Sent to the Principal's Office

I arrived in Suncheon Friday afternoon after spending a week doing orientation in Gwangju (it's about an hour's drive away).

My principal came to pick me up, along with my co-teacher Winnie (after Winnie the Pooh, who, Winnie informed me, is Canadian like me).

In South Korea they follow the Confucian heirarchy system, which basically means I am the dirt on the bottom of your shoe as an unmarried, relatively young woman (although I AM 24 or 25 here, I haven't quite worked out how they count age, but in any case I'm older then my actual 23 years!)

And the PRINCIPAL is KING OF THE SCHOOL. We were told this repeatedly by foreigners and Koreans. On the first day of school I have to bring him a present (I'm going with whisky, apparently it goes over well) and my vice-principal a slightly smaller present (smaller bottle of whisky).

So I have to give this man STATUS which means low bows, receiving anything he gives me with two hands (even if he's just passing me a piece of paper or something, it's hard to ingrain in my western mind, especially when it happends quickly!) and when pouring him alcohol I have to have my left hand on my right arm (which is standard when pouring alcohol for ANYBODY, but for him my left hand should be around my elbow, instead of by my wrist because it's closer to my heart).

He is super important and I have to make sure he knows I know that. AND he doesn't speak ONE word of English. So I have to reley on Winnie to translate. Her English is very good, but not perfect. I was trying to tell my principal (his name is yum bae kim, but I have to call him principal, kyo cham song sang nim) that my luggage was VERY heavy. So I was acting like I was carring heavy luggage.

Apparently I'm not very good at charades.

Winnie and Mr. Kim chat for a bit, then she turns to me and says 'yes, he is a little bit fat, but you probably shouldn't have told him that'.

WHAT!!?

Haha, great first impression Jennifer! I made Winnie tell him I was talking about luggage butI was REALLY embarrassed for the rest of the day! (I also had a talk with Winnie about perhaps checking with me before translating things that might be potentially volatile).

After the hour long car ride to Gwangju (during which I was asked to explain multi-culturism in Canada, yikes) we went directly to the school, before I even went to my apartment. I sat in the vice-principal's room for an hour and a half. The vice-principal and some other teachers watched the olympics in Koreans and chatted about me (I heard Jen-ni-pur a lot) but no one actually talked TO me, so I was very confused as to why we were waiting there. I still have no idea. One positive aspect of the visit was that I received my textbooks. Although they are largely written in Korean and I have to use the pictures to guess what I am meant to be teaching. Thank Goodness I have this week off!!