I guess it must be some part of the curriculum or something, but EVERY school in Korea has gone on a school picnic in the last few weeks. Really, it's more of a field trip with a picnic at lunch, but every school calls it a picnic.
Our school "picnic" was to the Dinosaur museum in Haenam, about an hour away from Mokpo. I was busy doing work for a 3 hour workshop I had to give Monday, so I had to tell my school I couldn't go on the trip. Things have really turned around at my school in the last 3 weeks though, and the Principal offered to drive me to the picnic with him a few hours after all the buses left, which gave me time to get work done, but allowed me to join in for some of the fun.
The Dinosaur museum wasn't as impressive as I hoped it would be, so I don't actually have any pictures from that part of the day! After lunch, the Principal took me back to school and offered to let my new co-teacher come back too since he was bored.
The really story for the blog is what came at 5pm, when the kids all went home and the teachers "celebrated a successful trip" by having beer, soju and snacks in the staffroom. We've told stories and shown pictures of the live baby octopus eating, but this time I caught it on tape!
The video quality isn't great, but it's the best i could do on the small digital camera.
First you'll see our school administrator (in the blue jacket). His demonstration of how to eat live octopus isn't great, but I just want to point him out because he will be the main character in another story I have to tell!
The second man you see in the video is my vice-principal. He was a good sport and tried to give the best demonstration he could on how to go about eating this dangerous snack. Enjoy!
Doesn't that look appetizing? Just stab, wrap, dip and chew, but watch out for squirming legs!
I of course skipped out on this part of the feast and stuck to oranges and melon slices :)
The second story for this week is a bit of a continuation of another story I told months ago from one of my first staff dinners. Last night I was invited to join the staff for Chinese food, as we were being treated by the parent's association to celebrate the new head parent --if that makes any sense! I haven't been to any of the staff events this semester as I was always finding out about them 5 minutes before they took place and usually when I had something else planned for the evening. This week, they gave me more than 24 hours notice and since it was Chinese food and not raw fish, I thought I should go.
Well the school administrator, along with some of the other teachers, likes to drink in excess at these events. He is the one that during another dinner told me I was beautiful and then started making gestures around the chest area. I thought he was making comments about my bust, but apparently he was trying to say that I'm beautiful on the outside, but he is beautiful on the inside and inner beauty is more important. Well, I now I'm sure he was talking about my chest --we had a second miscommunication last night!
After a few shots of soju he found his way to my table and got right into the conversation with me. I don't think he knows a single English word other than beautiful because that's all I heard (he should maybe think about attending the mandatory English classes I give to the teachers each week!). In attempt to communicate better he likes to gesture a lot. I understood the part that he thinks I'm beautiful, and then I had some help from other staff members who translated that he was impressed that I workout at a gym (he likely heard it from other Korean's that work out at our gym -- us foreigners are easy to spot and are often the subject of gossip!) Everyone was surprised to learn I do weights at the gym -Korean women can't lift their own handbags! and the weight room is apparently the last place in Korea you will ever find a Korean woman (except when they go in there for cake and coffee and gossip and hula hoops!). Our communication went like this: I understood the hands by the face and "beautiful", the bicep squeeze and "beautiful", but when he started gesturing in the shape of an hourglass and then sticking his butt out and making an X with his arms, I started to get confused and a bit offended. The women didn't want to translate anymore so I could tell it wasn't good. I of course was a bit shocked that we went from "you're beautiful" to "you have a fat derriere", but they are brutally honest in Korea and don't show much tact. I kept asking "chogum - no?" (small, No = not small, and then no and making an X with my arms -- this is the best I can do in Korean!) So I told the other women it was okay, I understood that he meant I had a big butt. I was really embarrassed and then finally I think one of them felt badly for me because she spoke up and said it was the opposite. She translated for me that "he likes your bum line". Things were a bit awkward for a few minutes, to say the least, and I'm guessing along with skipping English class he also skipped the sexual harassment seminar that every school does at the beginning of the semester.
As if that wasn't enough of a situation, the dining room suddenly turned into a noraebong (karaoke room) and what I thought would change the atmosphere a bit, actually made it worse (but mostly for the Korean women in the room -- I was laughing hysterically!). The TV gets turned on and a song code is punched in and one of the parents was up for a song. The foreigners are always laughing about the karaoke background scenes that play while the words are up on screen. You don't get music videos to the songs, just scenery usually. We've seen forest scenes, skiing scenes, beaches, temples, all things that have nothing to do with the song, but that provide something pretty to look at while people sing. To everyone's
absolute shock, the pictures that came up this time were of three blonde, naked females soaping each other up and scrubbing in the shower!!! Korean women aren't supposed to see stuff like that and the females on staff are pretty young and all unmarried so they were just mortified. They immediately turned away and went bright red. The pervert administrator got as close to the TV as he could to get a good look, and everyone else was either laughing uncomfortably or hysterically like myself because it was just so unbelievable! My new co teacher kept apologizing for how uncomfortable the night must have been for me but I just laughed and asked him if he knew what a blog was. I told him this would make a good story to tell people back home!
Ohhh, Korea! Always eating, always full of surprises, and always something to laugh about here!
