Sexual Harrismint - A saga

It was raining that day, raining real rain from the sky.  It should have been an omen, or at least one I could have heeded. You see, I had a coworker dinner that. One of those large, Korean ordeals that tend to make most foreign teachers super uncomfortable, but also serve as a “good” “way” “for” “your” “coworkers” “to” “unwind”. By which I mean at these things, pretty much everyone there is super uncomfortable.

The dinner itself wasn’t so bad. We drove about half an hour to an ori (duck) place out in the middle of nowhere. I was pretty content to sit at the end of a table, relatively undisturbed, attempting to help in non-verbal ways (since my Korean level is approximately that of a slow-developing infant).  So while it wasn’t pleasant, it also wasn’t particularly traumatic. As the dinner got going, however, the lead administrators (the principal, who I’m pretty sure is just constantly drunk; the vice-principal; and the male and female head teachers) began to make their rounds to the different groups of teachers.

And this, I am fairly certain, is the entire point of the dinner. I have never seen so many unison looks of discomfort and outright misery as upon the faces of the teachers when any of the administrators came to sit at their tables.  These poor people – they know it’s coming like a flood, and there’s nothing they can do about it. Instead, they have to smile and pretend to be excited about these visitations and happily feed the male administrators.

Yes, you heard me right. The female subordinate teachers feed their male superiors. Now, I like to think of myself as a fairly enlightened new age guy. I’m up with feminism; I believe in equal pay for equal work, and that women should probably be allowed to wear shoes in the kitchen or while they’re birthing babies or whatever.  So you can imagine my surprise and shock when my female coworkers folded up a packet of food and stuffed it in my vice-principal’s mouth like it wan’t no thang.

I was shocked! I couldn’t believe this was happening in a developed nation in 2010! I mean, it would be one thing if I had accidentally joined a harem instead of  an elementary school, but I am pretty sure that these people were still my fellow teachers in school! I mean, honestly!

So after those moments of abject horror, and several shots of VILE soju later, my vice-principal left our group to go make some other poor teachers feel intensely uncomfortable. And we continued on eating our dinner, nobody willing to bring up the terror that had just passed.

As the dinner began winding up, with sheets of rain crashing against the clear tarp that served as the only covering for the porch, the final terror arrived. I had emerged from the dinner up to this point relatively unscathed. But then she came. Our female head teacher, clearly very drunk by now, came clomping over to our table and sat down with a  brand new bottle of soju. I cannot tell you how excited I was to see her…

Clearly at this point, the best idea was to drink more shots, which was exactly what she decided I would need to do. I looked around, hoping to catch the eye of a friendly coworker, but by this point, my coteacher and the only other teacher who is my age had vacated the area, and the remaining teachers were studiously avoiding my pleading gaze. Defeated, I resigned myself to drinking with the head teacher – not exactly someone you can say no to.

Only two shots into the bottle, she was…shall we say, not doing great. She had a bit of difficulty holding the shot glass steady, and spilled most of it on my leg. I am not sure what happened at this point, but the next thing I know, she’s reaching toward me to wipe off my leg and -

JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL SHE IS TOUCHING MY SWIMSUIT AREA I NEED AN ADULT!!!

But the fun didn’t end there! Oh no, she decided I needed to try the kimchi (which, admittedly, I hadn’t gotten around to eating yet). After taking a bite and declaring it “mashiseyo!” (delicious), she decided to take the remaining pieces of the duck and put them in the kimchi, and HOLY CRAP THAT FOOD IS IN MY MOUTH.

Never in my life have I needed an adult more.

I just…I didn’t know what to do. I have no idea how these ridiculous things keep happening, but I guess that’s just the fantastically dynamic nature of the job. SO EXCITING.