The next entry in the Korean Odyssey

Saturday, February 28, 2009 at 9:00am
2/27

So today we tried to go to church. We travelled to ha yang to the nearest catholic church because that's where Kayla needed to go. Me, Angela, and Kayla all got to the church only to find that it was empty. We asked a lady moving stuff around in there and she said that the next service was on sunday, or March 1. Kayla was pretty disappointed, but at least there was sunday.

When we were done we decided to explore around ha yang (which gave me a great excuse to try and find a tailor). I know a guy who was stationed in Korea for like 6 years and he said the best deal to get here was to hire a tailor to make all new clothes for you. He said he had a silk suit made for like $200 bucks, which, when I last checked, was like $1300. With the exchange rate the way it is I think the price will fall for me to like $150. He also said the regular clothes are very inexpensive too. A custom wardrobe would be sweet I think.

Anyways, we went exploring in ha yang and found some cool cheap little stores, but not much else. I think there is much more exploration to do there. We ate at a place called New York New York and had Korea's version of a New York restaurant. There was spaghetti and steak and that's basically it ha ha.

After the meal we came back and I ran some in the gym. I don't know if the air quality is bad here or what, but I felt like I was running on jello instead of legs. It took me twenty five minutes to run 3k, even with the incline at 10% on the treadmill. I will have to do way better if I want to run the 5k here in April.

I got done working out and pretty much had destined myself in for a night of much ado about nothing, when Kayla suggested we go over to our friend and English teacher, Eli's house.

When we got there they were deep into a game of Cranium. They finished and we started again. Basically, to sum it up, I am awesome at drawing with my eyes closed and impersonating Martha Stewart. Kayla's team won after a good two and a half hour game ha ha. People came and went but for a while everyone sat in Eli's living room and jammed out using guitars, maracas, bongoes, an african xylophone thing, and a didgeridoo. Oh yeah, I got to play said didgeridoo. It was awesome. I was even able to kind of make it sound like it does on movies.

It's pretty neat that the english teachers here are mainly form non-American countries. There are teachers from Australia (Eli, Ryan, Andy), Canada (Julie, Justin, Janice), Ireland (Steph), and the U.S. (Chad, Jonathan). There are some other teachers here too, but I only listed to ones I have met.

It got past midnight and I asked the teachers how me and Kayla were supposed to get back in our rooms. One of them said to just open it with my hands. That's exactly what I did, however, it was a bad idea. The desk worker came out and told me not to do that anymore and that next time I should call a teacher to let me in. I apologized fervently and told him it wouldn't happen again. He let us go. Thank goodness.

2/28

Today was probably the best day I have had in Korea so far. At 2 o clock we met Angela and some guys from China (I can't remember their names or how to spell them, but on a funny side note, one of them was the guy who told me not to open the doors using my hands again, but it's ok because he was cool) and we headed out for downtown Daegu. We planned to have fun and shop and find a nice place to eat dinner. We took the hour bus ride and when we arrived I immediately saw a sign for what I wanted to do there. There was an herbal medicine market and museum not far from where we were dropped off. It was perfect.

We headed to the market and randomly selected one to be the one we go inside of. It was so beautiful inside and it smelled incredible. Just walking in was like a pick-me-up. I got my Chinese friends to explain what the shopworker guy was saying in Korean (their major was Korean language) and the guy explained to us how the herbal medicine could be used to treat many different symptoms and illnesses. We had left and came back to try and buy some stuff when they said an eastern doctor was on the way, one who prescribed certain herbal remedy things and who could tell you what was wrong with you just by feeling your pulse.

I was ecstatic about this. I wanted to get the scoop on the eastern medicine, especially since I want it to be the subject of my fulbright research project, if I get it. We wait around for a few minutes and the doctor comes in. He looks just like I imagine, with a nice suit and a very scholarly appearance. We let some old people in front of us and then it was my turn to get my health read and try to figure out what, if anything, is wrong.

He took my hand and concentrated on finding my pulse while he asked my translator about me and my lifestyle. He let go of my hand and told my translator... that he couldn't find my pulse. I switched hands. He found the pulse in my right hand and asked if my back had been hurting me.

I was really intrigued. How could this guy have known that a have an acquired hip dysplasia that causes my spine to be rotated and it to hurt if I am very active during the day? I was beginning to think that maybe this eastern medicine thing was real. Why even see a real doctor anymore?

While I was going through that process in my head, my translator was very busy and told me that the doctor also asked if I get tired easy. No, I said, wondering where the doctor was going with this. Not needing my hand anymore, he returns it and says something to my friend. Puzzled, he looks at me and says, you need to play more sports so that you won't be tired as easy and your back won't hurt anymore.

I was kind of disappointed, I thought it was going to be an amazing experience and that the doctor was going to tell me how to maximize my potential through the power of herbal healing. I was pretty wrong. However, when Angela and Kayla went to get examined, he was exactly right about their conditions. Maybe he was right about mine. Maybe I just don't play enough sports anymore.

This in a roundabout way all brings me to something else I found out today. the eastern medicine doctor is completely, 100% free to all patients. All they pay is their medicine cost. The most remarkable thing about this is that many patients (at least according to an old lady in the waiting room/lounge/den area of the shop waiting with us) receive complex diagnoses which are often confirmed in a hospital. The herbal medicines help with those things, and many people in Korea firmly believe in them. It's kind of a nice change from the $500 minimal fee (before insurance) it takes to see a doctor in the U.S.

We said goodbye to the doctor and his kind and left on our merry way. I was practically floating. I got to experience the herbal medicine experience, something that had intrigued me for a while. We all went shopping in random stores and in an underground mall until dinner time.

Our dinner was pan seared chicken, and the cool thing was that it was brought out to our table as it was cooking. So there we sit watching the broth basically get boiled off because the iron pan is so hot. The steam flew and the smell was amazing to say the least. It was probably the tastiest meal I have had here on this trip.

After dinner we went to the famous Kyobo book store. It had both Kroean and English books in it. I managed to get a sweet kroean-english english-korean dicitonary and helped Angela pick out twilight and a walk to remember. When I went to pay for the said dictionary, though, I ran into a snag. Big surprise. I tried to run my card from home (which I run as a visa credit card all the time) in their machine as a Visa.

The card isn't technically a real credit card. It's a card which, when ran as credit, takes the amount out of my bank account, so it's like a creditdebit/debit card, if that makes any sense. Anyways, I run the card and the transaction goes through. I'm in the clear, right? Wrong. They stop me and tell me that they don't know what kind of card it is and that after some phone calls they decided to cancel the transaction altogether and make me pay cash. boo. I had to borrow a little more money (the wired money is in transit I guess) but I got the dictionary.

We boarded a bus back to the school and made it back to our rooms all safe and sound.