Mollie Teacha!

Before I left for Thailand:

            In Korea, all teachers, administration, and principals are not allowed to stay at a school for more than a certain number of years (4-6 depending on the position).  Two of our administrators are transferring to another school.  One, being the "numba one driva," in his words, and the other being the executive mechanic, aka the Gardner.  They are both pretty funny- both short and stumpy and are hilarious to watch when we all play volleyball together (they sometimes try and spike the ball but completely miss because they are too short to reach over the net).

The only picture I got from lunch- half devoured plates of seafood and only
chopped up sea dwelling creatures were left  

We all went out the week before I went to Thailand to celebrate them leaving and also to celebrate a successful end of the school year.  We traveled to a city about an hour away to have a big sushi lunch.  They love to drink soju here, which if you have heard of it before, is pretty good.  Everyone explains it as a lighter vodka but I don't think that's a good comparison.  It is definitely like nothing I have ever tasted, but it is much easier to drink than vodka and much better tasting than sake.  Well, they drink it like water here.  So when we went out to lunch, they insisted on serving me a bunch. 

They pride themselves on telling people how many shots they have taken- so they kept asking me while they were giving me drinks but honestly I could not even remember since they were coming from every direction. 

After many cheers, chatter, a sashimi/seafood filled lunch, we all hop in the car to leave.  As we are leaving, the other teachers tell me that one of the drivers is "happy."  I asked if that meant he was drunk and they agreed. 

So, the drunk driver (school bus driver, not the actual driver of the car), made us follow him to a special place he knew about that was nearby.  We pulled up to a Migratory Bird Sanctuary down the road.  

About 8 other teachers and I climbed a tall tower and relaxed at the top while looking through high powered binoculars for these so called migrating birds. Now, it's in the middle of December in South Korea, so there weren't many birds to see when we were bird watching.  After we left the tower, we turned left and walked up the hill more.  There were a group of cages outside so we went to look. 

This brings me to the way Koreans handle animals.  There were a bunch of cages side by side, and all of them had birds in them.  One cage had 4 huge buzzards waddling around, definitely not enough space for all of them.  The owls were in the next cage- no place for them to hide during the daylight and not many places for them to perch themselves.  The rest were all smaller animals but all of them were outside and no coverings!  It was really cold there- the pond we walked by later was frozen!  It made me sad to see all of the animals just sitting out there in the cold. 

After ogling at the birds, we went to the souvenir shop for some much needed coffee.  All the other teachers insisted that I try and guess, who of the 4 men, were the oldest and youngest.  Unlike Americans, age in something everyone knows, no matter what your age is.  They even post it at the bottom of the screen when interviewing people on television!  This is because everyone is addressed depending on their age- if you are older, you are spoken to with a sense of politeness and higher respect.  If you are younger, an entire different kind of sentence structure is used, more casual.  I personally think that most Koreans, and most Asians in general, look younger than they really are- and sometimes they even fool each other with their age, so people always ask each other.  Well, when I guessed, I was completely wrong.

I guessed that the youngest guy was the oldest and the oldest was the second youngest.  I then tried to explain that the youngest man acted older because he was so devoted to his job and stern when it came to working (which is completely true).  I didn’t, though, say that since he was the only one balding, that that swayed my opinion.  Yes, many Koreans have great genes here when it comes to old age and hair.  They keep their hair color until well into their 50’s, maybe even later, and it’s rare to see them balding. 

The group of my co-workers

While drinking coffee, we all talked about age and children.  A couple of the men told me that they have children around my age so they now call themselves “Malia teacher’s Korean father,” but it comes out at “Mollie teacha Korean whot-taa.”  They have trouble pronouncing “f’s” and I guess it’s easier to say Molia instead of Malia- the shortened version being Mollie.   

Sitting in front of a "love" sign

We all got back into our cars and started our hour travel home.  Well, if you know me, I always fall asleep during car rides- it’s something my Mom trained me to do when I was little and I have never grown out of it.  When I awoke, the teachers were all frantically chatting and pointing to things on their phones.  One proceeded to tell me that we had gotten lost. We were now on the road heading towards Seoul, a 2 hour trip!  We then swerved off the highway at the next exit and onto a country road which took us through a bunch of small cities.  

About an hour later, an hour longer then what was expected, we arrived back at school.  This trip was a lot of fun, and it made me closer with a lot of the teachers.  It was also when I was supposed to teach Winter English Camp at my rural school so I got out of doing that as well and had a day off!