The Adventure Eases Up...Day 8 in Korea

I woke up early on Thursday, but still felt tired. However, I knew that I had a teacher's meeting that was supposed to happen at 1:00 and didn't want to oversleep so I got up. I spent most of the morning emailing, chatting, and updating my blog. (Somehow I forgot to make any stick coffee) Around 11, I showered and shaved and got dressed to go meet Mrs. Yoon at the gas station at 12:30.


Mrs. Yoon called around 12 to tell me that she'd stayed up late watching Olympic soccer and had overslept. (The Korean men's team had played Gabon) She asked me if I could meet her at the gas station at 1:40 instead.

At about 1:30 I headed down to the gas station. I could see the old man who attended the pumps sitting out in his chair under the awning. I was waiting by the road when a car horn honked behind me. It was Mrs. Yoon. She was in a different car than they normally drove. This one was not an SUV and it looked like it had been well taken care of. I hopped in and we drove to the school, chatting about teaching, the Olympics, and our respective societies.


When we got to the school, we went upstairs and inside the lobby was a young, pretty Korean girl. Mrs. Yoon introduced us, telling me that her name was Jenny. We shook hands and bowed. Mrs. Yoon led us to the teacher's room, where I sat at my desk and Jenny sat at the desk next to mine (where Jane normally sat). Mrs. Yoon told us that she had to make a phone call and went out into the lobby. While we were waiting, Jenny told me that she was brand new and had not worked yet. I told her that I was also new, but that I liked the school and the other teachers. She told me that she'd spent time studying in Alabama. I told her that I was from Georgia. She said she liked Georgia a lot more than Alabama. I told her that I did, too. She complained about how hot it was in Korea. I asked her if she'd experienced the summer in Alabama. She admitted that they were far worse. 


Mrs. Yoon came back in and asked us if we'd like some stick coffee. We both said yes. She made it and brought it back. This stick coffee was some kind of caramel flavor. I liked it.

She asked us if we were hungry or if we wanted to business first. We both opted for business. We spent the next few hours learning about how kids were assessed, how the new classes would be scheduled, developing part of a monthly plan, and making lesson plans. We left around 5:15 and Mrs. Yoon drove both of us back to Gwangju-si. 


We went to a little restaurant in a part of town that I was very unfamiliar with. The restaurant was in more of a traditional Korean style. We had to remove our shoes at the door and sit on the floor at a long table. There were cushions stored beneath the table for sitting on.

Yep, the cushions are about that thin.

Mrs. Yoon ordered the food for us and we sat at the table talking. Jenny and Mrs. Yoon started to take pictures with their iPhones. After about 3,267 pictures, they stopped and we chatted for a bit. After a while, the waiters brought out about as many bowls as the women had taken pictures and set them on the table. Every time that I thought they were through bringing out bowls, they would bring something else. The table literally looked like this: (I'm not joking)

I think our table had more stuff

Basically, you just tried stuff from every bowl and dish on the table. There were all kinds of well-seasoned vegetables, ttabolkki, noodles, rice, soup, and some things that I'm still not sure how to categorize. The waiters put 2 big plates of bulgogi (Korean bbq beef) and fish in the middle of it all. Basically, you just took your chopsticks and grabbed what you wanted from each dish when you wanted it. Reaching across the table was not considered rude. It was awesome.

Bulgogi. Mmmmmmmmmm...

Mr. Lee and Jake joined us after a while. Jake asked about my day and told me that they'd gone to the swimming pool. I watched both of them as they ate to make sure that I was doing everything right. I saw them giggle a few times at my handling of my chopsticks. Korean chopsticks are a lot harder to handle for me because they're made of metal and they're much thinner. I can wield the wooden ones pretty well, but I'm somewhat clumsy with the metal ones. Koreans, however, are so good with them that they can probably use them to eat milk. Mrs. Yoon asked if I'd used chopsticks before and told me that I had good form. Mr. Lee challenged me to pick up a tiny onion that was on one of the plates. I managed to get it after about a minute and 30 seconds of looking like an idiot. We all had a good laugh.

After dinner, Mrs. Yoon directed us to the tea room. It wasn't really a room at all, but a place outside where one could sit at little tables with umbrellas and drink coffee or tea. Loud American oldies were playing through some outdoor speakers. They asked me about my musical tastes and I told them about my love for jazz and blues (as well as many other genres). They, too, were big jazz fans (except maybe for Jenny. She probably likes K-Pop). Somehow we got on the subject of drinking and I told them about my experience with the makgeolli. They told me that it could cause terrible headaches. Mrs. Yoon said that drinking in Korea was a very social thing and was usually done in groups. She said that Mr. Lee was sad because I'd been doing it alone in my apartment. He said that if I ever needed someone to drink with that I should call him. I then learned that one of the Korean toasts is something like "Let's die!" I thought this was hilarious. They also thought it was very funny when I made it into a cheer. Mr. Lee got me to do my New Zealand dialect for Mrs. Yoon, who really enjoyed it. Mrs. Yoon then told Jenny about what she'd told Jake about speaking English around me. Jenny asked me how I felt when they spoke Korean around me. I told them that I usually had little to no idea of what they were talking about, but could pick out some words and phrases here or there. She told me that if she ever wanted to talk about me, she'd just start speaking Korean. I told her that I'd just start talking about her using ebonics. They enjoyed my ebonics.

Mr. Lee pointed out that I had eased up a lot since my first day in Korea. I told them about how I was very cautious because I didn't want to offend them in any way. I told them that I'd researched a lot of Korean culture, but that my Western habits might cause me to unconsciously do something that was offensive. (Like take something with my left hand) Luckily, they've both been exposed to a lot of Western culture and are very forgiving of my social blunders. I'm a lucky guy.

At some point, I taught them the phrase "Monkey see, monkey do." (Mr. Lee asked why it wasn't "Monkey sees, monkey does."

At the end of the night, Mr. Lee and Jake went to the big car and Jenny and I left in Mrs. Yoon's car. Mrs. Yoon dropped us off at the bus station near my house and instructed me to wait with Jenny until the bus came. Jenny was getting ready to go on a vacation to the beach with her family (which she wasn't very happy about because there were going to be a lot of people there and she couldn't swim). She was also unhappy about how far the bus was from her home (she lived in Seongnam). 


Other things I found out about Jenny while we waited: she likes big cities, she likes indoor activities, she hates sports, and she likes American Chinese food more than real Chinese food, she likes Mrs. Yoon and her family. 


After the bus came and picked Jenny up, I walked back to my apartment. It took practically no time for me to fall asleep after the long day that I'd had.