Don Schlack, chief of the Far East District's environmental section, hands out hard hats before he and a group of Yongsan Garrison kindergartners head out to watch a drilling team. (Joseph Giordono / S&S)
YONGSAN GARRISON, South Korea — The Army Corps of Engineers was going to temporarily close the Seoul American Elementary School playground anyway, so they decided to make the best of it.
While work crews with a huge drilling machine took underground samples Wednesday, a group of kindergartners stepped out the front door of their class for a “field trip” and a chance to don hard hats.
They lined up by a chain-link fence, watching the Far East District crew drill into the ground, pulling out long steel tubes with soil samples. Earlier, in the classroom, Don Schlack, chief of the district’s environmental section, explained what they were going to see.
He also showed them mineral samples and talked about safety and working around heavy equipment. Schlack gave white and red hard hats to the kids.
The drilling team, one of several environmental assessments ongoing at Yongsan, was busy at work. The big yellow geotechnical drilling machine pounded tubes into the dirt.
When one sample was pulled, Schlack and a worker carefully unscrewed the metal and opened the tube. Inside were glittering, foil-wrapped candies and Thanksgiving-themed dried ears of corn.
“Next time you walk on your playground, you think you’ll be walking on top of more candy?” Schlack asked the kids.
For a moment, their eyes lit up with visions of buried treasure, chocolates down to the bedrock. But then their better senses prevailed.
“Noooo!” came the reply, loudly and in unison.
