Teachers outing

Today was the reason I moved to Korea.

I found out yesterday that I was going to spend the day in a teachers conference. I had no idea what that meant but I was excited to be out of the school on a beautiful day. It was also beyond beautiful today. It was 36 degrees and not one cloud in the sky.

The students finished their exams at 10:30 and were ushered out of the building. The teachers gathered at the entrance to the school and we jumped on board a bus.

On the bus we were given a bag of goodies. Chocs, fudge, crackers, cherry tomatoes and water. It was delicious.

I was lucky enough to sit near the English department so I had lots of lovely English conversation for the hour and a half trip.

When we arrived we were at Pohang which is a beach town close by.

We went into a conference room where we spent 5 minutes hanging up a sign. We listened to a ten minute presentation, took down the sign and headed to the beach.

It was my kind of conference.


We went to a local sashimi place that was expecting us. The fish was delicious. I'm not a huge fish fan but it was incredible. We had shrimp, clams, seafood noodles, blowfish and a lovely salad. The most important ingredient of the meal though was definitely the Soju. Each member of staff did more than one shot of soju as well as a lot of beer. Then of course there was Brandy. I was handed a small cherry glass filled to the brim and told it was 'Young gook Soju' so I wasn't allowed to refuse.

It was awful Brandy, infact I'm sure it was just brown soju...well 40% soju instead of the normal 12%.

After a lot of drinks and some drinking games, which my teachers loved. We headed to the beach.

Everyone spent the afternoon running in and out of the sea. The water was freezing which was weird considering how boiling it was but we had a blast. The teachers become kids themselves. They giggled and laughed and I felt privileged to be part of their day. The male teachers started a battle and started throwing each other into the water. They must have been so cold.

The water was so clear that when I went to investigate (mainly to get away from the water throwing) I found my first jelly fish. I have a weird fear of jelly fish so it was fascinating to actually see one. It was beautiful in a weird way. We also saw a school of about 40 fish. It was a beautiful beach and a lovely sea.

Later we all headed back onto the bus where we were given a 3 hour treat. NORABANG. The teachers sung on top of their voices , danced around the bus and just generally had a fantastic time. While I sat on the bus and everyone danced around me I couldn't help but think that I didn't belong here but that it was the only place I wanted to be. Korean people are so kind hearted and welcoming. They always want to have fun and almost always have a smile waiting on their face. They are shy around me and they do get worried about how to approach the weird foreigner a lot of the time but they really made me feel at home today.

Just when I thought the day couldn't be better I came home, put on a facemask and ate the best Bimbibap I've ever had. all in all a ten out of ten day.

Thank you Korea.

Drinking games of course!