Korean "Medicine"

I've been having trouble with my body lately, so I ended up going to a new hospital to see what they could do for me. My right knee has been numb for two or three months now, and the past few weeks my arms and legs, and other parts of my body, too, have been falling asleep very, very easily, like if I stay still for a few minutes, put even a tiny bit of weight on a body part, or raise my hands above my head for more than like a minute.


At the hospital, the doctor, who speaks English and lived in New Jersey and New Hampshire for a while, had me get X-rays of my spine and knees. My knees are fine, but my posture is bad, he said, because my spine is slightly scoliated, which I knew. No help there.


He recommended taking hot baths, which I and 90% of Korea can't do on a regular basis, since Korean bathrooms don't have bathtubs, unless they're in a really modern, Westernized building. He also gave me a bunch of pills to take, as is the practice with Korean doctors. Stupid pills.


He said I had to start seeing him two times a week for a few weeks, so the second time, when I hadn't gotten better, he put me on physical therapy, gave me more pills, and suggested I start jogging. I said no to the last part. I told him I do yoga four times a week and walk once or twice a week. That should be fine.


Physical therapy was silly. The nurse started me off with paraffin wax gloves. I had to dip my hands in hot wax ten times to make the glove, then she put plastic bags over my hands and had me lie down for fifteen minutes. At least it's good for the skin. Then she pulled off the gloves and put two suction cups on each forearm and ran electricity through me for fiteen minutes. This is what they did for my neck back in LA, except they used tiny pads, not huge suction cups. That was it the first two times.


The third time I saw the doctor (whose name I was never told, by the way), and told him I felt about the same, he told me to quit yoga, and do something more "oxygenizing." I said no. He also reiterated about the bath. I reiterated that I don't have a bathtub and he suggested a bathhouse. Bathhouses are like a two hour ordeal, and you have to pay. Screw that. I'd love to do it sometime for the cultural experience, but not twice a day. I don't have the time.


Physical therapy added a "massage" to my forearms, where my arm was kind of manipulated around and pulled a bit, and the nurse ground his knuckles up and down my bone. It wasn't too bad, but not a real massage. Then he put my right arm into this big sleeve that had inflatable compartments. The compartment at my hand inflated, then the one at my wrist inflated, and the first one deflated, then a third inflated, and the second deflated, and so on, all the way up to my shoulder. It was pretty cool. This lasted about another fifteen minutes. He didn't do my left arm. I have no idea why.


The fourth time when the doctor asked me if I had taken a bath before I went there and I said, no, I have yoga after this and it's silly to wash before exercising, he hung his head in frustration. Then I decided not to come back. He recommended getting an EMG to get my muscles checked, but we had discussed that idea at the beginning and it's a $600 procedure. No way. He last asked me if I take vitamins, and I said I take folic acid. He said I should take vitamin C and B. I said I get plenty of vitamin C, since I drink orange juice every day and eat oranges and other fruit with vitamin C. He still recommended the pills--they're better (what the crap?). So I asked him how much vitamin C is in a pill, and I don't think he quite got me, so he said the dosage varies. So I said, yeah, but how many oranges are in one pill? He still didn't get me. Even if I ate fifty oranges a day, he'd still recommend the pills. I ended up buying them anyway, because the pills are a B and C complex, with the various B vitamins, and I don't really know how to get those into my diet if they're not there already. After this little series of disagreements and misunderstandings, I really decided not to come back.


My last physical therapy session involved the wax and electricity, but no more inflatey sleeve. The nurse put these massive adhesive strips, like bandaids without the medical pad, on my forearms, and said she didn't know how to explain it in English. She said to leave them on and take a hot shower tonight. I'm not sure if she meant I should take them off before or after the shower. I also didn't bother to ask her if it was okay for me to take my regular noontime shower with them on. I'm almost positive the were just bandaids. They weren't even mentholated, like the muscle-relaxing patches.



So now I have an even poorer opinion of Korean medicine than before, when they were giving me tons of pills and ass-shots and steam inhalants for a cold. Heather took me to the oriental hospital today to see what they could do about it. More on that when I have time.

Ye', Drinkin' with the Locals

So today as I left work, Heather's dad followed me down and asked if I wanted to go drink some beer. He had asked me to drink with him when I was living at Heather's house, but I said no at the time because it was a school night. At this point, I'm not quite as concerned with what I do the night before work, so I said okay. He drove me to this place about a quarter mile away from my apartment. I'm pretty sure it was called Camelot, although the name on the building was in Korean, and I don't think it said that. The menu said Camelot, though, so who knows.


So he took me to Camelot, which is a nice place. The tables on the perimeter of the bar each have their own stall, kind of like enclosed diner booths, and there are also tables in the middle. We sat in one of the stalls, and he ordered three beers and a fruit plate. Koreans eat a lot of fruit. When the waitress brought the three beers, at first I thought he was going to double-fist it for a second, but then I remembered about Korean eating and drinking custom: everyone shares. So we each got a glass, and we shared every one of the five beers we drank (I think he went light on me since it's a weekday. I'm sure he could have tossed back a few more easily. Koreans party hard.).


We drank Hite, a Korean beer that, I'm pretty sure, tastes exactly like Budweiser. Not having had a Bud in almost a decade, I'm not positive, but all beer tastes the same to me, anyway. It's worth drinking shitty alcohol to have an important cultural experience, though.


There was a lot of Konglish and Engorean. Neither of us speaks enough of the other's language to have a real conversation. He obviously speaks more useful English than I speak useful Korean, though. I was able to make a complete sentence about what we were doing, and he thought that was funny. I also could name some of the fruit we were eating, and name some colors, and say which fruit was big and which was small ("small red tomato"), and he would laugh at that. Silly American.

He was telling me about how much the other teachers drink. Lissette, the girl I replaced, drank three beers, which he seemed impressed with. I don't think women drink as much here. He said Steven drinks a lot, which I can understand, as he's a pretty big guy. I said I usually drink whiskey and coke back home, and he said Lissette liked that, too. I wouldn't be surprised if he treated me to whiskey sometime. It's more expensive, of course, but this family seems to have some money.

Some funny things:

I still don't know Heather's parents' names. She told me to just call them Omma and Apa--Mom and Dad.

Although an ashtray was provided for the rinds and seeds of the fruit we were eating, Heather's dad still spat watermelon seeds onto the floor. And not just onto the floor around the table, but out into the main part of the bar. Stuff like that seems totally okay here, as confusing as it is to us.

The big tv they had going on the wall was playing the most bizarre stuff. Every time I looked up, I was like what the crap? For example, one time I looked up and a bunch of people were holding up picture frames with plastic wrap stretched inside them and pressing their faces into the plastic wrap. I think maybe they were making face prints??? One guy just smashed his face right through the plastic, so I don't know if my theory is right. Korean tv is so weird.


We only stayed for an hour, which was better for me, since I had already stayed a half hour late at work to correct, and I only have three hours or so from when I end my last class and bedtime. It was a good time overall, and I'm glad I didn't knee-jerk refuse based on communication barriers and it being a school night.

Teachers' Day

Yesterday was Teachers' Day, and I was glad that they have a day to honor those of us who work our asses off to help kids learn. I was told that children give their teachers gifts; one of my students mentioned that they give carnations to teachers.

Since I don't really like flowers, and a chocolate bar costs the same amount, my friend from the air force gave me the idea to put up a little sign in my classroom last week with a picture of a flower with the red circle and bar through it and a picture of a chocolate bar with a thumbs up next to it, and refuse to comment on it. So I did, and some of the kids even figured it out. They all thought the sign was very peculiar and they studied it a lot. Now that I think of it, I should have taken a picture.

Considering the amount of teachers Korean students have, I expected a lot of kids to give me a flower or maybe a card or some little trinket. I was wrong, though. It seems to be more of big deal than I thought, and most of the kids seem to choose which teachers they want to give presents to, and give them pretty good presents, instead of small ones to all of them. I got thirteen presents, with one more on the way. One of my students says "It's not ready yet."


Here is a picture of the full spread:


And a little more detail:



From left to right, generally: bergamot body wash from The Body Shop, an embroidered handkerchief with hand mirror from renoma Paris, a mini rouge compact from Anna Sui (it's not in the detail picture, but I remembered to include it in the wider shot), body lotion from Anna Sui, a "diamond" hair clip from Ssilbaereudae Paris (it's in Korean, so I don't know what the English translation is), a basket of assorted French cookies and cakes (the picture shows only half of what it had originally), orange and aloe-flavored chocolates from Jeju Island in Korea, a decorative box, a floral handbag, a bar of milk chocolate, and handmade soaps in aloe, grape, and black sugar flavors. Plus the massive basket of carnations.

I think the box is my favorite. I love containers. Like I said, I don't really like flowers, but I was rather impressed by the basket of carnations. It was quite thoughtful, as were all the gifts.

All this stuff, especially considering that a fair amount of it is European or American, and how nice the Asian stuff is, is easily worth over $100, probably closer to $150. Holy schnikes.




Here are close-ups of some of the more decorative stuff:

Lotte Department Store

Lotte Department Store has eight floors and I perused all of them. It was really silly. I thought that having only done clothes shopping at lower end stores that maybe the fashion of Korea was misrepresented a bit, but no. High end clothes just mean more ruffles, more spandex leggings, more long, clunky jewelry, and more awful color clashing.

There was not as much Engrish as I wanted, though I did find a couple good examples. I'm kicking myself now for not writing it down, but the first good one I saw said something about "feeling actually emotion," which was cool and made me laugh out loud. Another one was called "Green, Be Nice!" and had a bunch of little icons, presumably stuff you can recycle? One of them was "Strong Duck." I took a long time looking at that shirt.

The things men wear here would frighten any American man, I think. I really, really, truthfully saw ties with sequins and glitter on them. And a lot of them, too, not just a few weird ones. Like almost a majority of the ties in the store were either bejewelled or were a color not considered masculine by our culture.

Additionally, golf clothes, which get half a floor to themselves, are evidently synonymous with blindingly bright colors. They don't seem to go as much for the plaid golf pants here, unless of course they are canary yellow and fluorescent orange.