Teachers' Banquet

To honor the teachers at ECCs, YBM hosted a Teacher’s Banquet at the Grand Hyatt on November 18th. The term “honor” applied rather loosely, since we still had to pay to attend. Maybe “gather” would be more appropriate. Shockingly, Bree Teacher and I managed to find it without too much trouble at all (in that Grand Hyatt means the same thing in English as in Korean, and we were practically almost to it when we got in a taxi. Nonetheless--). It was actually QUITE a nice hotel, and they had it all pimped out for us, with ECC-themed ice sculpture and all. I’m not quite sure what purpose it served, but still.

I found our table on the map (in the back row, of course; it could only be expected), Korean teachers are at #94, and foreign teachers at #95 with 4 teachers from another school. So I trundle over, and of course see the Korean teachers and Shaun sitting at #96. They beckon me over, so I sit with them, even though it’s not our table; which I tell them. But no one seems to care.

Until a girl comes over and tells us that we’re sitting at their table “but it’s ok.” Which it’s clearly not, so I move. But Shaun doesn’t, which makes me seem incredibly awkward, and like I don’t want to sit with the Korean teachers (I was beside Henna, but still--). Eventually he came and joined the foreign teachers’ table, though. Soon after, Sunny, the manager, brought us wine, which divided amongst all the teachers didn’t amount to much.

Ryan and Brendan decided that we needed more wine, so they went to the store conveniently located next door, and bought quite possibly the world’s worst wine (although I’ve yet to try the traditional Baby Mouse Wine, which adds to the fermenting process… Yeah. Baby mice). This wine was only for the foreign teachers, but it still got gone pretty fast. As did the two bottles they brought with dinner.

Luckily, the guy who sat at our table, who we called Mr. Kim (because, odds are, that actually IS his name) seemed to have some sort of connection to the waiter got us two more bottles of wine. And then what they told us was our “last bottle.” And then two more. (Meanwhile, at Bree Teacher’s table, her teachers were drinking the dregs from other schools’ bottles, and eating their leftover desserts. Classy).

The entertainment for the night included a “talent” (again, used loosely) show put on my some teachers from various ECCs, as well as singing, a magic show, and an amazing a capella group, who sang and beatboxed everything from Korean jamz to Hanson’s Mmmbop. After there, as is quickly becoming ubiquitous in Korea, there were B-Boys.

For some reason, I decided I wanted to walk part of the way home, on account of I have no idea where I was, and had never been there before. So, I took my YBM-emblazoned thermos, and headed out the door. I strolled around the city for a while, until I found a subway, and then I rode the rest of the way home