A Teacher's Retreat That Spelled F-U-N!

Friday after the grade 6 graduation all of the teachers at my school headed out on an overnight retreat just outside of Seoul in Asan. All of the grade 6 teachers changed and ate lunch in the office and then we headed out. All of the other teachers at the school took a bus on the retreat, but two of the grade 6 teacher's drove us. Jiny and I went with two others in one car and the rest of the grade 6 teachers went in the other vehicle. Since we were late leaving Incheon because of the grad by the time we got to our first stop, which was the Hyundai car factory we were too late for the tour, so we missed it. We just hung out outside until the rest of the teacher's finished and then we headed to the second destination, which was Asan Botanical Gradens. We got a tour of the gardens where we introduced to many flowers, plants and trees. Some of the plants and flowers we could even eat, which was strange to me, but I have definitely eaten worse. The tour of the gardens took just over an hour and when it finished we headed to the hotel to drop our bags off and chill before we had to meet for dinner. Dinner is where things got CRAZY and I realized just how much I love my school. We ate dinner at this restaurant called, Rib Station. We had the whole top floor to ourselves, so this is when things got crazy. First, the MC of the retreat, which was a grade 4 teacher made a speech, then the principal made a speech in which we had to do this shot of the most disgustingly strong hard liquor I have ever tasted. I took the tiniest sip and thought my heart was going to stop. Most of the male teachers think I'm a strong drinker, so they would keep coming up to me offering me shots of rice wine or soju, naturally I had to oblige, so I was doing many shots at dinner, but I slowed myself down because I didn't want to be to drunk. At one point, the principal came over to me and asked me to do a love shot with him. Since, he is the principal of our school I can't say no, so I agreed. Once we had the shots poured I thought we would do the shot and that would be it, but OH NO! Suddenly, he asks for all the teachers attention and announces to them that him and I are about to do a love shot. All the teacher's started clapping and cheering and I was mortified, but I made it through...lol! Also, during dinner, the teachers that were leaving MeonWooGuem to go teach at another school all had to give a speech and after each speech, we had to do a shot, so that meant more drinking. The principal made an announcement to all the teacher's about me staying for another year at the school and that I would be more involved in Sports Day this year, since I didn't even go to it last year. All the teacher's seemed happy about it, so that was nice. After dinner we headed back to our hotel to noraebang (karaoke). Well, let me just say that most teacher's were drunk before we even left the restaurant and even more drinking happened while at the noraebang. I had to sing for the Vice Principal because he was hanging out in the room we were in, so I chose 'Dancing Queen.' Then I told the prinicpal (through Jiny's translation) that I would sing for him at the noraebang, so when we went into his room to day 'Hi,' I had to choose a song to sing, so opted for another ABBA song and sang 'Mamma Mia!' The principal was in my face the entire time I sang the song and just loved that I sang and danced. Most of the night the VP and a couple other male teacher's kept getting me to dance with them and even a select few teachers started to speak English to me as they got more and more drunk. It never seizes to amaze me how much English most Koreans can speak when they are drunk :) When the grade 6 teachers had enough at the noraebang we all headed to a chicken restaurant across the street from the hotel and ate chicken and drank more beer. I was exhausted, so I took off early to go and get some shut eye. Breakfast Saturday morning was at 8:30 a.m. so all the teacher's ate at the hotel restaurant and they were all very slow moving. We left the hotel at 9:30 a.m. and headed to Kwangcheon where we got to see the really tiny shrimps that are a traditional part of Korean food. We didn't spend too much time in this area. When we were finished we headed to Sudeoksa temple. We ate lunch first and then we had a couple hours to check the temple out and the cultural shops that surrounded it. The temple was nice, but if you seen one you've seen them all and I have seen a lot in Korea. We left the temple around 2:00 p.m. and headed back to Incheon. I got dropped off right at my house by the grade 6 teacher that drove and as soon as I got back I unpacked and took a nap because I was so exhausted from the trip. The retreat was so much fun and I really hope they have another one this coming school year. *I'm sorry that I have no pictures from the trip. Too much was happening and I kept forgetting*