A very Jeju Christmas - The Trick Art Museum (제주도)

Dr. Fish

I went with some friends to a cafe in Seoul to get some tea...and have fish nibble the dead skin off of my feet. For some strange reason, this cafe offers the infamous "Dr. Fish" treatment. You can get a drink for $5, for a couple extra, a natural pedicure!

My initial reaction to the idea was..."yeech!" But, for the sake of not being a complete weeny, I went along.

This is how it went: when we were ready, we were led to the fish area. We took off our shoes and washed our feet. There were two tanks: big fish, and little fish. The little fish were about one and a half inches long. The big guys were 3 inches long. Considering the fact that bigger fish meant bigger mouths and bigger bites, which made me think of having my toes chomped off by ravenous cold-blooded monsters, I opted for the smaller fish.

I had - foolishly - worn skinny jeans with legging underneath, so I delayed putting my feet in the water for as long as possible by negotiating my jeans up and over my calves, as fas as they would go without cutting off my circulation. Then, moment of truth!, I stuck my feet in.

The little buggers started nibbling me almost immediately, and I burst into laughter. Oh - did I mention that I have incredibly ticklish feet? That, coupled with my natural aversion to the sensation of being eaten, made it nearly impossible not to jerk my feet out of the water and run away screaming.

"Shh!" one of the girls said, "people are starting to stare!"

Ok, so I was practically whooping at this point, and pulling faces. I managed to tone down the manic laugh to a distressed whimper. I couldn't look in the water - couldn't deal with looking, in fact - but I could feel it. Many tiny little mouths, biting me. Little bodies, wriggling between my toes. Without looking, it was not difficult to imagine that I was being attacked by an army of leeches.

I tried not to imagine that.

I forced myself to relax, and eventually (10 minutes into our 15 minute slot) it worked. My nervous system became too overwhelmed to sense individual bites, and I perceived instead, vibration all around my feet. It wasn't exactly what I would call relaxing, but it was manageable. For someone with less sensitive feet then mine, I would dare to say that it could even be enjoyable.

I, however, won't be doing it again. Once was enough.

Actually, some heat*

*this post is a follow-up of an earlier piece. (No Heat)

I woke up late and ran out of the house without checking the temperature. I pushed through the glass door, and my nose hairs froze up crispy. Of all the days not to check the weather! It was too late to turn around and go back, because the elevator up to the 12th floor takes about 10 minutes round trip, and I only had 15 left before I needed to be at school. I walked as briskly and the biting wind would allow, worrying that I might get frost bite on the tips of uncovered ears. Because...I also ran out of the house without a hat. Whoops.

I checked my computer at school for the weather: 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

"YIKES", I thought, "I am going to die of cold today."

I wrapped my scarf around my head like Nanook of the North, then headed to class. I drank so much hot green tea I thought my cold-constricted bladder would burst (embarrassing).  I ate mostly soup for lunch in the cold teacher's room, went back to my ice-box, I mean, office and then...

bloop bloop!

The heat turned on.

Holy Blessed Mother of frost bite recovery! I am not going to freeze to death! Yay!

By some lucky accident, the school had turned the heat on in my office. For one toasty afternoon, I sat comfortably - not hunched with cold, but pleasantly relaxed.

Yeah - just one afternoon.

But since that day, we have gotten just enough heat to keep from freezing to death, which is nice.

The first snow

Bucheon is not exactly a romantic city. It's rather boxy and lacks in color, but I was still completely enchanted by the first snow fall. I took my camera to document my walk to school, and it's a good thing I did because it all melted by the time the day was over.

Despite my disappointment with the wet brown walkways, I was a little relieved. I have heard that Korean cities don't shovel the sidewalks. That the snow falls, people trample it down, more snow, more trampling, a little melting, and voila! A winter of treacherous bumpy ice, and wipe-outs.

It will certainly be interesting to see what happens when it finally snows for real.

No Heat

Before coming to Korea, everyone told me "dress warm" and "it's cold here". This advice was slightly ignored because I was living in Boston - not exactly a tropical oasis - so I figured I could hack whatever Korea had to dish out.

What people failed to mention is that Korean schools don't use heat. Ok, this is probably a slight exaggeration. But only a slight one. Schools don't turn on the heat until the temps turn freezing, and that's if you're lucky. My school? The principal passed down the message in November:

No heat this winter.

Now, you would think - or at least I would - that a place that holds children for 9/10s of the year, would be heated. The very young and the very old are susceptible to...I dunno, the elements and whatnot. Right? RIGHT?

I didn't actually say this to my principal, I just shivered down the hallways, and wore more layers.

Oh yeah, the hallways. Windows open. WIDE open.

Turns out that most schools don't have ventilation systems. In order to get fresh air - as in, rid the school of the daily funk of kids - the windows must be open.

*sigh*

The kids all walk around with their coats on, and I have taken to main-lining green tea every hour. I refuse to wear my coat indoors, which is stupid, I know, but I just can't do it. I've had to thumb my nose at tradition and wear my boots indoors so that my toes don't go numb. Numb-er, that is.

sick face

For what seems like the hundredth time so far, I have a cold. Maybe I am allergic to children and their general germiness, or maybe my body is still adjusting to the new climate. What the reason, I am just now getting over another attack of sinus pressure, cold symptoms, and fatigue.

This time, I refused to go to the doctor. The reason is pretty silly, but I discovered that the medication he gave me bloated me and made me think I was gaining weight, so that's the end of that relationship. I toughed out the sniffles until last night, when I remember that ibroprophen cures the common cold.
 
I hate when it takes me a long time to come to a simple solution.

Anyways, I'm feeling better today.  Well enough, in fact, to update you all on the Korea adventure.

Woot!

Kimjang (김 장)

Kimjang (Making Kimchi)

Last weekend I went with Ghey to her in-laws' farm to make Kimchi. Yes, she warned me that making Kimchi was a lot of work. That it wasn't fun. That it would take two days, and then I was going to regret it. But I went anyways, because Kimchi is one of the basic elements of Korean society, and I just couldn't not go.

We arrived at the farm around 4pm on Saturday, just in time to help wash and brine the cabbage.  The cabbages (which look more like bok-choy to me than cabbage - are the two related?) are washed in salt water, then flicked dry, then packed with rock salt. I just hovered around the action, because Ghey boxed me out with a polite "There's nothing to do. Just take a rest." I grabbed her son, AJ, and went to explore the farm. (pictures soon)

Before I go any further, I should mention that her in-laws don't speak English. One sister-in-law managed conversation with me, but she was the only one out of the 12 people (other than Ghey and AJ) who could. This meant, for the time I was there - they gossiped about me in Korean, and I watched. It made me feel very nervous to know that I was being discussed, but not to know in what way, or make any sort of response.

Anyways.

After setting the cabbage to brine, we went back to the parents-in-laws' tiny house. It was 4 rooms that could have almost squished into my mother's kitchen. No bed, no chair, but heated floors and lots of blankets.

I was given one of the few seat cushions in the house, and a lot of space for my over sized, inflexible legs, and we ate. They gossiped about how well I used chopsticks (awkward).

After the dinner dishes were all cleared, the adults began a vicious poker game, where the winner has to buy everyone fried chicken and beer. Everyone -adults and kids - sat on newspapers on the floor, greasy faces and fingers, eating chicken straight out of the take out boxes.

I could have been in Detroit at that moment. You know, minus the floor-sitting part.

Fast forward through one backbreaking night of sleep on the floor and pretending not to be awake at 6AM so that I didn't have to go to the farm and wash cabbage, it was time for breakfast, then back to work.

Or should I say, the real work.

The next step was cutting the bottoms of the cabbages, getting rid of any remaining root. I sat a block of styrofoam with a sister-in-law and prepped enough heads of cabbage to feed four families for a year - over 200.

Then, the kimchi sauce (made from homegrown ingredients to make it extra delicious) needs to be rubbed into each leaf. That picture above is of me trying my hand at making kimhci. I wore big rubber gloves for protection, but managed to get red sauce all over my pants. Natch. After the cabbage was rubbed red, we handed the heads to Ghey who packed them with a mix of shredded onions and daikon soaked in more red sauce. Then heads were wrapped up with the largest leaf on the outside, and put in a storage box.

4 hours later...

We ran out of Kimchi sauce and had to stop for lunch. And thank goodness, because despite the fact that I pooped out long before lunchtime, my back was craving some one-on-one time with two aspirin and a real bed, and I didn't think I could wait much longer without tears.

We ate fresh, amazingly delicious kimchi with meat and rice, topped off with some fruity homemade wine.

I got home at 3pm, nearly 24 hours after I left, and crawled into bed until Monday morning.

In my fridge is a container with enough kimchi to last me at least 3 months. Mmm....delicious.

The National Arboretum

By some stroke of comedy, my school decided to send the teachers on a trip to the National Arboretum...in the winter. These photos were snapped with my cell phone (I forgot my camera) while we strolled through the barren woods. It wasn't very green, but it was still pretty.

What they do at Costco

There is no oatmeal in Korea.

Kidding!

But take, for a moment, that feeling of shock and sadness, then multiply it by 100 and you can imagine how I felt when I thought there was no oatmeal in Korea. I asked Ghey about oatmeal in my first week here. She said,

"Sure, we have oatmeal," and "of course."

I asked her about oatmeal a few weeks later and she said,

"Ok, so, I didn't really understand what you were asking about when you said 'oatmeal.' What is 'oatmeal'?"

"You know," I said, "it comes from oats."

"what are oats?"

Oh dear. A self-pitying cloud of sadness descended on my head.

Then, I talked to a foreigner about the situation. (Yes, oatmeal shortage is, in my opinion, a "situation").

"You can get oatmeal at Costco!"

HALLE-FRICKIN'-LUJAH.

Wait, wait, wait. There's COSTCO in Korea?

Yes, as it turns out. I went on a trip with my friend Dee last week. I bought scotch brite wet floor wipes, cetaphil cleanser & lotion, and oatmeal. I somehow resisted buying bakery-fresh cookie packs, cheez-its, holiday candy tins, sheets, mega-vitamin packs, and blocks of cheese.

It was tough, but I managed.

Costco is wonderful. It's the closest place to Bucheon where you can find several American comforts in american-sized proportions. But the absolute best part, is the food.

Just like Costco in the US, there's a food court. They have pizza, hot dogs, and soft serve ice cream for cheap cheap cheap. I could tell the food is good because the seating area was packed. You have to hover awkwardly over people who look like they are considering getting up, in order to get a seat. I snagged a table from a girl who tried to claim it with her silverware - I thought she was going to stab me with her fork for getting in her way.

That didn't end up happening, thank goodness.

Considering the fact that Korean pizza falls far short of any american standard, and often includes stow aways like corn kernals, sweet potato paste, and uncooked ham, I fell on an enormous slice of cheese pizza and didn't come up for air until halfway through my second slice.

That's when I saw the onions.

Oh Lord, the onions.

Every Korean person around me had piles and piles of chopped onions on plates, souped together with ketchup, mustard, and relish from packets. They were eating this onion goulash - yes, raw onions - by the spoonful, shoveling them in between bites of vanilla ice cream and cinnamony-churros.

"Why are they eating so many?" I asked.

"Probably because they're free," Dee answered.

And then came Tupperware lady. She took out her home Tupperware from her purse, and shoveled in about 5 pounds of onions to go. Then she took out her milk bottle, and filled it with grape soda.

We watched, open mouthed.

"I guess there's ghetto people every where," Dee said, "I can't even watch. That woman has no shame."

Then, the lady pulled out a second bottle...