Strawberry festival

Not much to report. I went to the Nonsan strawberry festival on Saturday. Lots of strawberries, as you might imagine. I did my 5K training yesterday and today. The race is this Saturday. 

Today was a really nice spring day. The cherry blossoms are blooming, so I took a walk around this river I found. 

I started my NEAT class for the second grade this past week. They are so great. They're very enthusiastic and willing to participate, and they think I'm hilarious. I told them cell phones weren't allowed and if I saw any, I would sell them on Gmarket (Korean Amazon). They laughed for about five minutes straight. 

Last Tuesday I went out for dinner and drinks with some of the other teachers. It was the "20s-30s club." There were about eight teachers altogether, four female and four male. I actually had a really great time - we ate pork barbecue for dinner, and then pig skin. Apparently it has a lot of collagen and is therefore good for our skin. It wasn't too bad actually. It had the consistency of Swedish fish but was incredibly spicy.

Then we went next door to a bar for some beer and soju. We even played some Korean drinking games, both of which involved chopsticks. In the first one, a person says something like, Who was a chatterbox in middle school? and then we go one, two, three and point our chopstick to the person we think is the best answer. Whoever has the most chopsticks pointed at them has to drink. Then we did one where we point our chopsticks at a random person and one designated person says a random number, then they count off in succession of whoever the chopsticks point to, and whoever is the last person has to take a drink. The teachers  really rolled with laughter when I could understand the instructions for the second game but the math teacher didn't get it. The female gym teacher translated the questions in the previous game for me. I'm getting better at understanding, but I still don't really know what's going on at dinner conversations. I just don't know enough words. Also, we had chicken feet as appetizers with our drinks. Awful. 

Then on Thursday I went out to dinner with the science teachers because I teach extra gifted and talented classes that are run through the science department. This dinner was pretty dull, but then we went for coffee after and that was more fun. Three of the teachers had been at the 20s-30s dinner, and so they had a great time recounting stories that mostly involved teasing the math teacher. Then one of the technology teachers told a story that I actually understood! It was so exciting. Basically, he saw this foreigner and an old man, and the foreigner dropped some trash on the ground, so the old man wanted him to pick it up, but I guess he didn't speak any English, so he just pointed at it and was like, Yo... yo...YO! Haha. 

I might have mentioned that we have a soldier at our school acting as a public servant. He's like 27 or so I think, and I feel bad for him because he seems to be terribly shy. At dinner they were like, say something! He and I took the metro part of the way back together, so I asked him if he liked our school, and he was like, Honestly... no. Poor guy. I think he's just very uncomfortable.