School Bonding Time

I'm really behind on posts! For the last two days of the final week of school, we had "teacher bonding" time. I think most, if not all, schools do this, because Nick also had a similar event with his school. These dinners might as well be compulsory. They're pretty important as a social event, and are seen as a treat from the principal and vice principal, so to refuse would be pretty rude, right?

The idea is you eat, drink, and be merry with your coworkers, in order to strengthen friendships and sort out any misunderstandings outside of the workplace. It's a really nice concept and I wish we had something like this at home.

Anyway, I only had a few lessons on the Thursday, and nothing else to plan, so I was dozing until it was time to go. We were roughly assorted into teams, piled into any available cars, and drove to a nearby barbecue house. I feel like we ended up booking out the entire place.

Can I just say, Korean BBQ is my new obsession and I want it forever. You can't really recreate it at home and just the casual, chatty, social aspect is so relaxing!

*Homer Simpson noises*

Now, this is Korea. So there's also bound to be a lot of drinking involved. Again, it's part of the social aspect, so generally it's encouraged to join in as much as possible. My school was quite partial to a "one shot!" of beer or soju, (essentially, DOWN IT) which quite pleasantly led me to discovering that I much prefer Cass and Hite to any of the beers we have back home. They're lighter and milder, which I guess is why so many people DON'T like them. Even my coworkers were surprised when I said I preferred it, because they all seemed to prefer Western beers.

Once we'd all stuffed ourselves and quite possibly depleted the restaurant's entire supply of 쌈 (leafy vegetables such as lettuce that you use as a sort of burrito wrap vehicle for all that meat), half of us moved onto "round 2", a nearby bar, whereupon the drinking continued.

Here, I had my first experience of "strange food". For the uninformed, about 4 years ago I made a promise to myself to try everything once. I heard people saying "번데기" a lot, but assumed they were joking around. But then the crockpot of soup appeared and, oh.

For the uninformed, 번데기is "silkworm pupae". Yep. Bugs.