Because of our predicament, an early morning event, my boss and I had a talk about the festivities of the night. She tried to give the foreign teacher crew a curfew, and we politely declined. Each side gave a compelling argument, but since we held the language advantage we were able to convince her otherwise. 2:00, which was the curfew, may sound late, but when you're getting off of work at 11:00 it's just three hours.
The night began with a tray of assorted raw fish appetizers, es-car-got, and other snail like creatures. I indulged in it all, not necessary because I like it or even might like it, but because I like eating weird stuff and telling people about it. The next plate was a plate full of sushi. Not normal sushi either. This is raw fish. Raw fish and an assortment of sauces. You can also wrap it in lettuce if your heart desires. There is no roll, no rice, no veggies, no California in the name, no avocados, just raw fish. It's really good too. They also delivered calamari at this point. Really big fried squid tentacles, and guess what, the Koreans did not like calamari, (it's too cheap compared to an expensive plate of raw fish) so I feasted.
There was soju and mackju and somack (a combination of the two) and Korean drinking games that I may or may not have participated in. There were chants and cheers. There were spitwads flying at mirrors, resembling a scene from Billy Madison much more so than an office party.
2:30 a.m. Noribong
We sang our hearts out as if we were in the finals of Korean Idol.
3:30 am Apartment
In the convenience store at the bottom of our building, we were busy preparing for the next day by aggressively detoxing the liver. This involves Morning Care, lots of water, and ice cream. Morning Care is a gross drink that Koreans swear will cure your hangover. It tastes like medicine and it costs $4.5o, which is expensive over here. Water is essential when trying to cleanse the body. The ice-cream, well it just sounded good at 3:30 in the morning. This trio of treats was sure to get me off to a good start at 8:30 in the morning. Right?
8:15 a.m Saturday Apartment
Well, a train apparently hit me in my sleep. My trio did nothing to prevent my present condition. Morning Care, just like every other hangover prevention medicine, is a load of dung. This is just what I've heard, I have no experience in this matter. I'll tell you what does work though: McDonald's. It just so happened that the bus was picking us up right in front of a McDonald's. And we ate. I love McDonald's for their breakfasts, and I have never scarfed down a hasbrown as fast as I did that morning. I have for the most part been deprived of great greasy treats, and my condition was less than stellar. After Mickey D's and a little cat nap, I felt good.
10:45: Somewhere on a Mountain
We finally arrived at what was basically a boy scouts camp. Hundreds of Korean cub scouts lined the paths of a pretty Korean hillside. We had a competition between the foreign teachers. Once again Zach was pitted against John, Meg, and myself. It was his academy versus ours. Games included the usual suspects like tug of war and a group jump rope competition. Then there were new games. One game was essentially volleyball with no rules, but a 20 pound ball the size of a full grown midget. Basically a huge ball that was filled with air. It was soft and big. There was no spiking of this ball, in fact, if you tried to hit it with just one hand it would hardly move. That proved to be an embarrassment for me on more than one occasion.
The first time I hit the ball as hard as I could. My arm moved further than the ball, just in the opposite direction, right into another guys face. With his nose bent and a fat lip, Brian hung in there and tried to help the team. We ended up losing this game for a multiple of reasons. Here is a list of excuses why we failed to win:
1) We had three children running around on our side of the court. These were the director's children, so we had to embrace 'em. Zach's team had zero kids.
2) The other side had more men on their side, although half of the team was gay. I am not joking or exaggerating either. Zach works with maybe five homosexual men. That is starting to look like less of an advantage as I sit here typing. Okay, scratch that.
2) My team was hung over. No, that doesn't work either. I'm sure they were hungover as well, this is Korea after all.
Okay they won. Why do I need multiple excuses in the first place? They didn't have any kids. That's it. That's why we lost.
We also lost Jump Rope, and a balloon stomping contest. The balloon contest is where everyone runs around kicking and stomping like madmen. The goal is to pop other peoples balloons, while protecting your own balloons. The balloons are attached below the knee and around the ankle. Everyone has two balloons. I never stomped anybodies balloon. I was horrible. We won tug of war, literally pulling Zach in our direction like a rag doll. We also won another contest, but it's too hard to explain.
To Be Continued
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