point out that there is a detour or roadblock, or that the entrance to where you are going is just off to the left even though the GPS says to go straight). Unfortunately, our bus driver was spot on.
Welcome to the Fun Fun Science Museum, which is on the second and third floor of this building, up a narrow flight of stairs. If you want to go to the third floor, you'll need to ask the nice lady with the keys to open it for you. But why would you want to go up there anyway? There's lots to do downstairs- like look at the beer can fountain, examine the tongue shaped bottle opener, listen to the head of the Maestro tell you your future from his magical box or put on the gorilla head mask.
Perhaps needless to say, I was creeped out. As were the other three foreign teachers. It was sort of like some really bizarre knick knack collector had taken the contents of his garage and stuffed them onto shelves in a room. We hung back as our kids seated themselves for a show (we were the only group at the Fun Fun Science Museum), and began discussing where we should be expecting to find the dead babies. The suit of armor was a major contender.
When the Korean equivalent of the mad professor (our show host) pulled out a huge canister of liquid nitrogen, I began to wonder what it said in my contract about my responsibilities if the children were hurt on a field trip. I mean, I love playing with liquid nitrogen as much as the next nerdy science person, but I'm pretty sure that three is an early age to be exposing children to dangerous substances.
Things seemed to be going okay though. The nutty professor was freezing balloons and feeding the children frozen crackers to make them breathe steam. Assuming that the crackers weren't poisoned (to add to the dead baby collection)(I really hope they weren't, since I was dragged up as an amusing foreigner to eat a cracker too), this seemed pretty benign.
I began to calm down. The kids were having a good time, any dead bodies that may have been there were either fresh enough or well preserved enough for us not to smell decay, and I was even growing used to hearing the Maestro's creepy predictions about my dire end with Disneyland's Haunted Mansion-esk music playing in the background.
And then the mad professor went for the fish.
We should have seen it coming. I mean, you've got two fish hanging out on your demonstration table (in a fish tank) and a canister of liquid nitrogen. What better ideas do you have?
Yes. Yes, he did. He froze the fish.
As it turns out, there is no language barrier for horrified gasps.
And if that wasn't bad enough, he then dropped the fish popsicle on the table accidentally. My coworkers and I almost all had simultaneous heart attacks. The kids were looking severely shocked and even the Korean teachers were looking a little uncomfortable with this rather inhumane treatment of a frozen fish. So, with apologetic looks, he dropped the fish back into the fish tank where it made like a zombie and came back to life.
We were still shocked. So was the fish. It swam in spastic little circles for the remaining 20 minutes of the show, though that may also have had something to do with the active Tesla coil next to its tank. I later examined it closely for dents, or chipped bits, but it seemed to have remained mostly intact.
So it is true, that you can freeze a fish with liquid nitrogen and then bring it back to life. But I don't recommend it, unless you feel like severely traumatizing someone. Then, I definitely recommend it. I'm not sure I will ever be able to look at a goldfish the same way again.
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