On Thursday I finished teaching my 4th period class and headed back to the teacher's room. I was starving because at this point it was 1:10 and I had been teaching non-stop all day, so I put my stuff down and was ready to head to the cafeteria. Just as I was about to leave, one of my co-teachers came over and said "We will go to lunch now. You will come with me."
Ummm ok? I could tell that this meant we were not going to the cafeteria, so I grabbed my purse and followed her to her car.
We then proceeded to drive to a restaurant not too far down the road, where we met the other English teachers from our school.
We ate a typical Korean lunch (lots of side dishes, soup, fish)...but I kept looking at my watch and thinking things along the line of "Shouldn't we be getting back to school now?"
It was 2:05 by the time we were done, and our next class starts at 2:10. Of course, no one seemed worried about it. We got back to school a little late, and went to teach our next class without anyone batting an eyelash.
Again, I couldn't help to think that I REALLY am in Korea now (in case the whole language thing hasn't given it away yet). If a bunch of teachers in the US went out to lunch and were a few minutes late getting back, you would never hear the end of people complaining about those "lazy, overpaid teachers." Talk about a different perspective.
All in all, not a bad surprise. School lunches in Korea are pretty good, but I can't complain about a random restaurant outing. I have no idea why it happened, or if there even was a reason, but that's part of the mystique of these lovely Korean Surprises.
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