A night out with Korean teachers

As you may or may not know, it is very common in Korean culture for people who work together to go out for a meal together every so often.  Earlier this week I experienced my first one.  It was with 12ish teachers (including myself), and we went for samgyupsal (Korean BBQ pork). This particular meal out had two purposes.  First, it was a kind of goodbye thing for one of my co-teachers whose last day was this Thursday, and second it was to welcome the new teacher who will be replacing her.  So here, I suppose I could point out that they never did anything to welcome me, although I have heard from others who were in my orientation that their schools did. Oh well, anyway...
So, attending this dinner was me, my three co-teachers, my new co-teacher, the master teacher, the two PE teachers, the music teacher, my grade three co-teacher's husband (who is also a teacher at our school), their daughter and another teacher who I've seen around, but I don't know what he teaches yet.  Out of all of these people the only people who can fluently speak English (more or less) are me (of course), my main co-teacher, and the master teacher, and it seems like my new co-teacher can speak a bit better English than the old one (although it may have been the alcohol - guess I'll find out on Monday!).  So right there, that automatically sets it up to be slightly awkward for me with everyone sitting around talking in Korean and shooting sympathetic looks my way.  Not to mention the fact that once we started eating, I get scrutinized about what I'm eating and drinking ( or what I'm not, but I'll get to that later).  So those were the more awkward parts of the evening.  Now onto the more amusing parts which I believed I promised to elaborate on:

Ok, so I don't know if you know this about Korea or not, but they have a very big drinking culture here.  And what they drink is mostly beer and soju.  This night was no exception to that rule!  Copious amounts of alcohol were consumed, although I think most of it was by the men not the women.  Ah, but I'm getting slightly ahead of myself - I should mention that some of the teachers apparently told my co-teacher that they wanted to talk to me, but they probably wouldn't until they got drunk because they're too shy to speak English under normal circumstances.  Well they did indeed talk to me...Read on...
 
Who should I start with first?  Hmmm.....how about the older PE teacher (who is probably in his 50's)? So this particular teacher didn't speak any English at all, he basically talked to me through my co-teacher.  I learned all kinds of things about him - he didn't get married until his 40s and his wife is an English teacher and so he used to see a lot of foreigners who worked with her so "even though though he doesn't ever say anything to me, he is 'worried' for me living on my own, especially being in a foreign country."  Kind of him to be so concerned.  Oh, and he likes golf.  A lot. I heard about it at least 20 times.


For this next part (which was by far the most amusing), I think it would be better to explain using quotes, so here goes:

One teacher: "Amanda, you are beautiful!" Another teacher: "He's a liar!" *Me (thinking)...umm...so what are you trying to say...?* My co-teacher: "It was a joke, a joke Amanda."  First teacher: "Sorry Amanda! You beautiful!"

"Amanda, why aren't you drinking beer? You want soju? Drink beer!" (MULTIPLE times!)

"No thank you? No thank you?! Why?? Why?"

"AMANDA!!" *grins and gives me a thumbs up* "You gorgeous!!"

"Amanda...Help yourself!" (for this one I need to explain that this particular teacher always says this to me while we're eating lunch, and thinks it's hilarious)

"Amanda... I'm drunk!" (huh, I'm sure I never would've guessed that on my own :P)

"Amanda, blond hair, *thumbs up* very original!" Master teacher: "What do you mean original?" First teacher: "Cute! Beautiful!"

At one point one teacher was getting very loud and excited, so the music teacher tells him that he's making me uncomfortable, not really but if it helps...  He sits down, looks at me and goes, "Amanda! CALM DOWN!!" lol...it wasn't me that needed to calm down!

My new co-teacher tried having a conversation with me (not that I could really hear him over all the noise of the other teachers) and at one point tells me that he is not only an English teacher, but also a music teacher, so he wants to "teach me all about Korean music".  Fair enough.  Then the other teachers hear him talking in English, and it's "Ooohh!! English! good!"

"Amanda, hobbies? (I say something like hiking...)  Hiking? Oh!! You come hiking with us! (two of the younger teachers) Call? Call? Call?" (This also happened 3 or 4 times)

"Hey! You! *long pause*  Amanda!" (the teacher who said this must've said it at least 20 times that night every time he wanted to get my attention, and it got to the point where I was nearly killing myself with amusement every time he said it, because he was so intense about it and it happened every time I looked away or started talking with another teacher).  And it was also 99% of the time followed by "Korean culture!!" You drink beer!!" or just "Beer!!" or "Soju!"

"Amanda, we *gestures to all teachers* family, ok?"

"I'm 32!  I'm 8 years older than you, so you call me 'oppa'! I'm your brother!"

"Amanda! Oppa, Oppa! Say!" or "Amanda, oppa - call? call?"

When we were starting to get ready to leave, my co-teachers were discussing that one of them would take me home, when the younger PE teacher shouts out, "NO!!!! Amanda, you no go! Come drink cocktails!"  All of the female teachers look at him, and he gets this puppy dog expression, and says like a little kid who has been bad, "Sorry. Sorry Amanda!"


Oh and if I wasn't used to being called Amanda by this point, I definitely am now after that night. I think pretty much everything sentence said to me that night had 'Amanda' somewhere in it.
And since we were there for a good 3 or 4 hours, and they were drunk by the first hour, I'll leave it up to your imagination about how many times I got to hear my name and all of the other amusing things I got to hear....