Teacher's Extracurriculars

Hey everyone, it's Jamie this week.

One of the things that makes my working environment interesting is all of the non-work related stuff that the teachers and other school staff get up to together. Based on my conversations with the other foreign teachers, it sounds like it's this way at most schools, too. I may have already mentioned that most Wednesdays we play volleyball. Well, a while back that culminated in an inter-mural tournament with a few of the other schools in the area (we did not make a noteworthy performance.) Like so many other things, this was a complete surprise to me. Earlier in the day I thought to myself, "I wonder if we're going to be playing volleyball today?", and when I went to the gym I saw that it had been set up for spectators.

Four or five schools participated, so most people spent more time watching than playing. In fact, some people came just to watch. Most principals didn't play, but ours is cool so he did. It was kind of interesting watching new people trickling in and seeing how people reacted. When a new principal came, everyone had to stand up until they sat down, even the other principals. Here are the backs of some principals' heads:

The one in orange and stripes is the principal at my main school. Overall the games were fun and lighthearted, but it did seem like people were taking it more seriously than our weekly "practice".


Another week, when I was at my Wednesday school, I got a call from my main school telling me not to come back for volleyball practice like usual. Instead, they would be coming by my travel school to pick me up, since they were all going hiking on a mountain on the same island as my travel school. Like so many things that I would have assumed were optional, this was not presented as a choice. So, I hiked with the teachers from my main school for almost four hours. It was great exercise and the views were amazing, but it was also pretty steep in parts and it lasted a lot longer than I thought it would. I recorded some of the views for posterity:

More recently, I finally got to go on one of these adventures with the teachers from my travel school. Before, the principal had always told my coteacher that since I wasn't technically an employee of their school, I shouldn't be involved in their activities. I have no idea why it was different this time, but I was invited to go fishing for octopus after school. It was cold, but totally a lovely day for it (not that I'd know):

I managed to catch one whole octopus! (And yes, most of them were this size):

It looks limp because, while I totally did actually manage to catch an octopus (a lot of the teachers caught more than 10), I tossed it in the bucket with the rest of them really quickly, and then we fished one back out later because my coteacher wanted to take a picture of me with one.

They brought a kerosene stove on the boat, and some of the teachers cooked the octopus right there while the rest of us fished. We ate it boiled with a tangy and spicy sauce. Sometimes we have cold octopus legs as part of lunch, and they were definitely better hot and fresh, but it was a lot more octopus than I ever would have assumed I would eat in my lifetime, let alone within a few hours. After everyone was done fishing we brought the octopus back to the school, which they tried to make as complicated as they could:

They had a will to live, and they were continuously pushing the lid off the bucked and crawling out. The Korean teachers would calmly grab them and toss them back in, someone would remember to keep their foot on the lid for half a minute, and then they'd go to do something else and the octopus would start escaping again. Once we got back to school, they fired up more kerosene burners and we had a little cookout:

They prepared them all sorts of ways. Most of them were boiled, but some were chopped up raw (and alive) and mixed with some kind of spicy vinegar sauce into a sort of ceviche. Most of the boiled octopus were also eaten straight with a little bit of one of a few sauces, but some of them went into some special dishes people were making, like some kind of soup and what I will flexibly call a salad. I had more than my fill, but they didn't like it whenever I tried to stop eating. Everyone else was eating continuously, and every time I stopped they'd ask if I didn't like it or tell me how expensive octopus is. They were especially fond of the heads, but I couldn't stomach more than one. It was okay at first, just kind of chewy and gummy like the legs, but then I could feel whatever kind of membrane the brain was encased in pop in my mouth before it was filled with a warm goo that was something like pate, but with a stronger flavor, as well as the awareness that I was eating octopus brain. So I didn't have a second.

I don't usually like surprise adventures being thrown at me, which my dad will be able to confirm, but these kinds of things have helped to break up the monotony of the workweek. If I'm dragged along for any other cool adventures with the teachers, I'll be sure to tell you guys about them. Thanks for reading, and I hope you're all well!