Pizza

I'm going to make a longer entry about Korean food once I get internet access at home, but I do want to mention pizza, because it's a little different.

I decided to go out and get pizza this weekend, because I was tired of eating carrots and mashed potatoes for supper. There are about a million pizza places in my neighborhood, so it wasn't too hard to find one. Pizza is "pija" here, by the way, because even though there isn't actually a "z" sound in the word, they seem to always replace letters they don't have with the combo "j/ch" sound they have. They could easily call it peet-sa, but no, pija.

I've had pija three times since I've been here--the first two were at Heather's place, delivered. I think I can safely say by now that all pija in Korea has the crust with the cheese inside that was really popular in the States for two minutes in like the 90s.

Pija comes with a little container of sweet pickles that you eat with a tiny fork. Some people take that fork and fold the tip of the piece of pija over onto the crust and eat it like that. You also get a packet of parmesan cheese and some hot sauce. It's strange.

When you pick up pija, they wrap a ribbon around it like a present, so you can carry it... more easily? I find that questionable. It looks nice, though.

Pija is expensive. I got a 10" (or so) bulgogi pija, which has beef and vegetables on it, and a half liter of Pepsi for 13,300 won. That's about $14. I guess it could be worse, but when you compare it to the 65-cent bowl of soup I get from the food stand on my street, it seems bad.

Korean Showers

In Korea, they don't have the bathtub/shower combos that we have, typically, and they don't even have bathtubs. Or shower stalls. The whole bathroom is like a big (or small) wetroom. The shower tap is connected to the wall, and the shower head is removable, on a hose. No shower door, no curtain. It's pretty interesting. And the shower exchanges water with the sink instead of the tub faucet. There actually is a down-facing faucet on the shower control, but since there isn't a tub to fill, I think it's just for washing your feet, or maybe handwashing clothing in a tub. All the water goes down a drain in the middle of the floor.
The whole wet room thing means you have to watch out not to get the toilet paper and the towel wet. It also means that you have to wear plastic slippers in there if you want to use the toilet or brush your teeth after you've showered and dressed. I've taken to rolling up my pants a bit before going in because I kept getting the hem wet.

Going to the Clinic

I made my first clinic visit today. I seem to be getting this increasingly frequent problem where I get a cold that just doesn't end and makes my voice go awry. It started at the beginning of college and came only every two or three years, but now it's happening every year, or maybe even more often than that. It really doesn't seem like too many months ago I was seeing someone about this thing. They told me it was allergies last time.

So I've been coughing and producing massive amounts of phlegm for two weeks, and the last few days my voice has been all weird. Heather's mom took me to the clinic, which was right down the street, and luckily it was a wham, bam, thank you ma'am kind of deal. The doctor stuck some metal tubes in my nose and mouth to get samples after I told him my symptoms (or helped Heather's mom tell him). He told I needed fluids and rest. Duh. Then I had to hold this plastic facemask near, but not on, my face while it spat steam on me. Then I got a shot--the first time I've ever had to bare my ass to do so. Then the nurse swung the curtain open before I even got my pants back up, haha. Privacy doesn't seem to be an issue here.

We went to the pharmacy across the street for my medication, which consists of FIVE pills a day for the next six days. I have no idea what they are, or what the shot was, but it's not the practice here for doctors to tell patients what they're doing to them. It all felt kind of reminiscent of when I went to the hospital in Kenya for this same problem, and they gave me fifteen pills in an unmarked envelope and told me to take three a day for five days. Mystery medication. I hope it works.

By the way, the whole thing cost under twelve bucks, and I don't even have my medical insurance yet. What a country.

Yoga in Korea

I joined a yoga studio this week with my boss Heather. It's only a few blocks away from my apartment. We went early on Monday to apply and pay and talk to the teacher about joining the class. She teaches in Korean, which will be good for my language skills, but she says some stuff in English for me, too. I think she makes fun of me sometimes to the other people in the class, which is pretty funny.

Korean yoga is kind of different than American yoga. The first difference I noticed was that the mats are already set up on the floor in the studio, and they have quilts on top of them. I'm used to walking in and laying my mat down and then having to move once the class starts to get really full. Here classes aren't full, though, so I guess it's easier this way.

I also had to commit to specific days, instead of doing something like paying for a month of unlimited classes, or paying for a certain amount in advance and using them when I want. I said I'd come Monday through Thursday. Tuesday is mandatory for some reason. That's pilates day, with yoga relaxation at the end.

The practice alternates by day from doing primarily breathing and stretching to doing more active exercise. Monday and Wednesday we have to breathe through the nose using the abdomen, and Tuesday and Thursday we have to breathe in the nose and out the mouth using the chest. It's hard to concentrate on all that.

The teacher did like a check up on me on Monday to see what was wrong with me. She could see I hold my left shoulder lower than my right, which is due to my herniated cervical disc tensing up the muscles on my right side. She also checked my breathing, and was surprised that even though I've been practicing yoga for two years, my breathing isn't very deep. I do have a terrible debilitating cold, though, so I hope that's the culprit.

The actual practice is a little less organized and intense than I'm used to. In the studio I went to in LA, we would start with specific warm up stretches that would lead to more complicated postures. But here, there aren't any complicated postures so far. It's kind of like going to high school gym class. Monday we just did a bunch of stretches and breathing and the like, and Tuesday we did a bunch of pilates exercises involving twisting, stretching, backbending, and pressing on tension rings. It's still pretty brutal, though, I must say. I'm wicked sore. I didn't go today, though, because I can't breathe through my nose, and it's nose-breathing day. Too bad.

At the end of yoga, you get into a final relaxation pose, where you just like on the floor and relax and try to clear your mind. We do that in this class, but instead of being called back to the world by the teacher and then leaving together, everyone just gets up whenever they feel like it. Even the teacher leaves the room before we go.

Also, there's no Oming at the beginning or end, and there's no saying Namaste (that which is highest in me bows to that which is highest in you) at the end, either, which I think it a typical way to end a yoga class. I would have thought they'd be into that here, since they bow so much. Very strange.

Of course this could all just be the way this one lady runs her studio. Maybe other studios are different, who knows?