A weekend in Jinju

I haven't spent a weekend in Jinju since my third week in Korea. I think I just felt so miserable and isolated from the rest of the world here that I just wanted to get out any chance that I got. So I was always out of town on the weekends and it was getting exhausting. This past weekend I decided to stay here and check out my city.

I had a really nice dinner with the female teachers from the school. We were celebrating because one of the teachers will be retiring soon so we had a dinner in her honor. After dinner we went to a really nice coffee shop in town called the Coffee Flower. If I ever make a list a things to do here in Jinju that place will definitely make the list, its great. We had the upstairs reserved for us and it was really cool because its cozy like a house and there were several different rooms to sit in. They make these really delicious waffles with fresh fruit and ice cream. It's great.

The younger teachers left early to say goodbye to the handsome ethics teacher that was leaving. It was supposed to be a simple goodbye but someone got the idea to go out drinking too. So went to a bar and drank and played drinking games and took pictures until it was really late. And then decided to go bowling. I was tipsy and sleepy and we still had class in the morning. Note: In my last entry I wrote about how long my week was and there were all these exciting things going on this week...this is part of it. I'll get to the weekend in a second).

Once we finally said our goodbyes I laughed so hard because instead of giving hugs and kisses like people in other parts of the world, they just shook hands! Wow! Who does that? I just laughed and they looked at me like I was crazy but the feeling was mutual. I love the teachers at my school though they're great.

So for the weekend I started out just hanging out with friends downtown and listening to one of their stories about how she wanted to leave her hagwon because she felt so mistreated. After listening to them talk about their situations I appreciated my school so much. It gets stressful every now and then but at least I've never had anyone try to take my passport or get angry because I got sick or upset that I went out even though I was sick and blame me for students quiting the school. Whew...thank goodness.

On Saturday morning I met with the male teachers and my "representative" her English name is Dana...funny story. I'll tell it later. But she translates to the non-English speaking teachers for me and helps me out with just about everything. Everyone always jokes that she's my secretary. She was kinda forced to go on this long hike because none of the other teachers speak English and they said she needed to translate. I kinda felt bad. The hike was great though. It was a really beautiful site surrounded by the ocean and huge rolling green hills. The day was very overcast so you couldn't even distinguish the sky from the ocean. There were so many boats and fisherman out in the distance too. It was a very nice site. The hike also went well because that handsome teacher that left the school came back into town to join us for the hike. That was a pleasant 8 am surprise!

We had lunch on the mountain and I was pretty much forced to try some kind of disgusting raw fish. It was really ugly and brown with silver skin and tasted horrible. I tried to smother it with as much kimchi, veggies and sauce as I could but it didn't help. I was pretty much yelling at someone to pour me some water so I could wash it down. It wasn't quite a yell though since I had a mouth full of food and was trying my hardest to stay calm and respectful...that's big in Korea. They guys laughed so much because I looked like I was gonna loose it.

Later that night there was a Christmas party at one of my friends homes. It was really good to go there and eat and relax with friends. We tried to go to Nora Bong later in the night but she's in a small town so no luck with that. We ended up in a bar drinking some beer and being "loud" foreigners.

On Sunday I was super excited because it was Kimchi day at my co-teachers house! I got up early and went over to have breakfast before we started to make kimchi. It was so much more work than I thought it would be. Around this time of year all of the women make a years supply of kimchi for their families. Sometimes groups of women will get together to make enough for all of their families. They were not as excited as I was since this is a mandatory thing they'll be doing every year for years to come. I thought that you just boiled the cabbage and blended together some seasoning and spices then mixed it all together and called it a day. That's not exactly how it works out.

When I arrived there were two huge red tubs filled with this red paste and Mrs. Im's mother-in-law, her friend and her maid were all there to help out. They kept mixing so many ingredients into the mix. It was garlic, some kind of seeds, whole salted and boiled shrimp chopped up, some kind of grey stuff and bottles of brown liquid and peppers. I mean it was like massive amounts of just "stuff" going into the mix. We had on gloves and mixed these two huge bowls of stuff with our hands. Once we finished mixing we got the heads of boiled cabbage out, cut them into quarters and opened them one leaf at a time smearing the kimchi sauce on them and then packing each piece of cabbage into a container. There was soooo so so much cabbage to do this with. It was very interesting though watching the process kind of turned me off. I just had to get passed it though because we had that kimchi for lunch later on that day.

All in all I have come to the conclusion that Jinju is not such a bad city after all. I'm starting to feel more comfortable here and the teachers at my school actually do know how to have a little fun.