Public Urination

One day a couple months ago I was at the park, sitting by a big Greek theatresque structure, which had a nonfunctioning fountain at the base. There were a ton of kids playing around the area, as always, and as I looked at one little boy playing on the steps, I saw a funny sight. Ever so nonchalantly, he pulled down his pants a little and took a piss right on the steps. Then he pulled up his waistband again and went on with his play.

Tonight as I walked out of the building I work in, I saw another little boy standing outside a parked car with one of the back doors open. His pants were around his ankles and he was, for some reason, pulling his shirt all the way up past his chest. It was dark, and I thought it would be rude to keep looking right at him at such close proximity, but I'm pretty sure he was also peeing. Right at the car, too. There was someone I assume was his grandmother sitting in the seat next to the open door, who noticed a lot of people were now coming out of this and other buildings, so she hurried him up, starting to pull him back toward the car. As I got past the car, I started laughing, and so did his grandmother. I wonder if this practice segues into sleazy adult public urination, or if they curb it by adolescence...

No pictures this time. Sorry.

Oriental Medicine

After finding my Korean-Western hybrid doctor incompetent and deciding to forego that BS, my boss convinced me to go to the Oriental hospital, which is right next to the clinic I went to for my neverending colds and allergies and such. There are like a million hospitals around here.

I was hesitant to go to this Oriental hospital because I know that guys are all into the acupuncture. I went to acupuncture in LA and was treated by an acupuncturist who came very highly recommended (although he was white, booooo). Let me tell, you I've never had a worse medical experience, and probably the only other experience worse than that acupuncture was incurring the herniated cervical disc that the acupuncture was trying to cure. I went five times. The first time it wasn't so bad, but each time after that got steadily worse, until I was crying from the pain each time one of the maaany needles went in. I still have nightmares (not really).

Anyway, Heather told me I didn't have to do acupuncture (liar), but the doctor could just feel me up (not her words) and be able to tell what was wrong. So I went. He did feel me up, and told me (well, Heather, since he doesn't speak English) that the problems in my arms and legs are not the same problem. How bizarre. The symptoms and time of onset are the same...

He said the problem with my elbow is like tennis elbow, but clearly not tennis elbow, since that's accompanied by pain, and all I get is numbness. Heather couldn't explain the problem with my legs in English (could he in Korean?), but she eventually told me something like my legs are retaining water. When you push down on my skin, the skin stays indented for a long time. That's not normal? So she says it's not the fat in my legs that's keeping the impression there, but water. I don't get it.

I agreed to be treated both from desperation and curiosity about the experience. The doctor said it's a damn good thing I got to him when I did. They can't cure this in the US. I had to see him three times a week for at least two weeks. Here is the regimen:

1) Acupuncture for fifteen minutes. Three to four needles in my forearms and three to six needles in my calves. This was significantly less than what LA acupuncturist was putting in me, so it was much better (although sometimes a bit jarring). Clips were attached to several of the needles and electricity was run through me. I was not a fan of this. Sometimes the electicity increased, so much that my hands would start jumping around. No one speaks any English around there, and it was really hard to communicate what amount of electricity was right to begin with, and which part of me was getting too much later.

2) As at the other hospital, suction cups were attached to my arms (but also to my legs this time), and electricity again was passed through me for fifteen minutes. Those suction cups leave wicked marks.

3) Now begins the fun part. After electricity, I turned around and put my ankles on this machine with like ankle stirrups and my legs got shaken for five minutes.

4) Another five minutes in the massage chair, like the ones at Brookstone. This thing was heavy-duty. I really felt like someone was pounding and kneading my back. No wonder they're so expensive.

5) At home, I had to take three doses a day of what is probably the nastiest medicine ever created. It was really terrible. And expensive. I'm too embarassed to say how much I paid for it, so don't let the curiosity burn deep within you. I seem to have gotten a free nylong bag out of the deal, though.

Here's the medicine and medicine bag:

I had to boil the medicine, let it cool, and drink it a half hour after eating. I'm really not sure if I had to boil it to make it work, or if I was boiling it to make it less nonpalatable. I did notice it was better when hot than when cold. I had to drink it cold at work, and boil it before I went in. Yuck. A lot of my students knew exactly what it was and told me about their experiences with it. Funny.

The result? After two weeks of all that, the doctor told Heather I wasn't cured (he showed her the pushing in my skin trick), because Western people's skin is thinner than Asian people's skin. I'd have to do another two weeks, or more. Screw that. I thought I felt better for like two days at the end of the treatment, but I think that was just coincidence. As long as I don't sit still too long or put weight on my body, my limbs don't fall asleep. I may just not have been exposing myself to unfavorable conditions during those two days.

Heather "leally" wants me to go back, because she thinks American doctors actually can't fix me. She's going to try and see if she can get a discount on the medicine. We'll see how that goes.

THE TOMSTORY

I saw this on one of my students' t-shirts a couple weeks ago, but haven't had time to put it on the blog. Naturally, I stopped class to copy this down, which of course led to questions about what the hell I was doing. So I explained to them about Engrish and how funny it is to us. They didn't quite understand, being like 7 years old and all, but I think they soooooort of got something about what I was saying. I think it boggles their mind as much as ours that something like a t-shirt or a sign could have bad English on it, since it's made professionally, but they don't have the grasp of English to realize anything is wrong, so they don't exactly believe me.

By the way, I referred to it as "bad English" to them, too, and they thought I meant "bad words." Before they got all excited about a first-grader's shirt with swear words on it, I had to explain to them that I meant "wrong English."

Wear the Love
Love is wearing THE TOMSTORY with your family. "When I remind of our family love. Love is beloning to someone who really loves you. Love is taking time out to be with the family. Love is wearing THE TOMSTORY with your family
Love is beloning to someone who really loves you.

I don't know what THE TOMSTORY is, but I assume it's the brand of clothing. That's kind of sick.

Last Day in Byeonsan Bando

After we left Jikso Waterfall in the midafternoon sometime, we were only a few kilometers from the park entrance. The plan was to hike back towards the entrance, via the path we had seen on the way to Jikso, and get close enough to make leaving the park the next day an easy task. This would allow more time to make sure we got to the bus station in Jeonju in time to catch a bus home. Kent could take any number of buses going to his area of Korea, but there are only four buses to Ulsan from Jeonju, and they stop early--the last one is at 5:00.

Things didn't work out quite as we had wanted, though. The trail back to the entrance was so easy that it only took about an hour to finish it. Furthermore, we couldn't find any camping spots along the way. Although the trail was flat, all the area around it was at a steep incline, or too densely wooded, or too close to the main trail. We saw a tiny trail going downward, and took it, thinking it would lead us to a field we could kind of see below. It just led us to a road on the border of the park. After walking along that road for a few minutes, we found we were at the entrance we were trying to avoid getting to that day.

Going back into the park seemed like bad idea by then, since we might not find a spot by dark. The best option at this point was to go to Seokpo Camping Park, which had been our backup plan in the event we could not find a place to camp. So we walked back toward the road we took to get to the park originally, and found the entrance.

Although we had passed the camping park on the way to the park the day before, we didn't look past the sign. One would expect there to be a road leading into the park, with some sort of entrance booth along the way, leading to what we think of as a camping park, with places to pitch tents or park RVs (I doubt they have those here, though), small buildings for bathrooms, etc. We found something entirely different, though.

The sign pointed into the base of what looked like an elementary school playground. The school was on the far end of the playground. Instead of a road, though, there was a military-style obstacle course. Passing by, I had seen it, but had assumed it was playground equipment and didn't give it more than a cursory glance. It seemed like the camping park wasn't a public park, but a military facility. There went that idea.

The only option now was to get a motel. I had seen one as we had walked through Gomso, so we continued our trek back into town. We ended up spotting a nicer looking motel than the one I saw, perched at the end of a small peninsula, so we went there. It was quite expensive for a small-town motel: 70,000 won (about $70). The place was relatively nice, but small, and the bedspread smelt like mothballs, which made the whole place smell like mothballs. We had a balcony, but of course it looked back into the town. We did not get a view of the water.

Completely exhausted, we just ate supper from what was left of our camping food instead of going to a restaurant. The next day we slept until ten. I was still pretty wiped out, having not gotten any sleep on Friday night. But we made our way out of the motel and to the bus stop to start the trip home.

We waited for the city bus for about 15 or 20 minutes, and it was about 30-40 minutes to get to the Buan bus terminal. The bus didn't actually drive into the terminal, but the driver told us where to get off. We didn't really know where we were, so we got a little lost and had to ask a taxi driver where the bus terminal was. As it turns out, we just had to walk about a couple hundred feet the left of where we were dropped off, but we had gone straight, because there was a long line of buses parked along the street there.

Once in Jeonju, I was told that the two remaining buses to Ulsan that day were full, and the next bus didn't go out until 9 the next morning, which wouldn't get me back to Ulsan in time for work. I almost flipped out for a minute there, but then the lady said there was a bus at 3:00 to Busan, which is the nearest big city to Ulsan. From there I was able to easily get a bus home. They go every ten minutes.

So that's my adventure in Byeonsan Bando. It was a lot of fun, with very few hiccups. It was a good substitute for the island I had wanted to go to, Ulleung-do. I hope to do more backpacking soon.