something to nibble on

So there I was, sitting in a cutesy Korean coffeeshop, with fish eating my feet.

It was the end of a typical weekend - the kind where I catch the first bus out and the last bus in and pack the day with various activities with friends in town. I had met one of my Korean friends downtown as she got off work for the evening, and she pulled out a booklet of advertisements to scan for coupons and places to go. We haltingly chatted in three languages with her Japanese co-worker about some of the shops, restaurants and spas in the book as she leafed through, and decided that we weren't all that hungry.

"Mmm, you want coffee and ... bread? This place has coffee, tea and bread," Yuni said, pointing to one of the pages. Her English is really pretty great, but there are plenty of times I miss what she's saying or only get part of it, and we hang out in part to trade language practice.

"Sure - sounds great," I shrugged, the ever-agreeable tourist. I wasn't quite sure what "bread" would turn out to be, but wherever my Korean friends want to go usually is great, so always happy to leave the decision-making up to them. Often, when you deal cross-cultures and cross-languages, you find yourself letting go of the small things and just seeing what happens - otherwise you'd be hammering out details for hours. She tore out the page and pocketed it, nodding.

We waved goodbye to the co-worker and ducked out into the cold night, then scuttled down a couple streets until we came to a nondescript set of stairs. Yuni pulled out the crumpled advertisement and consulted it a moment before scanning the signs plastered on the building.

"Here," she nodded.

We scurried up the stairs and through a door that opened into a warm, bright world buzzing with low conversations and smelling of tea and toast. Aproned staff bowed and greeted us, gesturing toward small tables surrounded by plush chairs in purple, green and gold. Bookshelves and faux trees were scattered among clusters of laughing young women. A few couples leaned close over steaming mugs, backlit by holiday lights and brick walls painted with foliage and shadows. It appeared to be pretty much the standard coffeeshop scene in Korea, with a bit of novel flair, and I was excited to have a potential new hangout downtown.

We set our stuff down and scoped out the menu, deciding on chamomile tea and the "toast bar" - basically a bunch of different breads set out by toaster ovens, butter and various jams. Koreans are pretty crazy about their toast, and there are entire shops devoted to just serving the crusty stuff. This seemed to be the coffeeshop version - aka, the "bread" Yuni had talked about. She went up to the counter to order for us and came back a few minutes later with our tea.

She said she also ordered something else, which I didn't quite understand, but I got that it would be ready when our number came up on a sign over on the wall - about 30 minutes. I wondered what could take 30 minutes in a coffeeshop, but again, it didn't seem worth figuring out sooner than necessary, so I smiled, said "Great," and asked her to pronounce "dog" and "crab" in Korean, which sound exactly the same to me but are supposedly different. Then we chatted about her sister's wedding and some translation work she'd done earlier that week for the U.S. Army in a court case for some soldiers who had gotten in a bar fight with some Koreans.

A few grammar and culture conversations down the line, number 178 was up, and I looked up at the counter, expecting to see a plate of something or other. But no, there was Yuni, calling my attention back and telling me to bring my bag. What? Um, okay ... maybe we had to go collect whatever it was from some other part of the restaurant? I grabbed my bag and headed after her, over to the side of the room where there were steps up to a long wooden platform. I hadn't really looked over here before but there weren't any other people except for the attendant, marking something on a clipboard and apparently giving Yuni some sort of instructions.

What the ...?

Yuni motioned me to take my shoes off at the bottom of the stairs and kept listening and nodding. I slipped off my clogs and padded up the stairs, curious. I could see some inset areas coming into view, and I thought for a moment that maybe they were like the floor tables I'd seen in other restaurants and this was a place for eating some sort of ceremonial food ... hmmm. But as I topped the stairs I realized that I was staring down into tanks of water ... and not just water - water full of small, darting fish. There were several cushions around the edges of the tanks, and sinks set into the floor a few feet away. I was totally bewildered.

Fish, fish ... oh yeah. I flashed back to the conversation we had had at Yuni's office about spa treatments and recalled a rather gross one about people submerging their feet into tanks of live fish, who eat away the dead skin. Kind of like a pedicure, a la Fear Factor. Wow. It all came clear. I had somehow missed the part about how we were going to get this spa treatment. But here I was, in this mod little coffeeshop in downtown Daegu, about to have my feet eaten off by a writhing mass of sea creatures. And it was a bought and done deal from a very sweet friend, and apparently quite the rage by the hip 20- and 30-somethings, judging by the crowd ... so hey, what the heck. When in cute coffeeshops with feet-eating fish in Korea ...

So yeah ... you can check out my pictures (just happened to have my camera along, by some great fortune). I really did it. And here's a Washington Post article with more information on the treatment, though about a Tokyo spa, and a link to the 나무그늘 site (the Daegu coffeeshop where I went) - though this site is all in Korean.

As for my experience, well ... learned the words for "creepy" and "tickle" in Korean, and basically tried not to think too much about it, except for realizing that this was perhaps the strangest 10 minutes of my life.

it doesn't get any better than this

OK, so I just hit the high point of teacherdom: my first letter from a former student. Probably my only one, being as we are now subject teachers and I only see the students for 90 minutes a week each, rather than having them all week long, so not much time to form any sort of bond. (Not that I'm complaining - subject teaching makes far more sense with our constantly changing schedule, and is much more manageable.)

So this letter is on the traditional cutesy Korean paper decorated with flowers and hearts and nonsequitor, nongrammatical English ("Today is happy day." "Good things might come to those who wait." "Welcome to Flower garden"). Korean products, including clothes and stationary and mugs, tend to use English letters/words as decor rather than for meaning, and some of it is pretty funny.

The letter is from my one student, probably about 12 years old, who cut her finger in art class (no more big scissors). Her English name is Tracy, and she plays a traditional double-reed Korean instrument sometimes written as "piri." Apparently her brother plays it, too. It should give you some insight into how fantastic and cute the kids can be, and how they tend to talk very dramatically for humor and emphasis. I've tried to preserve the spellings, capitalization and spacing in typing it here.

Hello, Kristin marsh teacher?
I'm Tracy. How are you? I'm fine.
I want to see you. My finger is ok. Teacher, thank you. I'm crying. And I'm sad. Because, I miss you. I'm crying every day. I miss you, teacher!
Oh, dear. Soon, my brother's concert. It's the Pili. There is Donga shaping [shopping] 10thfloor.
Good, bye - Kristin marsh teacher!

- Tracy -

I'm prety. You are prety.
I'm kind. But. You are very kind.
I miss you.

Isn't that the best thing ever? :)

the holidays a la Asia

I'm sitting in my dorm room on a cold December night, looking out on our resident fuselage, listening to some mellow blockbusters on MySpace music, thinking about careers and tomorrow's lesson plans, and trying corn ice cream. It's not as weird as you'd think - kinda like frozen creamed corn.

We've got our first official batch of five-day kids - about 45 from a private school or schools in a more rural region northeast of Daegu. That's 4 or 5 kids per class. Last week it was 18 in each class, and we've had all manner of daycamps, overnights, half-days and three-day sessions, so we've really seen the gamut. They're all awesome, though, and what makes everything worth it. Tensions have been high recently over various things, but these kids are the best part of everything, and what make me thankful every day, if not quite every class (We are considering getting "I Survived Group 12" T-shirts after one particular crew), that I took this job. They're just fun and creative and goofy and crack themselves up with these jokes that aren't even funny, but it totally cracks me up that they find them so hysterical.

The holiday season has fallen here, too, which I'm coming to find means giant anime-style Santas and who knows what other Christmas creations parading the streets, a plethora of cooked-batter streetfoods, and the traditional merchandise explosion you find back home. Oh and the karaoke version of "White Christmas" is about the best thing I've seen yet - one long string of pictures of Korea's verdant hills and Buddhist temples. Not one flake of snow.

Mostly it's been cold and dry and rather sunny, but this weekend was one miserable long drizzle ... the perfect kind for curling up in a downtown coffeehouse with a new book (or three) and watching civilization scuttle by outside, and I definitely indulged. It's strange finding myself reading again - entranced by the bookstore and perpetually in the middle of about six books, just like when I was a kid. I guess that lifestyle of eight-hour days of staring at words is finally relaxing its grip. Now I've just got to figure out what to do with the library I'm amassing.

I get pangs for American holidays and family time every so often - like the other day when I saw pictures of the Iowa Mills' Thanksgiving, or tonight when I told a Korean friend about last year's holiday outing to Kansas City's jazz district. But I'm also looking forward to trying out this whole island holiday thing this year, spending Christmas and New Years on the shores of Bali with good friends from college, now spread around the world.

Oh but I never did quite get my Thanksgiving story put up here ... so the 20 of us Americans at the Village (with the very important help of certain Korean staff) coordinated as traditional a dinner as we could muster the Sunday after the holiday, and I volunteered to do the last-minute shopping, thinking I was being smart to avoid the chaos of climbing over everyone else in the kitchens with all their Korean machinery. Well, the short of it is that I ended up being very much the turkey and having my most fabulous "weird foreigner" moment yet in this country, loaded down with a ridiculous amount of food, answering relentless phone calls and trying to navigate Korean public transportation.

With considerable effort, I had dragged my overladen bags down to the bus stop near the local Costco (a Sam's Club-style warehouse of mostly Western things), but the bus pulled up before I was quite ready with my fare. But I leaped on anyway with all my cargo, much to the amusement of the onlooking passengers and the bemusement of the surly driver. The next bit all sort of happened at once - me fishing for change, one of my bulging bags tumbling down and various Thanksgiving offerings rolling out across the floor of the 739, the bus jolting forward and my shoe sliding off my foot into the stairwell and just barely slipping out the closing door. I don't think anyone else saw the shoe go, and I was quite the wild-haired freakshow there, still digging for a darned 100 won piece and debating the worth of a Size 12 shoe, laden down as I was and sock-footed, two busrides and one walk from home in Asia. To top it all off, my phone started ringing again.

The shoe won out.

Seven blocks later, I had found the coin, collected my things and finally managed to hit the stop button, and all the wide-eyed Korean "aunties" watched me clamber off the bus. I then hobbled back the direction I came, at one particularly poignant moment passing a true bag lady (a rare sight here, but you just can't make up the stuff that happens in real life - no one would believe you). And even in the middle of my "I am ridiculous" haze, I did realize that my lot even at that moment was something to be thankful for, because I was strong enough to huff and puff it back, rich enough to afford a taxi for the last leg of the journey when I had missed the right shuttle, and lucky enough to have an amazing, nostalgic feast waiting for me when I got there.

And I got my shoe, dadgumit.

changes, chicken feet and cute children

No time for a full-on post, but a few notes from Daegu:

1) In the lastest string of changes, we are not, in fact, getting our public school kids until at least March. Classes between then and now will be on a week-by-week or day-by-day basis depending on which schools we can schedule, and will probably be entirely daycamps. We start this week with 4 days of different grades from a prestigious private school in Daegu and one day of a kindergarten class from Yeungjin's academy. Definitely keeps us on our our toes, but we're also getting pretty good about adapting to curveballs.

2) I've realized that my friend in Sudan, where people live in huts and goats wander around in the streets, is eating less exotic food than I do. I'm pretty sure I had chicken feet tonight in town.

3) I hung out with the first- and second-grade classes yesterday to prepare for this Wednesday and Saturday when I'll be teaching youngsters, and they sure are cutie little bundles. Cutie little bundles who speak about 10 words of English. And apparently not all of their parents have impressed on them why they go to this place with the strange people who babble nonsense, because some of them feel it's their duty to teach us to speak properly. One little girl resolutely repeated "Han bon do" each time I said "Another one, please," and one of the boys had the following conversation with me:

[6-year-old scribbles what appear to be a boy monster and girl monster on his paper.]
Me: Oh wow! Two people - one, two.
6-year-old [pointing to each in turn]: Namja, yoja.
Me [pointing to each one]: Yes ... "man," "woman."
6-year-old [pointing]: Nam-ja ... yo-ja.
Me [pointing, nodding]: Yes ... "ma-an," "wo-man."
6-year-old [perplexed ... decides to take a different tack, points to a boy across the table, then a girl next to him]: NAM ... JA ... YO ... JA.
[We go a few more rounds of pointing at different people and pictures, with him first getting more emphatic, then patiently slowing down for this simpleton who just can't get it, and finally giving up to go bang on the drums.]

Where do monks learn to drive?

By coincidence, I followed up my metropolitan whirl with something close to Korea's other extreme: a templestay. Monday, some friends and I spent a couple hours on a couple buses to head due east to Golgulsa Temple to check out the Buddhist way of life. Twenty-four hours of meditation, martial arts, yoga, vegetarian meals, hiking, chanting, and way more floor-sitting than my body's equipped to gracefully do at the moment. All this in a pristine mountainside temple dating to the 6th century. Pretty amazing.

We almost got on the wrong bus to Gyeong-ju (yes, it's a theme - part being a unknowing foreigner, part just being myself in any country) but managed to get thing straightened out before actually boarding. From Gyeong-ju, the directions say to take a city bus another 40 minutes to a certain stop - but if you're going, best enlist a local's help. The bus announcement for the place is decidedly different, they don't stop unless you ask, and you'll never see the stop marked on the road. If you successfully make it off the bus (we were only 50 meters or so past the place when the bus screeched to a halt as our helper shouted down the driver), you'll find yourself in the middle of the country at a random road with no clear signs for this historic spot, your only directions to "walk 15 minutes."

Those were 15 long minutes, lemme tell ya, trudging single-file along the road (which we hoped was the right direction), past fields and a small town and countryfolk giving us quizzical stares. But we finally spotted some signs for the temple (only in Korean though ... the temple's tourist-friendly reach is pretty much confined to its grounds) and knew we had arrived.

Despite the lack of worldly announcement, the temple is quite a grand place - maybe a couple dozen buildings ancient and new scattered along a gorgeous and quite vertical mountainside. I'd guess there were maybe 25 monks and monks-in-training in residence (a couple of them Western) plus a handful of Western twenty-somethings living there in a two-year training course for sunmudo - a form of martial arts. Monk fashion includes natural-dyed grey and brown robes, shaved heads and accessories of simple glasses and watches. The sunmudo trainees wear a certain loose-fitting pant and regular T-shirts. Then there were maybe 20 of us there for the templestay, and upon arriving, we were given orange vests - kind of like a Buddhist take on prison garb.

The templestay program goes on daily, with visitors staying anywhere from hours to days, and the schedule changing a bit from day to day. The time is basically broken into regular strenuous or culturally interesting activities separated by fairly long stretches of free time to rest, hike, meditate or just contemplate the beautiful surrounds. here typically is a service element to every day - cleaning or weeding or building, for example - but I think that since we were there for Chusok, the schedule was devoted more to holiday ceremonies instead.

In the evening we ate dinner a la Korean Buddhist custom - men and women sitting separately, quietly. Nothing can be thrown out, but you can get seconds. I definitely don't have a handle on the Buddhist approach to food, however: According to Buddhism, you're supposed to focus on your food and be grateful for it, yet eat for sustenance rather than pleasure. As everything's vegetarian and simple, yet fresh and delicious - it was some of the best Korean food I've eaten, and I had a hard time with the not-enjoying-it-too-much concept. I definitely could stand to eat less food mindlessly, but I think that tenant alone could keep me from converting - not to mention the whole Buddha business - the world is just too full of delicious things to savor.

After dinner was an couple hours of chanting (always accompanied by plenty of full-bodied bowing), a brief meditation (as in sitting straight-backed in the lotus-position, hands encircled in front of your navel, eyes closed, "ohm"ing and hissing), sunmudo training (ouch, ouch and double-ouch - those monks are amazingly fit people) and a demonstration of traditional Korean dance by a local university professor. This was all supposed to be an outdoor moonlit ceremony to observe the holiday, but drizzly weather unfortunately moved it indoors. Then to bed to prepare for an early morning - the men were divided into a few rooms and women all shared a large common room, everyone sleeping Korean style (with mats on the floor), but the mats here were more like a folded-over blanket.

Korean Buddhists believe that the karmatic power of the universe begins to awaken around 4 a.m. and that the morning is a particularly potent time for reflection, so chanting and meditation was slated for 5 a.m. Apparently some of the Korean women in our room believe that 4 a.m. is a particularly potent time for fixing their hair, because they started rustling around 3:45. Not having a clock at my bedside, I was up and dressed before I realized the hour, so I slipped out into the dark for a quiet starlit stroll, or so I thought.

Unfortunately one of the many temple dogs - kept to ward off evil spirits - apparently decided I was a demon on the loose, and the two of us managed to rouse an even larger crowd. A sleepy-eyed German (or something like that) emerged on the scene of me standing petrified in front of the snarling mutt, and we had a most delightful conversation something like this:

(German speaks to dog, who lowers volume of growl.)
Me: I'm sorry! I just wanted to take a walk.
German: Don't be afraid! She senses your fear. DON'T BE AFRAID!
Me: Um ... okay. (Thinking: Yeah right. You come down here and stare down this ferocious thing and DON'T BE AFRAID!)
(German speaks again to dog, who finally goes silent.)
German: It is early.
Me: I know.
German: 5 o'clock. You come here.
Me: I know. I just wanted to take a walk. (pointing to trail)
German: On mountain?
Me: Yes.
German: It is early.
Me: I know.
German: (stares at me for a moment, then finally shrugs shoulders at the weird American) Be careful.
Me: I will.

(German goes back inside and I start up the path, walking away from the dog I'll note. But as soon as I take a few steps the dog breaks into snarls and growls again and starts tearing after me.)
Me: Okay! Okay! I give up already!

I edged back around the building and down the mountain, muttering all the way about stupid dogs.

Turns out that maybe that dog was good karma though in disguise, because instead of stumbling around on a dark hiking trail with little to see except some burial mounds, I headed over to the other side of the mountain (assiduously watching for signs of any other spirit-keeping dogs) for a closer look at the ancient Buddha carved into a rockface above the main temple. It may not have been the smartest thing I've ever done, creeping up crumbling footholds in a dewy rock wall in the pre-dawn, but the payoff was worth it - stupid dog and all. The monks had started their morning chants and a soft light pulsed out from the elaborate temple below; hushed droning and percussion wafted up with a hint of incense on the cool breeze. A star-studded sky sprawled above, and the verdant Korean mountains were spread out before me, occasional lights illuminating a misty valley here and there. And at my back, a 4-meter serene-faced sculpture - pounded into a mountainside by Indian Buddhists who had migrated to Korea about the time the Dark Ages were setting in upon Europe. This is traveling.

I had to book it down to morning chanting, then we had an elaborate yet pious breakfast ceremony for the holiday. Awhile later was tea with the grandmaster, a warm and graceful man with a deep-belly laugh that reminded me of the way one of those jovial Buddha statues might laugh if it came to life (though the grandmaster had none of those statues' girth). In my limited experience with Buddhist culture, it seems to me that the faith tends to emphasize a docile sort of humor - kind of like how Christianity has its own version of standup-style jokes, I suppose. Later was more chanting and then a Chusok ceremony celebrating growth and life and the lives gone before us, which basically involved a lot more bowing and some chanting and a table full of harvest goods. People come to the table two by two to symbolically empty cups of water into a communal bowl, then hold the cups as monks pour them full anew.

Then another tasty meal. And for our final adventure, the couple of my group who remained crammed into a small, rickety van with a questionable clutch and an even more eye-raising driver - a monk. I haven't even seen taxis here pull some of the stunts this guy managed ... and I had to wonder where monks learn to drive. Or maybe because they're religious, Korea just gives them a free pass to the road. Anyway, our fabulous guide (in full monk attire, of course) successfully shuttled 12 of us tourists to several other historic Buddhist sites in the area and explained the culture and history in broken but extremely animated English. A Brit in the group bought everyone ice cream at the journey's end, including one for our monk, of course. I'm not sure where ice cream fits in with the whole take on food, but our guide gratefully accepted, and it was really heartwarming to see someone's eyes light up that much at what seems such a little thing.

The trip home took an extra hour because of holiday traffic, and seemed even longer for the lack of sleep and soreness of body, but there's no question it was worth it. Templestay: $40. Bus fares: $11. Incidental tourism costs: $3. Experiences ... well, you know.

Chestnuts growing in an open field ...

Harvesting chestnuts is a four-appendaged sport. Or so I learned during this weekend's cultural outing - a day of activities at a "folk village" north of Daegu (kind of like Iowa's Amana Colonies but much simpler and smaller).

For anyone who didn't know (like me, before today), chestnuts grow inside fist-sized masses of thorns, which turn brown and thunk to the ground when ripe. Getting these well-armed bundles to give up their hearts is a prickly task. You'll need one hand to hold a sack, two well-soled feet to stop the thing into submission and then nimbly pry it open, and a surgeon's hand to go in after the innards. This of course while dodging the tree's attempts to pelt down more thorny fruit at the intruder.

I probably could have seen the process even in Colorado, but it's so much cooler to do my stomping-prying-extraction dance on a rainy gravel lane half a world away, listening to bleating goats and amusing a wizened Korean farmer leaning on a rake. Maybe that's why people travel ... not necessarily to make more memories but simply to tie them to more exotic incidentals. Plus, odds are that I wouldn't have hit any chestnut groves in the foreseeable future in Colorado.

And it's pretty neat to have a better understanding of the process behind what ends up on your plate - or palate. As far as I was concerned, the woody, autumnal treat simply materialized on city streets half-roasted. (By the way, that's not my picture - it's copied from an educational website with a clause allowing such use.)

Despite an unyielding downpour, we also:

• picked apples,
• dyed handkerchiefs with onion, ash-tree and soil dyes,
• ate a farm-fresh meal,
• made Korean rice dumplings,
• saw a traditional wedding ceremony (a couple from Iowa got mock re-hitched), and
• stomp-danced with the old women to a medley of traditional rhythm instruments.

All in all, an awesome day sponsored entirely by Daegu city tourism.

It's amazing the amount of money Korea is pouring into reaching out to the world, especially to Westerners. That event, which has been at least an annual occurrence for some years now, included buses, food and materials for about 120 people - not to mention labor costs. There were all sorts of nationalities there, including the first Spanish speakers I've chanced upon in Asia - a Mexican couple in government work. (My Spanish has obviously rotted away, by the way - eeks.)

And Friday, we went to a cultural expo back at Gyeong-ju, the historic city with the tombs east of here (see this post for ramblings from my earlier visit to other parts of the town). The government also keeps systematically pouring money into that expo center, constructing modern architecture, sponsoring cutting-edge exhibits that blend millenniums of culture with futuristic animation, and drawing performers from the world over.

And let's not forget that my existence here is largely on the government's tab, too. As I understand it, the Village we were hired to run is essentially city-funded to educate a broad swath of the city's kids - plus eventually serve as part of a large-scale attraction area north of the city with resorts, an amusement park and who knows what else. Organizers hope to break even through weekend events and special sessions, but the main portion of the state-of-the-art venture is dedicated to public education.

But it's not only the government pouring money into global ties - it's a whole culture. There are legions of expats here teaching English at all manor of institutions, most of them private firms funded by Korean parents hoping for global opportunities for their children. English competence is seen as a source of power, though Korean children are also fully expected to value their cultural heritage. There's much still that I don't understand about that balance, but it works largely in my favor.

TPR 101

Today was the day I've been waiting for. After a week of unyielding rain, the skies had at least temporarily plugged up and left the city in a temperate haze. Okay, so maybe not quite the perfect conditions for trying out my newest Korean small talk: "Nashiga chosumnida" ("Nice weather"). But tomorrow could very well be back to steaming or more rain ... so my next shot could be in April - heck if I wasn't going to bust it out.

Pay attention class, this is an example of education giant James Asher's Total Physical Response theory (basically that language should be learned in physical, real-world scenarios) in action:

It starts at breakfast, when I "Nashiga chosumnida" the attendant. Then the maid washing the windows on the way out of the hotel. I "Nashiga chosumnida" the bus driver (whose English is improving a lot more quickly than my Korean), and the linguistic-major Romanians within earshot giggle. The lunch ladies. I make a special "Nashiga chosumnida" outing during break, delivering the day's weather report to a handful of shops near the college.

Nashiga nashiga nashiga. Asher's got nothing on me. Bring it on, baby - I'll "Nashiga chosumnida" this whole country before the rain returns.

And in good Korean fashion, they all smile and nod, more or less amused with the crazy American who's suddenly decided to turn meteorologist.

Or at least that's what I think they're smiling at ...

Funny, no one seems to be returning with the "Yes, that's right" statement on my recording ... don't they know the script? Am I in the right country? ... Hmm. Better pocket this one for now until I can hit a dictionary or talk to someone to get a translation ...

And upon further investigation, it appears that I have in fact been telling everyone something to the effect of "You good pigeon." Or perhaps "Your sister's grandson well."

Friggin' Asher.

Oh well, it's supposed to rain tomorrow.

3 bucks to see the doc

So this week's big adventure was a trip to the hospital. Don't worry - in Korea's socialized medicine system, the hospital is just a one-stop shop for healthcare, not reserved for urgent or serious procedures.

Anyway, a whole troupe of us teachers went to the local general hospital to get prescriptions rewritten, vaccinations and take care of other minor issues - thankfully herded along by our ebullient fashion-plate of a Korean facilitator. It was like a little family, shuttling everyone to respective locations and waiting around for translation help, and let's just say we all know way more about each other than I'm used to with co-workers. But that's OK - just see "Step 4" below.

We were quite the sight, as usual, scurrying along corridors and lounging about in waiting rooms. And being as sick people - and people waiting for sick people - have very little to do but gawk at such spectacles, it was definitely their day's entertainment, compliments of America.

There was a particularly hilarious scene in which an elevator wouldn't move loaded as it was with giant Westerners, and there was some ferocious Korean going on about who was going to get off ... with our shepherd (definitely skeptical of his charges' ability to cope if left behind) surely waging what amounted to a cultural war by asking seniors in age and rank to exit. Apparently the responses included "I'm a doctor with a patient!" and "I'm old!" Unable to argue with that, he herded us off the elevator and we waited another five minutes for the next and squeezed on before any Koreans had a chance. Ding ... one floor. One floor. Maybe Koreans don't believe in stairs in hospitals, being full of sick people and all.

Oh, and in another elevator trip, I discovered that if the people behind you don't think you're moving quite fast enough, they aren't shy about giving you a two-handed push on the back to propel you out the door. Or maybe that's just reserved for incommunicado foreigners ... I don't know.

So compare this with the States:

Step 1: Walk in the lobby and take a number. It's filled with row seats and quite resembles a bus station.
Step 2: When your number comes up (fairly quickly), pay a one-time registration fee of about $8 bucks - or $12 to see a highly experienced specialist.
Step 3: Go to the appropriate department, check in and wait to see the doctor (times seemed to vary drastically - some people were out in minutes, others languished for hours).
Step 4: See the doctor (most speak some English, but usually only select medical phrases, so it's a heck of a lot better to have a translator with you just in case). Oh, and it's highly possible you'll have to share a session with other members of your party, or that the next patient will come in halfway through your consult and patiently wait in the seat next to you ... the concept of HIPPA hasn't quite reached Korea, to say the least.
Step 5: Take your paperwork down to the lobby again and repeat the number process to check out. You'll probably pay $3 to $20 for the visit.
Step 6: Take your prescription to any pharmacy. Most medications cost $3 to $6 per box/bottle, but specific Western imports can be much higher.

Oh and that registration fee is only for large hospitals - go to a small hospital and you'll probably only pay $3 total to see the doctor.

explain fully

I love bureaucracy ... when I don't hate it. It's just endless fodder for amusement.

Exhibit A) American Family Insurance has just informed me that I will have to pay a deductible if a volcano or earthquake levels my Colorado condo. They sent me a whole letter just to tell me that.

Exhibit B) Korean visa application Question No. 19.

This picture is tiny, I know, but hopefully you can just make out Question No. 19, right above the penny - the one with the box stretching to the bottom right of the frame: "[Hangul script] Purpose of entry (explain fully)." And then not even a thimbleful of white space. Heck, they took up most the explanation possibilities just by telling you to do it.

Of course I won't explain fully, I'll just squish "teach English" in my neatest, 3-point handwriting and be done with it, but it still cracks me up.