An outing with my new coworkers

For the first month, I got to know three teachers at my school pretty well. There was my supervisor/head teacher, Joe. He was a Korean American who was a pretty decent guy. He kept Tony's zany Koreanness in check. There was Kevin. He was an Adopted Korean/American who was as foreign to Korea as I was. I got to know these two because we were the three people who smoked at our school, so we would always be in the stairwell smoking together during the breaks. The director smoked as well, but he would smoke in the lobby.

And there was V. I will call this teacher V because her name is not as common as many of the other names I've come across in my time here, and also because I come into contact with her on occasion. Anyways, V started at the same time I did, taught in an office next to mine, lived near me and was the only other person of non Korean descent. She's pretty cool and we fought the man together a couple of times.

Anyhoo, there was an outing planned for both our academy and the other academy my boss owned in Incheon. The three people I had gotten to know weren't coming. I'm not much of a socialite, but I figured this would be a good opportunity to get to know the other teachers and have a good time.

I rode in my boss's car along with Terry, another Korean American teacher I never got to know very well. I'm not sure where we went. I was told we were going to GangwanDo and that it was an island off of Incheon, so all I know is that we went somewhere about 3 hours away from Bucheon.

After driving for a while, we got to the area of the condo we would be staying in, and we stopped at a local fish market. I go with my boss in his shiny suit to haggle with the fish mongers. He points out a few fish, and the fishmonger pulls them out of the tank and clubs them. One fish jumped out of a nearby tank, and my boss yanked the fish club out of the monger's hand, chases after the fish and clubs it. He brings it back and adds that to the pile.

After getting all of the fish, we get to the condo where the secretaries from my school and a bunch of people I've never met were hanging out. It was a pretty nice place. There was a Karaoke machine in the room, and outside there was a ping pong table and a net for the Korean soccer/volleyball game.

The secretaries prepared a meal of sushi, and my boss pulls out three cases of soju bottles from his trunk. The feast begins. I was sitting next to the husband of a teacher from the other school who was about 50 years old. Throughout the meal, he poured both of us soju shots which we drank together. I soon lost count of the shots that were poured and passed the threshold between tipsy and sloppy.

I don't remember much from that night except for one conversation. I sat down with the secrataries from my school. One of them asked me how many soju bottles I could drink, and I said eight. This was a blatant lie. I'm not a lightweight, but after two bottles, things get fuzzy.

Apparently I just stumbled around for a while and then passed out pretty early. The only problem I caused was someone having to drag my unconscious self to the room where the men were sleeping.

The next day wasn't too bad, but it was a long trip home.