Wednesday

This is the Wednesday edition of our average week. Wednesdays and Thursdays may be changing soon but I’ll just tell you what has been happening.

Wednesday is, in my opinion, the toughest day of classes. I only have 3, all in the morning, making it my shortest day. However they are all three grade 6 classes and they are a handful. I’ve already talked about 6-3 but 6-2 is almost as bad. Well, not really but they are difficult to control at times and very loud. 6-1 is usually no problem and in fact one of the better classes overall. Looking at 6-3 and 6-2 today, I noticed that they both have a high boy to girl ratio. Maybe that is what makes them louder and harder to control since, no question, the girls are far better behaved than the boys. Most of the trouble with the girls is having them stop combing each other’s hair and say anything at all. I just try to keep smiling and doing the best job I can. It is over by 12:20, lunch time.

Every Wednesday in almost every school in South Korea is volleyball day. The teachers all have the afternoon off to gather in the gym and play volleyball with each other. My school is no different and we start at 2:30. Each school differs in its level of competiveness from the super competitive to the just for fun. My school is definitely at the ‘just for fun’ end of the scale. I am not a very good volleyball player but I do give it my best and that is pretty much all they ask for. I am put in the same position, right in front of the net for spiking and blocking. As far as I have gathered it is the same for every other foreign teacher. We tend be taller. I make my share of mistakes but all the teachers make a big deal if I do make a nice block or a nice spike so I always look forward to Wednesday volleyball. Volleyball usually ends at 4 and then I am allowed to go home. So that is another perk.

After volley ball is different for Laura and I. I usually get to go home early but she has to play till 5 and then the teachers usually head out for dinner. Teacher dinners can be quite the event here. Again it depends a lot on the school and it is not the same each time. Typically dinner also includes drinking and drinking leads to norabong (karaoke) and more drinking. I hate to group everybody together but all Koreans love norabong.

The reason why Wednesday blog post is a week late and there was no Thursday or Friday blog post was teacher dinner. I went to the chrysanthemum festival with the other teachers in the afternoon (no students). The festival was fine, lots of pretty flowers and butterflies. Afterward was dinner and it was a thing. The main course was raw beef served with raw cow stomach, raw cow liver and of course kimchi. In this case you wrap the beef up in a lettuce leaf, with a thin slice of garlic and soy oil with salt. It wasn’t too bad. I don’t think I would order it again (it would have tasted great cooked) but it wasn’t bad. For dessert? Raw octopus fresh out of the tank chopped up but still squirming. I’d passed on this dish once before at a school picnic. This time though I was half full of soju, the traditional Korean liquor (20%), as well. The traditional way of drinking soju is for somebody to fill your shot glass up, you then drink it in one gulp, you are then obligated to fill up there glass. Then it goes back and forth with each other filling the glasses. I drank at least twice with each of my male co-teachers (the woman sat at a different table). So I had the squirming octopus. It wasn’t too bad till one of the tentacles got stuck between my teeth well the other one was going down my throat. Luckily I managed to get it down without too much embarrassment. After 2 or so hours of dinner we did end up at the singing room. I sung Tik Tok by Ke$ha one of the few options in English on the list. It was a wild night and made for a rough morning.