Food poisoning

I'll start by saying I'm better now...

Apparently I'd gotten food poisoning a few weeks back. A stomach bug was going around, so I attributed the mild fever/nausea to that. Nothing too severe.

However, I just couldn't get back to feeling right. I couldn't keep anything in me... kept feeling worse and worse. At first, I thought it was probably just my system adjusting to the new foods, etc. This went on for about 3 weeks. At the end, my stomach became very bloated/distended to the point it was painful to even sit down due to the pressure it put on my abdomen. I was looking like I was pregnant.

Sooo... I went to the hospital.

Korean healthcare has very high standards. They probably rival the quality of care in the United States. Instead of seeing a general practitioner, I see an Internal Medicine specialist. I had an appointment at 9:20am and was advised it's best to get there a few minutes early because if you're not there they'll give away your appointment. I arrived at about 9am and an english speaking nurse escorted me to the waiting area for my appointment. At just about 9:20, the nurse came back and went with me into the exam room. The doctor examined me... with the nurse acting as a translator. The official diagnosis: acute colonitis resulting from a bacterial infection. In other words, I'd had food poisoning for the past 3 weeks that was gradually getting worse. I guess that's what I get for eating all that street food!

The doctor gave me 4 prescriptions: antibiotics and other things (not sure what they all were, honestly). I left the hospital and went to the pharmacy 2 building over to get them filled. Then walked back to my apartment a block away. All that and got back home by 10:00. Cost? Seeing a specialist at the hospital cost me $21,000 KW and the prescriptions were another $7,000. That's about $23.00 US.

An interesting thing about prescriptions here... when you go to the pharmacy, they package them for you according to your doses. You get this long plastic strip with each dose (however many pills you should take at that time) in an individual pouch.



Anyway... that was last Thursday. Finished up my meds yesterday. I've been sleeping a lot... letting my body rest up and recover and I'm doing MUCH better. Almost back to 100%...

Now... anyone seen one of those vendors selling the chicken skewers? I'm hungry!

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That's NOT Yogurt!

Soooo... I have a 5 minute break between class and I run to the 7-11 next door (yes, they have 7-11's in Korea) for a quick snack. I grab an iced coffee and some yogurt covered peanuts... or so I think.





I get back to class... and hurrying 'cause I'm going to have to start teaching again, I tear open the package, dump a big handful in my hand and throw them in my mouth to eat....

THAT's when I discover they're definitely NOT yogurt covered peanuts. They're wasabi covered peanuts... and not American wasabi, asian wasabi...

Well, after choking, gagging, spitting peanuts all over the place and drinking my whole coffee I was finally able to talk...

Word to the wise... if you don't know what it is, NEVER make an assumption! LOL...

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Gyeongbok Palace

Well, I finally got a chance to do some sightseeing this weekend. I love to see different historical/cultural sites and have been wanting to see some of them here. This weekend one of my korean friends agreed to take me around one of the palaces up in Seoul. We went to Gyeongbok Palace, the palace that served as the location for state affairs for the longest period of time in Korean history. I got lots of great pics. I'll only copy a few here, but the others are all over on photobucket.









I was able to see a few other things in the area... there's an entire "cultural area" that has some of the various historic aspects mixed into the city. It's kind of odd to see a traditional hanook home next door to a modern apartment building.





On the way home, there was a group of dancers from a church in the subway. I couldn't understand the music, but the dancing was rather pretty.

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Happy (belated) Chuseok

Well, it's been about a week and half since I posted here... time really gets messed up over here.

First, Happy Chuseok everybody (a week late). Chuseok is kind of the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving. Instead of turkey you eat Songpyeon which are made from rice stuffed with stuff (like sweet potato or sesame seeds).





The owner of Chung Dahm gave all of the staff 2 bottles of wine apiece as Chuseok presents and I bought myself a couple of asian pears on the way home from work, so I was all set!



Chuseok is set on the lunar calendar so it's always during the fall harvest moon. The view was incredible:



Thought I throw up a few more random pics from life here:












On a different note: I saw this on another teacher's blog labelled "My Life in Korea in 14 Seconds" and after cracking up laughing couldn't resist putting it here:

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A typical day

Well, since I am actually working while I'm here, I thought it might be good to show a typical day in the life of an English teacher at a hagwon (private English school) in Korea.

I happened to wake up early this morning and caught an incredible view of the sun rise on the mountains.





After doing some chores around the house (ok, I admit I also went back to sleep for a bit), I get up and walk down to school about 2pm or so. This is the street I walk down each day.



I teach two 3-hour classes each day (6 hours total) which start at 4:30 and 7:30 respectively for a total of 30 hours of teaching each week. Teachers at public schools and other hagwons don't usually teach as many hours in a week (some as few as 22) but the pay reflects the amount of work involved. Chung Dahm requires all teachers to clock in 20 minutes ahead of class time (so at 4:10) but most of the teachers are there between 3 and 3:30 to prep for the day's classes. Since I'm new and still learning the curriculum, it still takes me a little longer to do my daily prep. Still, working from 2:30 or so until 10:30pm is still only 8 hours a day.

Classes are broken down first by skill level (not grade), then by age... so all the students in the class are about the same English profiency even though the ages may range by 2 or 3 years. At Chung Dahm, the 4:30 classes are usually upper elementary to middle school students and the 7:30 are middle school to high school. I do have to clarify that Chung Dahm also has "Chung Dahm April" which is very beginning English as separate facilities, as well as "CD Prep" which is college test prep level.
My students range in age from about 11 to about 15. I actually teach 4 different levels/classes each week: two levels of "memory English" (vocabulary/reading) and two levels of listening/speaking skills.

Here are some pictures of one of my "lower level" classes working on their daily critical thinking project:















After work, different groups of teachers usually go do something together. Tuesday nights here is "soccer night" for our school, since teachers from a different branch of CDI here in town take the subway up to join some of our folks playing at the park beside city hall then have a few drinks. Since I'm not much of a soccer player, I opted to go to eat with a few other "non-players". We went back to the dak galbi (spicy chicken with vegetables) place I've mentioned before. This time I was able to get a lot more pics of the process of cooking the food. It starts with the chicken, which has been marinated in a spicy pepper paste, being cut up and put on the grill/pan (I posted a pic of that before). On top of that are added all the vegetables to cook.





Once the veggies are cooked, it looks like this:







This time we had solid red aprons instead of polka dot!!

After having dinner with one group, I stopped by the soccer field since it's on the way home. By now it was just about midnight and the game was finishing up. I then went with everyone to the convenience store on the next block, where everyone sat around having a beer and relaxing for an hour (or 2 or 3) at the end of the day:





Then it's back to the apartment to straighten up a little and head to bed.

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