The Black Sheep

Apparently once a month all of the single teachers at the school get together for dinner and drinks after work. This was obviously my first time joining and was really looking forward to it. It’s all females by the way, and most of them speak pretty good English so it’s nice to be able to talk to some people who speak English well, unlike most of the people I share an office with. We went to a Korean BBQ, surprise, surprise, of the millions of restaurants in Korea I think about 99% of them are Korean BBQ joints, which isn’t terrible but gets old after a while. And they are delicious, but you stink like a deep fryer when you leave. Anyways, we’re finish eating super and decide to head to another place for more appetizers and some fruity soju. Fruity soju is basically watered down vodka mixed with sugary fruit drinks, needless to say, delicious. We literally order a ton more food, it was like eating another meal, and we’re all stuffing our faces with this delicious deep fried food like we hadn’t just eaten an entire meal moments earlier… Anyways I get a call from my co teacher and she wants us to go meet up with her and the principal for more drinks. Nobody was very excited to leave because we had just ordered some delicious fruity sojo… Anyways, we ended up going; it turned out they weren’t that far from where we were eating…

So we’re rolling up there and it’s literally me and 5 other Korean girls; I’m getting mean mugged left and right, but at this point I didn’t mind. We get to the restaurant and my co teacher is TRASHED. She begins by pretending to be mad at me for not going to some dinner thing with her and the principal that I had apparently agreed to a week earlier. She kept saying “Arrrron is a bad guy” and that I was very untrustworthy. It didn’t hurt my feelings because I could tell she was blitzed. Well anyways, once us 5 get to the restaurant we had to move to a bigger table to fit everyone. We finally get situated after making quite a commotion (my co teacher was trying to chrs (cheers) with literally EVERYONE) well we get situated and I see what’s for dinner.... Raw meat. More raw meat. It was raw fish and raw beef. Both of which looked and smelled terrible and were about as uncooked as a raw piece of meat could possible be. I refused. I couldn’t do it again. There’s no way I’m going to go from eating delicious deep-fried food with five single Korean teachers to raw fish and meat with the principal and my belligerently drunk co teacher. Speaking of my embarrassingly drunk co teacher, she was now telling everyone to only speak in English and that she was very sad because she didn’t pass her exam to become a vice principal. She was telling EVERYONE this… oh, she was also telling people she didn’t know where she lived and she had no clue where her car was. Some of the teachers I was with and myself kept insisting that we had a sober ride home for her, which just prompted the next ‘chrrrs’. I really wish I could describe this sound with letters… Koreans have a hard time with the letter ‘r’; added to a heavily intoxicated older woman is literally priceless. I’m going to guess she probably tried to cheers about 30 some odd times with everyone at one point in the night. The principal, whom I was sitting next moments earlier to said, enough of this and moved to the other side of the table. Anyways, there was this jar of peanuts on our table and I told my co teacher that I could beat her in picking up single peanuts and putt them in a separate dish using chopsticks faster than her. Not to toot my own horn or anything but I’m becoming pretty phenomenal at using chopsticks, I still struggle with lettuce and noodles but am getting much, much better… Anyways, we started off playing fairly and after she realized she was loosing (no lie) she began to pick up 3-4 at a time which I cannot do, but it was taking her longer to grab 3-4 at a time and I was still keeping pace with her. I think the soju must have kicked in because she ended up grabbing a bunch with her hand and putting them into the bowl. Perhaps this was a bad competition for me to start because she proceeded to ask me every two minutes if I wanted to race again. I kept saying “No, you’re wasted Sister Kim, plus I’ve already proved I’m better than you at using chopsticks”. This really lit a fire under her because then she kept saying “Arrrron I’m better than you, I’m better than you” enough times to get under my skin enough that we played about 4-5 more times more, all of which ended up with her tossing peanuts across the table.

During this time there was a clear division of the people who wanted to hear her ramblings and get a good laugh out of them and those who were trying pretty hard to avoid her. I was stuck. I was sober, or pretty sober and every time I would leave she would screech, “Where’s arrrron” like a five year old might say if someone just took her favorite play toy. I actually ended up pretending to use the bathroom about 3 times just to get some fresh air and get away from the constant ringing of her babblings in my ear.

Her shenanigans got progressively worse throughout the night. The principal’s son and son’s friend ended up coming and eating diner with us towards the end of the night. Anyways, the principal introduces his son to me and emphasizes how handsome he is to everyone. My co teacher must have thought this was untrue because she stood up and said, “Principal Hueng, only you think so.” I was shocked. I actually was a little upset. I put my hand over her mouth and told her to sit down; it was getting a little ridiculous now. We finally ended up leaving after several attempts at getting my co teacher into a cab and convinced her that nobody wanted to go sing karaoke with her and that we had someone with us that knew where her house was…

During orientation, someone said that no matter how drunk Koreans get the night before and no matter how much of an ass you make of yourself, it’s never brought up the next day. This was apparently false because everyone at school was saying that they had heard about my co teacher the night before and how bad everyone felt for me. It was pretty remarkable. I actually found out that she said, “I can be a better principal than you” to the principal, which I did not catch because she had said it in Korean. So it was actually a slightly worse situation than I had initially thought.