The school year in Korea ends at the end of February. Because of this many of the teachers and staff of the school take an overnite trip to somewhere in Korea to celebrate the end of another year. I was asked if I would like to attend and thought it sounded fun. It was goin to be me and 40 other Korean teachers on the trip. So pretty much I was gonna blend in with all of the other teachers...
We left school early that day and headed north on a nice coach bus. We stopped at a rest stop after about an hour, and once we left there the boozing began. I soon realized that this 'trip' was really just an excuse for all the teachers to get together and drink. If you know me, Im totally against that kinda stuff...
4 of my co teachers (Jay, Diana, Ran, and Lucy) were on the trip so I thought I would be able to at least talk to them. However, when the booze started flowing so did the English. I loved it. Most of the teachers have at least a lil bit of English experience. Some were able to communicate with me on a very basic level using simple words and hand signals. It was really cool.
We ended up going for dinner at a disgusting place that served raw fish. I HATE FISH. Luckily they had some fried fish. Lemme explain that fried fish here in Korea is VERY different than fried fish back home. They dont cut off the heads or the tails and dont remove the scales. So they fry the fish whole. Luckily I was slightly wasted at this point so i could handle the fried fish. Without booze I surely woulda puked or starved.
After dinner we headed to the hotel and I found out that I would be sharing a room with 4 other Korean men. Their English was all pretty decent and they could understand me most of the time. The liquid courage helped us communicate. We went to play pool before we met with the women in the norebong. If you dont know what a norebong is, its basically a karoke room. Karoke in Korea is very different than karoke in America. In Korea you pay for a room and then its just you and your friends there. So you dont have to sing in front of complete strangers. Since im terrible at singing I wasnt exactly thrilled when one of the female teachers gave me the book and said, "You next." I gave it my best effort and didnt think I did too awful. I found out the next day it was as bad as I thought it might be.
After norebanging with all the teachers til around 2 or so I went back to my room with the other men and we decided to drink more soju. We got blitzed and talked til about 4 that morning. Needless to say, the next day was rough. Wee had to wake up at 8 for breakfast. I wasnt allowed to skip even tho it ended up being fish soup...AWESOME.
That day we went to Nami Island. Apparently its famous cuz of a really popular tv show that was filmed there. I was told by a co teacher, "Its really nice in the spring, fall and summer." So happy we got to go in winter... It was a pretty nice place and after the island we went to eat some duck cooked inside of a pumpkin. It was really good.
In the end, I would say it was one of the best things I could have done. Not only was it really enjoyable, but I got to bond with some of the other teachers a lil more.
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