Sushi School

Thursday night my second school (Yong Dang) had a dinner for all the teachers. This is very common in Korea - in fact, it's the second dinner I've been to with Yong Dang. But this time was different. This time was sushi, and I had some of the most delicious raw fish of my life. But along with the raw fish, this 12 course meal came with whale. I don't know what kind of whale, but there was sliced whale on the table, and people ate the flesh and left the skin. I took a cell phone picture, I didn't have my camera. Among the other rare dishes were triton and other shell fish, served raw. This makes for tough eating. Imagine eating conch, but unbeaten, uncooked conch. It's a jaw workout, and it's not that tasty. There was also triton eggs, which were delicious, like butter kind of. There were 3 rounds of soup, 5 rounds of raw animals, rice of course, a round of fried fish, fried veggies, salad, and many many rounds of a drink they call thousand year promise. The dinner lasted over 2 hours and people got rowdy drunk. Afterwards we went to a norebang - the singing room, and while the principal was grinding some woman teacher I sang brown eyed girl just because they could sha la la along with that one. What is this magical place we've come to? But one song wasn't enough for me. Oh no, they wanted more. So this man teacher, who took it upon himself to ensure that I always had a friend arm in arm, usually him, picked out a song for me. He chose Don't Cry for Me Argentina, the Madonna version. Of course I don't know this song. I barely know the chorus. But there I was, with his arm around my shoulder and three other Korean teachers by my side, mumbling the words and belting the chorus. Surprisingly, no one asked me to sing again. But I'd won their hearts with my attempts. So much so that a woman brought me a shot of house whiskey followed by an american cheese chaser. This may sound awful, but it's actually worse than it sounds. But it was lots of fun regardless of putridness.

As I was leaving, I said "see you tomorrow", and no less than three teachers said no, they'd see me next week because tomorrow was a holiday (this was Thursday night). They said there were no classes tomorrow and that I didn't have to come to school. I thought this was strange because Kyung Mi, my coteacher, didn't mention it. But I also thought, they know better than I. So Friday morning as Brian was getting ready for school, I layed in bed. I got up late and slowly made breakfast and coffee as I worked on an essay (there's a contest with cash prizes for EPIK teachers, we're all trying it out for a travelling fund bonus). At 8:25 I got a text from Kyug Mi. All it said was today is not a holiday. So with a heroic show of speed and determination, I made it to school only 5 minutes late. Welcome to life in Korea. So much for my relaxing day, but I did get to see my 1st graders and be buddy buddy with my fellow crooners from the night before. Surreal.

Jess