Welcome To Korea Party!!

Today, was the much anticipated Welcome to Korea Party I had been waiting all week for. Well, I wouldn't have really classified it as a party, more of a dinner. My standards may have been set to high. Anyways, after school ended today Jiny and Park Jung-su took me to a Korean restaurant across the street from the school. At first I thought, "This is it, just the three of us." I know, that's pretty selfish, but English teachers are a BIG deal in Korea, so I wanted more. Anyways, about 10 minutes later Mrs. Kim showed up and then the 4th grade english teacher, who's name I can never get, showed up 10 minutes after that. I was introduced to shabu shabu, basically, it is a soup with onions, mushrooms and a type of Korean green leaf, that is cooked in a cauldron right at your table and you add raw beef too it that cooks right there in the soup and then you dip it all in soy sauce. After that, noodles are added to the soup and when the noodles are finished the soup is dumped out into a different bowl and rice is cooked in the soup cauldron. The rice is the last thing to be eaten. Of course, kimchi was served as well, but I managed to get away with not eating it. The teachers were just happy I was there enjoying Korean food, because the foreign teacher last year didn't like Korean food. I'm already making a good impression simply by eating Korean food. Our entire meal was enjoyed seating on the floor, which for me was a bit uncomfortable because I'm not use to sitting cross legged on the ground for an extended period of time, so my left foot kept falling asleep. It made for a bit of an uncomfortable meal because I had to keep adjusting myself. Jiny paid for dinner, which was really nice and amongst all the Korean chatter happening I still had a few good laughs. After we finished with dinner we walked across the street to a coffee shop called Can More. It was the cutest coffee shop I've ever been to. It had rocking chairs as seats on one side of the shop and actual wooden swings on the other side of the shop. If you've ever seen the movie, 'The Secret Garden', that it was the coffee shop reminded me of. They serve ice cream, coffee, fresh squeezed fruit juices, ice flakes, etc. Mrs. Kim and Jung-su shared a fruit salad ice flakes dish and Jiny and the 4th grade english teacher shared a red bean ice flakes dish, yes it is as disgusting as it sounds, but I'm not a fan of red beans. They have a really sweet taste to them. Ice flakes is rather interesting, it is basically, flakes of ice with ice cream added to it and fruits and whip cream, much like a slurpee you would eat instead of drink. They each let me try there ice flakes dishes, there were delectable. I enjoyed a green tea latte, which was the best green tea latte I've ever tasted, take that Starbucks! The 4th grade english teacher paid for the desserts and coffee at Can More. I managed to get pictures of myself with my co-teachers. The picture on the top is Jiny, my co-teacher/mom while I'm in Korea, and me and the picture on the bottom is me with all my english co-teachers. Left to Right: Park Jung-su (she is my age), Mrs. Kim, the 4th grade english teacher (who's name I will get tomorrow) with her 4 year old daughter (who is actually 6 in Korean ages), Jiny and Me.*I decided to make these pictures bigger, so you can see my co-teachers better.*

The most exciting and frustrating part of the night was leaving the parkade with Mrs. Kim. Her car was parked on the lowest level of the parkade and the thing to know about Korea is that people are crazy ass drivers, they double park all the time and they can't read signs or symbols for which way too drive. Now, put all of those things together in a parkade that is about the width of my parents garage and you have utter mayhem on your hands. At least in Canada we have arrows and signs overhead for all to see. Nope, not here. They assume you can just see the direction of the arrows on the road and figure the rest of it out on your own. So, Mrs. Kim started to head out of the parkade going the opposite way the arrows pointed and then we got stuck in a traffic jam of cars going the right way. The guy following us had to back up, Mrs. Kim pulled over and once all the cars going the right way were through we backed up and headed in the right direction out of the parkade. Well, as we're driving up the ramp to get to the main level of the parkade, yet another traffic jam. HELLO people follow the damn arrows!!!!!! Mrs. Kim was going in the right direction and I made sure she turned to the right and not the left like she was originally going to do. Anyways, the cars going the wrong way this time were honking and a young girl who was the leader of the pack of wrong way drivers has the audacity to roll down her window and direct Mrs. Kim, which way to go...excuse me miss, but you are the one trying to go down the up ramp, Idiot! Well, Mrs. Kim had to back her car up turn right even more to avoid hitting this girls car and wait for all the dumb asses going the wrong way to clear the way before we could go. On top of that we had to wait for buddy in front of us to be brave enough to just go. Last time I checked being a crazy driver was a requirement, so if you aren't just going to go get the f*** out of the way. So, about 15 minutes later, no that is not a typo it really took us that long to escape the charades of the parkade we were finally FREE!! At least Mrs. Kim and I were able to laugh our asses of through this entire mess.