Dr. Fish Cafe
(noun)
A Korean phenomenon where you pay under $10 for a snack, a drink (including beer!) and the experience of soaking your feet in large baths and have the dead skin eaten off by little fish. And it's an absolutely hoot!
The pre-washing.
The soaking.
Today being pay-day and also a late working day, I called up Sara and told her I didn't feel like cooking and asked if she wanted to meet for dinner. Twisting her rubber arm, she agreed to meet me at a restaurant in her building called Tudari: Skewer Food Restaurant. The pictures of Tudari's food have always looked so appetizing, and now that Sara has converted to flexitarianism, we decided to give the heavily meat influenced menu a go.
We ordered a couple of draft beer and a sampling platter. When it arrived, we knew it wasn't going to be enough food and ordered an additional plate of chicken skewers. Beyond chicken, we had no clue what we were ordering, but from the picture it just looked like chicken kebabs. The server added the item to our order, and while speaking in Korean, gestured to his arm.
Great! we thought, it's wings! We like wings. We nodded in approval and off he toddled to the kitchen.
When our skewer order arrived, we each picked up one and bit off a piece. Looking at each, we chewed slowly and swallowed even more slowly. Sara put the rest of her skewer down and pushed the plate away indicating her distaste. I persevered through my serving, trying to pinpoint why it was so familiar. And then it hit me.
The server hadn't been pointing to his arm. He had been pointing to his skin. We had ordered a plate of skewers that were nothing more than chicken skin grilled in a spicy sauce.
Ew.
Tickets have been booked.
Visa applications have been submitted.
Accommodation bookings are under way.
An attempt to figure our the Korean government website for multi-entry application is on hold for a day or two, but...
All this put together means I must be going on a holiday! Winter is slowly but surely turning me into a seasonal sloth, so on January 26th I'm heading back to Thailand for a dose of sun to recharge my batteries, and perhaps stopping off in Shanghai en route for a little retail therapy :)
Thailand and I have a love-hate relationship, so I'm interested in seeing how this visit goes. A day will be spent in Bangkok to get buses booked and to get a fill of street Pad Thai, but after that it's off along the North Coast to park my butt in a stretch of sand thats warm and sunny.
I'll send you a postcard...
I am a big fan of Jon Scieszka - ask me for a snappy rendition of "Viruses are Coming to Town" from his book Science Verse, and I will happily oblige. Love, love, LOVE his work - I have used it a number of times because kids are drawn to his language and sense of humor. All of his publications are fantastically clever and he started a great website called Guys Read to advance literacy among boys. A brilliant mind all-round.
Just recently, he was named the ambassador for children's literature (modeled on the U.K. Children's Laureate) in the United States that will give him a podium to further promote reading among young people. Very cool!
Roughly a year ago, Kyle posted this entry on his blog about his adventures with indoor skiing in Shanghai. The whole post is hilarious, but what will always stick out in my mind is his encounter with the people he dubs "The Glee Twins". The Glee Twins were two young girls who, in true Asian fashion, posed for a number of concept photos, the most memorable of which being the heart pose. When Sara and I read this post and saw the accompanying picture, we decided to make it our personal mission to spread the joy of the heart where ever we went.
Sara and I began to break out the heart for all photo opportunities, no matter how obscure, or how terrible we may have looked. Note this picture: taken after a 4 hour 'hike' through rivers and over rocks back in October. We both look HORRIBLE, but we're hearting, so the picture is fabulous.
People began to question our actions, and when we explained, were quick to jump on the bandwagon. Soon, hearting was happening everywhere and with everyone...
I try to heart with Richard on multiple occasions and eventually pulled something in my back because of the height difference (Richard is almost exactly 1 foot taller than me)...
...but it was just about finding the right position, like sitting down.
I became fond of hearting with married men, which caused
some name-calling from his wife...
...who consequently was left hanging by Sara when they tried to heart, despite being held at sword-point by an evil pirate. Sara has slightly more discriminate taste when it comes to who she will heart with...
...unless it's a heart threesome. Soon, all the hearting started to cause friction in the group. Richard started giving Jeff evil looks for getting birthday hearts when he didn't...
..and marriages were put to the test when I hearted with Jeff and then later in the same day with his wife, Jen. Whoops! Who thought a little photo pose could cause so much trouble?! The Glee Twins started something terrible! Who knows where hearting will take us in the new year?
I don't know how many times I've seen this video, but each and every time it makes me laugh out loud. I was having a pretty crummy day so I dug it out again and decided to share it with anyone else who also might be having a crummy day. Enjoy! And if it doesn't help with the days crumminess, keep in mind tomorrow is Saturday :)
Earlier this week I was suffering from a slow-flow toilet. It wasn't blocked, but it was on the cusp and I decided to try and do something about it before it got to a dire situation. Unable to get my traditional plunger to work on my non-traditional toilet (it's a low-flow and has a different 'mouth' shape on it so it doesn't create the needed seal with the plunger), I decided to head downstairs and try my luck with the security guy. A couple of dictionary look-ups later to indicate the problem, he sent me on my way with a different kind of plunger which also proved useless. For the same reason.
Dejected, I headed back downstairs to return the plunger and beg for help when I ran into Tim, one of the other public school teachers who lives in my building. As I was carrying a plunger, he astutely guessed my problem, and given the pouty-face I was making also astutely guessed how the fixing part was going. And then he offered some advice:
Take a large, plastic soft drink/water bottle and fill it with water. Quickly turn it upside down in the toilet, with the neck of the bottle in the mouth of the toilet. Give it a quick, hard squeeze. The water in the bottle with be forced out in a jet and hopefully unblock the problem.
Skeptical, but willing to give anything a try, I headed back upstairs and grabbed a bottle out of my recycling. Within minutes I had a perfectly working toilet again! I plan on keeping that little do-it-yourself tidbit stored safely in memory! Brilliant!
At school yesterday, while working on materials for my upcoming winter camps, the phone at my cubicle rang. Usually I don't answer it because 99.9% of the time the caller doesn't speak English and they are calling for another teacher in the office. Given that I was, and still am, the only teacher in my office required to be working this week, I took a chance and picked it up. It was my vice-principal.
"Hello, this is Mr. Lee, vice-principal of Sangwon Middle School in the main office (this is how he starts every phone conversation). Please come downstairs. The photo man is here to take your picture for the book."
The book?!? I'm already confused, so I say...."I'm sorry?"
Which prompts the common miscommunication that I didn't hear versus the fact I have no clue what he is talking about.
He repeats, louder, "PLEASE COME DOWNSTAIRS! THE PHOTO MAN IS HERE TO TAKE YOUR PICTURE FOR THE BOOK!"
Still not understanding, but already exhausted from the conversation, I decide to head down stairs to the main office to find out what's happening. I am promptly greeted by Cynthia, one of my co-teachers, mirror in hand. While looking me up and down, she smiles and tells me that the school photographer is here to take my picture for the yearbook since he lost my first one.
I love when these things are sprung on me.
"Maybe...you brush your hair? Maybe?" is the first of many helpful suggestions.
I do my best to tidy and pin my hair without having access to a hairbrush.
"Maybe your skin is tired. You are sick, very white."
I do my best to rub some color into my cheeks.
"Maybe you like some lipstick?" she says as she rummages in her pocket and pulls out a tube.
Cynthia, you're wearing opalescent mauve lipstick, I think I'll pass. "No, thank you" I politely respond and wipe off any coffee film there may be on my mouth with the back of my sleeve. Only one thought keeps running through my head in the most sarcastic of tones: This is going to be awesome...
Because school is over for the students, and I am not teaching classes this week, I have chosen to wear clothes that are comfortable and most importantly, will keep me warm. On this particular day, the thermostat in my office reads 30 but I am still wearing long underwear, jeans, a thermal shirt, wool sweater, fleece and Columbia jacket while working. I am convinced the thermostat and heating system is the only electronic in Korea that functions in Fahrenheit, because there is no way the office is 30 Celcius. With all those layers, I am just on the cool-side of comfortable and my nose is a permanent shade of Rudolph-red. Combine this with the fact that winter is ridiculously dry so I have chosen to alternate hair washing days in an effort to make it less hay-like, and this particular photo day falling on a non-washing day, you can see where this story is heading, if you couldn't already.
Cynthia finally gives up on making me presentable, so she speaks to the photographer and lets me know that we will be taking the picture outside. Outside, where it is below zero and I am forced to de-layer down to my sweater, I shiver my way through 4 photos. Back inside, the photographer presents them to Cynthia and I to make a choice which one should be in the yearbook. I look over Cynthia's shoulder and immediately want to cry. They are all (surprisingly) terrible. We select the lesser of four evils and the photographer is on his way.
When the yearbook comes out, I anticipate a flood of phone calls from parents who, when looking at their child's yearbook to survey the foreign English teacher, comes upon a person who cannot keep their eyes open (I was sick and I had a sunbeam in my eye), has blotchy flushed skin (from trying to rub color in to their cheeks) and their nose has turned a shade of red usually reserved for cartoon characters and thus resembles someone blindly drunk.
I pray the photographer has a brilliant editing program.
