The Festivities

I was sitting in a Korean bar with a Filipino band and an English singer. My friends were speaking English, but I was speaking broken Korean to the woman across from me, who just happened to be moving to America in two weeks. Odd how these things happen.

After the Swaton festival earlier that day, I was exhausted. But my day from over. From the festival, the entire staff of the school (including a few new teachers) went out to dinner. I had never been to a Korean sea food place before (for obvious reasons), so I was excited to see how it worked.

Now, Koreans are generally very communal eaters. Sure, the main dish might be for you (and only you), but all the side dishes are generally shared by the whole table. The seafood restaurant was the ultimate extreme of this philosophy on eating.

In the center of each section of the large table was a large pot with boiling water. Everyone went up to the buffet, picked out some things they wanted, and dumped them into this pot. Then, everyone just picked out what they'd like to eat at any given moment: octopus, squid, shrimp (fully intact), and, most exciting of all, fish organs. I kept my vegetables to myself and just ate them raw. They weren't going in THAT pot.

Even after the fun of the boiled fish parts, I was still able to be surprised. Dessert was ice cream--bright pink ice cream. I can't even explain how out of place it seemed at the table of the octopus.

After dinner, I felt like a nap, but wanted to go out with my coworkers (at least the ones I really like). I invited some out but was cut short by the other foreign teachers, who just wanted to go home and take a nap. Seemingly it would end there, but it didn't.

I should also mention that Smith and Chris invited the foreign teachers out for a night of drinking. We all decline three times, but not because we were exhausted. Up until this week, I had been giving Smith the benefit of the doubt, but he went much too far for me ever to respect him again.

On Friday, the school rehearsed for the festival. I felt a little bad because I had to miss the very beginning of the rehearsal (I had a dentist appointment that couldn't wait--see the post "Getting Drilled" for more info). But when I got to Swaton, things got much worse very quickly. Chris didn't show up that morning (I think that makes his grand total for missed classes in the double digits now, two of which were field trips). Rachel came up to me nearly right after I arrived and asked where he was.

Drunk at home. That's where he was. He had come in at 6:30 that morning, and I let Rachel know. I wasn't about to cover for the jerk. He had made his bed a long time ago.

But that wasn't the worst of it.

When Rachel asked Smith where Chris was, he told her that Chris was sick. I know that Smith knew otherwise, largely because I'm almost certain Smith was the one Chris was drinking with. But to make matters worse, he also told Rachel that she shouldn't even ask those kind of questions, as though it wasn't her right to know where the teacher that should have been helping her with her class was. Smith even went so far as to say Chris really wanted to help, but he didn't know how. I can say for certain that that's untrue. He didn't want to help at all and made no effort to try to find out how to.

The two were forever in cahoots now, something I feared from the beginning.

But anyway, none of the foreign teachers wanted to go out with Chris or Smith because of all this (and for other reasons as well). We headed in for our naps and agreed to re-evaluate the evening in another couple hours.

Those of you who know me well know that I can't just fall asleep, no matter how tired I am. It takes a lot of winding down and relaxing before I even try to sleep. So when I got a call at about 10 asking me to come downstairs and figure out where we were going, my first reaction was to say that I wasn't going. Perhaps I should have trusted my gut, but I didn't.

I hadn't been out in some time and some of the Korean teachers were having a small farewell party for a teacher that was leaving. After much arguing on weather to stay or go, the troop of us (of course sans Chris, who we told we were staying in) made our way up to Chi-Chi's bar.

Chi-Chi's isn't really a foreigner bar the way that some bars in Korea are designed with foreigners in mind. No, it's a Korean bar that just happens to have a lot of foreign clientele. And, of course, a Filipino band. Apparently, even earning small wages in Korea is better than working in the Philippines (or so I was told).

The band was good, and after a few drinks, Simon, the Englishman I work with, decided to go up on stage with the band. They gladly accepted him, especially after they heard him sing his first song. See, Simon was a professional singer on a cruise ship before he came to Korea. To say that he's an excellent singer is to do him a great disservice. He's a phenomenal singer.

While Simon sang, I tried to talk to the Korean teachers in Korean. I generally don't speak Korean at school (we aren't supposed to), so a lot of the teachers are surprised to hear me speak it outside of class. My Korean isn't very good, but most Koreans give you high marks just for trying. And I like to try as often as I can because it gives me good practice (and generally a few pointers from the Koreans in the room).

Really, I had a great time with everyone there. I was only sorry that it took the teachers leaving before I got to know them very well. Good luck to all the teachers leaving. I'll certainly miss you.

After spending a few hours at Chi-Chi's, the boys talked me into going downtown. I generally don't like going downtown; it's just not my crowd. And not surprisingly, I didn't have a great time, and headed home soon after arriving. The one good thing about downtown is that we managed to avoid Chris. Twice I was told that I had "just missed him." Dodged a bullet there.

And for the first time since Chris came to Korea, I got home on a Saturday night later than he did. I thought about peeing on the floor or burning some macaroni and cheese, but decided just to go to bed.

The next morning, I remembered why I don't drink very often.

R