- Yesterday went on a drive to Namhae Island with Mr. Lee, one of my Co-teachers. The students had exams so finished the day early and so we had an early day as well. Since the staff were having a welcoming party for a new member at 5:30, Mr Lee wanted to take me for a drive somewhere and then meet the staff for dinner. The original plan was to go to a massive temple in the mountains about 1.5 hours away. Mr. Lee is Buddhist so he visits big temples often and has talked to me about going to visit some for quite some time. Unfortunately we didnt get out early enough to go their so we went to Namhae instead, which is quite closer. I didnt have my camera on me so I cant show u any photos from the trip. Mr. Lee did bring the school camera with him and took photos but insisted I be in everyone. This might have been ok if he didnt zoom in on me every photo. Each one is me engulfing the image with my squinted and schrunched face. No backgrounds. Just me. So that was a bummer. It was a nice little drive, but we didnt go too far on the Island, basically just reached it, drove over the nice and shiny new bridge and came back.
The highlight of the day was going to the dinner afterwards. We went to a pork BBQ place which is just about the best news possible. We ate "Samgyeopsal" which is basically thick, thick bacon. You chuck it on the grill, then cut it into bit sized pieces with scissors, and eat it by placing it onto a lettuce leave and adding whatever else you want on top, for example, special sauce, kimchi, beansprouts, onions, garlic, rice. I think I can eat up to half my entire body weight in Samgyeopsal. I literally wont stop eating it until its all gone. I basically finished off all what the ladies didnt eat as well as the scraps from the other mens grill. I was an absolute machine. It took about 90 minutes to get through the bacon - people were enjoying drinking, and you need time to cook the new batch of bacon (but it is continuously being updated, theres always some fresh stuff to eat and another leg being prepared) - and I was absolutely stuffed. So I was quite amused when Mr. Lee asked me, "Jacob, what would you like for Dinner?". My reply was, "ahhh, I though we just ate dinner". But no, dinner, technically, has to include rice or noodles. So after an hour and a half of non-stop eating I tucked into my proper dinner, rice with a crab soup. So the food was excellent and I ended up putting more of it into my mouth than ever before. We also drank like crazy - Mr. Lee asked me not to drink my Soju in "one-shot", to go half at once. Now I dont drink it in "one-shot" to try to impress people or to get drunk. I do it because I dont want to sip on it and taste its flavour. So I reluctantly obeyed his request. I decided id drink some beer as well so some of the male teachers decided it was time for "so-baek" - basically a beer with a shot of soju in it. These were actually really nice and continued with these until we left the resturant, 2 hours after we entered.
(not my photos below, but this is Samgyeopsal)
The men continued on to a bar after the resturant were more drinking ensued. Just beer from this point but after an hour I honestly felt like I was gonna explode. I had eaten so much, and drank so much I didnt think I was able to contain it. And not by puking, but by my stomach literally splitting open. The fruit trays and beers just didnt seem to end. Everytime i thought, 'OK, this will be the last one surely', another 4 beers would come out. I certainly wasnt going to say no, but I was amazed by how much these guys drank. The only thing I didnt like to see come out was the dried and pressed squid which is a popular bar food in Korea. It is exactly how I described it - a whole squid, dried and pressed - and unfortunately, tastes as good as it sounds. It was really good to socialise with the teachers outside of class - it loosened them up and they started speaking english to me which I had barely heard from them before. I also think they were fairly impressed with my drinking ability so it endeared me to them as well. We talked about all the regular stuff guys do - sometimes with the help of Mr. Lee and it was just a great, fun night. The old Korean female owner was hitting on me bigtime as well, with no shame whatsoever, so that was good for a laugh as well. At 11.30 we left, so, when it was all said and done, I had 6 straight hours of boozing and eating, and didnt pay a cent. Felt great in the morning too.
- My school in Daegok has a vegetable garden and are continuously growing about4 or 5 veges at the same time. The staff really enjoy taking care of it and making use of it - they are always sorting through freshly picked stuff in the staffroom. They often has more than enough to go around so sometimes I get to enjoy in the benefits as well. Last week I got a nice big bag of potatoes the other day, which was very nice and they are excellent quality. So I was quite happy with that. However, on the Friday, Ms. Nam realised that she forgot to tell me not to come in to school that day (because of student exams). So to give me something to do, and not make me just walk straight back out the door and go home, so made me pick vegetables from the garden. I went out there with a couple of teachers and picked some cucumbers and green peppers. Now, they look like chillies but are large and arent hot. They are very common in resturants and quite tasty, but you typically have them with a special sauce. There was millions of green peppers around, so we all picked until our hearts content. I was thinking that I was just helping the harvest. But no, these we for me, I came to realise. So, there I stood, with a plastic bag full of green peppers. "What the hell am I going to do with these?" was all I could think of, and ive repeated this question on a nearly hourly basis since they came into my possession. Trading them for some more potatoes would be ideal. Or maybe I can join the old ladies that sell produce in the street markets. Either way, Im still wondering what to do with them - they are currently in the fridge and untouched since last friday. Any suggestions?
- Last but certainly not least; the 2 greatest words known to Man - BEER OLYMPICS!!!!
Ive never competed in a beer olympics before but I knew that im an Aussie, and if theres one race on Earth that should be good at drinking beer and playing sports at the same time, its us. My anticipation for it was off the charts. For weeks I couldnt wait for it to start. Finally the day came. We started by making our costumes. Unfortunaltely, due to lack of numbers the Aussies had to join with the Kiwis, but we made our costumes unique to each country. There wasnt going to be any wearing of kiwis on my part and they certainly werent going to wear a southern cross that didnt have a red outline or 5 stars so we kept things seperate, but united to take down the rest of the world. It was necessary the we join because there is only 4 kiwis, but more importantly, there is only 2 Aussies, and Lee doesnt drink beer. So basically, the Aussies were a one man team. Realistically I think I could have won the entire thing by myself, but there were some games that required more than one person, so I couldnt get around that. My costume was the product of spray paint, and face paint, and the hat was certousy of Lee. I certainly wouldnt have been able to pull it off. We definately had the best costumes of anyone and nicknamed ourselves the "KWOZZIES".
Events that were held;
-Flippy cup
-Hoola Hoop relay
-3 Legged race
-dizzy race
-carry race
-Egg toss
-100 sprint
-200m relay
-chug
Teams competeing;
-Kwozzies (which later turned to "Skwozzies" or tri-nations when the South Africans joined our team)
- UK
- US
- Korea (Even though nearly no one was actually korean - mostly Yanks as they had the most people)
Shouldnt be too hard to figure out who lost - yep the Koreans. Unfortunately the real Koreans that competed were mostly girls or unathletic, so they couldnt drink and couldnt compete at anything. The yanks that were chucked on their team were pretty retarded too. They would fall over twice in the 3 legged race or break the hoola hoop, basically they couldnt do anything right. Next were the UK. They have a few solid drinkers on the team but for some reason couldnt get it done. Well, they were just beaten by better teams. 2nd was the Sqwazzies. Led, I might add, by One Jacob Roberts, WINNER of the 100M dash and anchor for the WINNING relay team. That alone should be enough means to be MVP of the tournament. I didnt do too good at the dizzy race, flppy cup, or the carry race, but I did essentially win 2 events outright, so, heck, I think thats worth something. Left quite an impression on the spectators with my display of speed. I also think I deserve MVP honours because of my display of team spirit - if i hadnt heard a cry of "Skwozzy Skwozzy Skwozzy!" in about 2 minutes I was right there to give another one. I also broke out into songs and dances of "I come from a land down under", "Tie me kangaroo down sport" and "Waltzing Matilda" whenever I felt appropriate- which turned out to be pretty darn often. I dont need to tell u who won but I will say the scorekeeper was also from that country and im a little suspicious as to his scorekeeping methods. Either way the sqwazzies can hold their heads high, knowing they represented their country they way it should be. All in all an absolutely fantastic night. The kind of night that you dont really want to end. Friendly, and not so friendly, cross country banter, drinking, joking, competing, dressing up and scaring the locals. Doesnt get much better then that.
- Lastly here is a couple of cool pictures from the Herbal Medicene Temple that I visited a few weeks ago as part of the cultural day.
No comments:
Post a Comment