Okay, so my theory was that since I have to wear slippers inside of the school anyway, who would care what kind of socks I wore? I slipped into my black pants, pulled on some white cotton socks, and stepped into my black shoes. It wasn't until halfway to school that I noticed my pants were hiking up, exposing my white socks. I tried to shimmy the pants down a little bit, but gave it up as a lost cause. Give me a white glove and I could have Michael Jackson'd it all the way to school and back. It didn't help to see that everyone at school wore socks to match their pants. However, since I am the only foreigner at that school, I decided to ignore it. After all, I don't know all of their social customs yet, and many of them don't know U.S.A. fashion sense (i.e. black pants, white socks, and black shoes).
The fifth grade teachers took me and my co-teachers out to lunch at an eel-soup restaraunt. Go ahead and read that last sentence twice if you need to. Eel soup. There were two tanks full of eels in front of the shop. When a customer orders, the cook reaches out the window, grabs an eel, and gets to work. It was very interesting. There were four men and four women, including me. The men all sat together at one end of the table with women on the other. We sat on the floor. In the big cities like Seoul and Mokpo, it is considered a special treat to go to a traditional style restaraunt complete with low tables and all the floor space you could want. However, out here in Nok-dong, you're schmoozing it up if you're at a restaraunt with chairs.
So, the cook brought out the little dish of rice, four side-dishes, and a giant bowl of eel soup for each person. I stirred the soup with my chopsticks.
I like eel. I do. I eat it all the time in sushi, in small, bite-sized pieces.
This soup had chunks. It looked like the cook chopped up a whole eel into three-inch long pieces and tossed it into the soup. The skin, fins, bones, and innards were still there. I ate very carefully, ready to scream if I saw a head.
It actually didn't taste too bad. It was spicy, of course, but quite delicious. I dodged the larger chunks of eel and ate kimchi instead.
After lunch, the male teacher wearing a purple shirt took me, my co-teacher, and another female teacher out to Sorok-do, a small island that houses a leper colony. Non-residents are only allowed on the island between 6am and 6pm. Purple Shirt explained that this was so the lepers could come out at night without people gawking at them. Yikes. The island was also where the Japanese tortured Koreans during the 1930's. I'm not sure exactly why, as the language barrier seems to rise and fall at odd times, but Purple Shirt made it very clear that the Japanese are not welcome. So, we walked around the sonamu (pine tree) garden, I in my Michael Jackson feet and button-up shirt. Purple Shirt kindly gave me an umbrella and a fan with four white girls wearing T-shirts and panties. No one else found this odd, so I didn't comment.
I didn't bring my camera, or I would have taken photos. The trees are amazing. They are tended by the lepers themselves. There is a pine tree that has grown all crooked and gnarled, due to lack of proper nutrients, Purple Shirt said. He explained that if the tree had the proper nutrients, it would have grown straight up. But, because of the poor soil, it grew into a beautiful, strange tree. The garden also contained a statue of Christ on the cross, a statue of an angel ("the leprosy go away angel," I was told) and a few monuments to people I don't know and couldn't read anyway.
Then, we went back to the school and I read over some lesson plans.
Walking home, I ignored my Michael Jackson feet and imagined eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
It's funny how much I took for granted until eel soup stared me in the face.
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