Dealing with sickness in Korea

Our South African friend, Brett, unfortunately had a TERRIBLE time getting good treatment and being admitted to hospital when he caught chicken pox here from his students. Note: Adult chicken pox is DANGEROUS. There's apparently a vaccine available here in Korea, so if you never had chicken pox as a kid, ask a doctor for that vaccine asap!

We can't comprehend that what Brett had to go through is the normal experience here. They didn't seem to realise and confirm how serious his sickness was until he was finally in a hospital-like clinic.

We have full health insurance here and everyone we've spoken to has had no problem going to a hospital to see an English speaking doctor when they needed to. Rob even managed to get a list from the Haeundae District office of medical practitioners in our area who speak English. It's so nice to be able to communicate in your own language when you're sick. And you want to be able to fully understand what the doctor has to say to you.

But so far, my experiences here have made me a little anxious about being sick in Korea. :(

I had an awesome experience of going to a doctor about knee pain. He spoke some English. He was the first doctor who's x-rayed my knees. He told me I have degenerate bones. (No wonder I've had confidence problems walking down steep hill slopes for years.) He told me I have the knee joints of someone thirty plus years older than me. That's right! Old lady knees! It sounds funny, but it really upset me, cos when I asked what we could do about it, he said "lose weight and not exercise." How can you lose weight and not exercise! Anyway, I have lost 5kg since coming to Korea (granted, I didn't have that weight before I left Germany, but it IS possible without too much effort...) and I have been going to some awesome physio therapy there that's really helped. The physio therapist there is a young Christian guy who's studied in Australia for 4 years, so his English is pretty darn good. Each time I go, he'd give my knees heat treatment, electro-shock treatment, then ultra sound treatment and then I'd wear the air massage pants to increase leg circulation. Sometimes I get to lie on the massage bed too. And it costs under 4,000won each time I go! (About $3!) He's also given me really good exercise to increase my strength in the muscles around my knees. Exercise should be walking/running in the pool. Haven't checked out that option yet.

The more negative exeriences are as follows:
I've had were going to a gynocologist on Rob's list and finding that no one there really spoke English. It was a mildly negative experience, because I clearly caused the workers there a lot of stress, not being able to speak Korean and I felt like there was false advertising. This clinic is so convenient for me. Right near my school. I did ok with my phrase book and the pictures on the gynocologist's wall. In all fairness, she did know enough English for us to communicate with help from the pictures on the wall, but she didn't want to speak English. I couldn't find out from them how their clinic was on this list of English speaking practices, if no one there can speak English.

With rainy season, there have been a sudden increase of flies at school, mosquitos at night and beautifully, thousands upon thousands of big, lazy dragon flies :)

I've been bitten by mosquitos on my legs, arms and neck (and now face) at night, and often these are getting infected days after the bite occuring. You know me, I TRY not to scratch, but I guess somewhere during the night or during the day I sometimes give in to the urge and then a day later, there's this huge pink pussy infection around the bite.
:( I have mozzie repellent spray, but it STINKS. Will have to try to use it more often, esepcially before walking Tia at night. We also have screens on our windows, so we'll have to make sure our couchsurfing guests know to keep them shut at all time and we have a mozzie net over our bed. That's being totally paranoid, considering there aren't really mozzies around compared to other countries. And yet, I'm stillg etting bitten. They love my blood! Please pray for me to be able to resist scratching and to keep away infection!

Last Friday and Saturday I woke up with what appears to be spider bites on my face. (Also on one leg, I think). They just look like pink acne and they hurt if you touch them, so I just put tea tree oil on them and waited for them to go away, but Korean friends urged me to see a dermatologist before going away on Summer vacation. So today I went across the street to the big medical centre here and found no English on any of the signs. Which floor to go to? I tried the second floor. None of the administrators spoke much English. I got them to understand that I wanted to see an English speaking doctor. Then when I showed them my symptoms, they told me I was at the eye clinic and the dermatologist is on the 5th floor. So on up to the 5th floor! I HAVE TO learn much more Korean!

When I got to the dermatologist, for the first minute he only spoke in Korean until I asked him in Korean if he speaks English. He said in perfect English "In Rome, do as the Romans do. You are in Korea, so you should speak Korean." Yes, I understand and actually, I agree with that statement. Because of his stance on Korean language, I asked him what the Korean was for certain symptoms and he gave it to me and we wrote it down. However, if I were feeling like crap because I was seriously sick, I probably would've thrown a tantrum right there.

Unfortunately this blog post hasn't been that encouraging for new teachers arriving in Korea. I can only encourage you to learn as much Korean as possible asap and find out from your mates where their good English speaking doctors are and go there. Do also enquire at your local district office, because there could be good English speaking doctors very close to your apartment and school. After all, 4 million people live in Busan. There have to be a lot of doctors here and doctors are highly educated people.

An into to long overdue updates!

Kia ora koutou! (Hi to you all! in Maori)

What have we been doing for the last few months?! It's sure gone fast!

Basically work (and I've worked had to work HARD in the second half of the semester - it was actually kinda crazy), church (I start leading a worship team from next week!) and hanging out with friends. That has left us with a VERY busy schedule.

There are so many minor comical or interesting experiences to tell you about, like how I bought a dark chocolate-peppermint ice cream at the movies but it turned out to be green tea ice cream coated in dark chocolate. VERY disappointing, after expecting to taste peppermint!

Aside from being able to read Korean and being able to say a handful of phrases, Rob and I have not worked hard on expanding our Korean vocabulary and I've recently been convicted about this. There was one week recently where I needed Korean EVERY DAY in some situation. Particularly with our neighbours, who've started talking to us because they see us around and about all the time. I didn't even know how to say "Sorry, I don't understand!"

Rob's been hit with homesickness for Germany and I've been in a few frustrating situations where I caught myself saying "Well, that's just retarded." My co-teachers actually agreed, but I don't really want to have that attitude, as much as possible.

Our first wave of good new friends are already leaving. There are about 10 of them leaving! That's life when you work in a foreign country.

We have been thinking about our old friends often though, so we made some videos which you can look forward to: introducing Busan, my school, our apartment and more...

Some upcoming entries from me or Rob will introduce:
-our Korean PUPPY, Tia
-my birthday
-lecturing for the upcoming EPIK orientation
-our new SUV
-Middle School assessments and Summer camps
-our Summer vacation: which officially starts next week, baby!
-couchsurfing and skype appointments
-old lady knees

It's the middle of Summer here now and it's mostly not too hot this year yet, but it sure has been humid. It'd be fair to say I'd forgotten what the word "sweaty" truly means until recently! It's actually rainy season, but that doesn't mean it rains every day, which has been awesome.

Well, we won't be waiting so long to write again now, so enjoy!

Cosplay at BEXCO!

5 minutes from our house is BEXCO, the Busan Exhibition and Convention Center, and today while walking past it, we came across an amazing sight. At least hundred Korean teenagers, and I do mean at least one hundred, dressed up in all manner of costume surrounded by friends and photographers. It was a huge anime/manga cosplay meeting (cosplay = costume + play), which according to my friend happens every Sunday but just not to this level. It was brilliant fun and so we went around taking pictures of all the different characters, none of whom we actually knew (someone mentioned something called 7-star). Whoever and whatever they were, I'm definitely planning to go back next Sunday and see if I can take some more pictures.

You can check out some of the pictures I took by clicking here and here's a link to one of my pictures that I entitled "Turquoise Soul".

Enjoy!