Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Braces!

So I'm a metal-mouth for a few months.  Got my implements installed last month, and will have these for three or four months, depending on how long that stubborn left incisor takes to drop, and for that cranky bottom row to line up like soldiers.  I had those invisible plasticky ones for a while, and they worked for the bigger stuff, but for the final detail work, I'm going to need wire braces for the last few months to get the details worked out. 


As you can see, other than the, you know, wires, things are looking a lot more even than they used to be:  Right Side:
 Left Side:
I've made a lot of progress already...

On the other hand... eating with braces is a pain in the butt.  I'm sure lots of my readers have experienced this for themselves, but I'm going through it now.

Foods that work with braces:

jajangmyeon
seolleongtang
muffins
kalguksu
dumplings
meat... in small bites
spinach
dubu (tofu)-based foods
eggs
kimbap (eaten slowly)
noodle dishes in general
shrimp

Edible, but needs cleaning afterwards:
anything with rice.
that is, most Korean food.

Foods that don't work with braces:
any ddeok and variations thereof
fish with bones
crunchy vegetable matter (kimchi, gakdukki)
nuts
artisan breads with tough crusts
fried stuff (especially deep-friend stuff)

On the bright side, I'm losing weight, because instead of eating until I'm full, I've been eating until I'm tired of trying to eat around my braces.

So that's what's up in Roboseyo-ville.

I've got some things I need to take care of, and I got a really kind e-mail from a loyal reader who's been concerned about the drop-off in posting lately (thanks! sincerely, thanks), and I promise, this is not the end of the Roboseyo we know, and once I've taken care of things, I'll be back in full swing.

But in the meantime... got in my application to the Korean Studies program I want to go to, and did a bunch of other stuff that'll come out once I start catching up on my back-blog.

See you again soon, Readers.  Thanks for your loyalty.

All the best:

Roboseyo

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Blood Connections, Group to Address Blood-Donation Issues, to Meet on Sunday

Blood Connections is a group conceived by some of the people who were working to collect blood for YooWoon, the 19-year-old boy who had a facebook page and a blood drive done in his name, but who passed away last week.

Some people, myself included, discovered that there are a number of issues making it harder for non-Korean speakers to give blood in Korea.  On Sunday, in Kangnam, a group of these people are meeting to start a group meant to address these issues, and make it easier for foreigners to give blood in Korea.  The facebook page is here, and it's a good cause that can mean life or death.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

YooWoon Passes Away at Yonsei Severance Hospital

According to messages from Marie, founder of the "Save YooWoon" facebook event, YooWoon, the subject of 2S2's blood drive, passed away yesterday at Yonsei Severance Hospital.

At the facebook page, Marie wrote:

"On behalf of YooWoon's family and myself, thank you once again for your tremendous support during this difficult time."

If you're part of the facebook group, you've received a message about where to pay respects to YooWoon, or you can contact Marie through the facebook page; I won't be publishing that information here, so that any stranger off the street can saunter in: I think I'd recommend that if you haven't met him already, or spoken to his family, it might be best to let the family and friends grieve in privacy.

Regardless, a big thanks to everyone who helped out by donating blood or spreading the word.

Until next time, and especially if you have a rare blood type, it might be a good time to think about donating yourself, or seeing what you can do to make sure that you won't be stuck in a bad situation if something bad happens while you're here in Korea.

Thursday, April 08, 2010

2S2 Saturday: The Skinny

OK, readers. Here's the news for our blood donation trip:
(Facebook event page here)

1. 2S2 Anguk will need to split into two groups: one group will go to donate blood, but those of us who don't meet the requirements for donation will still meet up and do something else that'll be fun: at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, there's a photo exhibit of National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry, the guy who took this photo, and a bunch of others: (more here) Admission is 8000 won for adults. (photo source)
2. But if you want to donate blood...

A wonderful lady names Ms. Ban helped me get the full information about the blood clinic situation, and I'm passing it on to you.

First of all, as mentioned earlier, there are some caveats to donating blood; if you're B- or, under specific cases (if I have this right), if you're AB-, you might have the platelets necessary to help out our man Yoo-woon. If you're not, you might still be able to donate blood, but it'll be out of your own general awesomeness, not for helping out his boy specifically, provided you pass these hurdles.

Take a look at this document. Read it carefully.
Take a look at this document. Read it carefully.

If any of the questions/explanations on those two pages preclude giving blood, sorry: you can't do it. Yep, that means our UK friends can't give blood in Korea. Enjoy the photo exhibit!

Next: if you meet those requirements, and want to donate...

First of all, the nurse we talked to wants saying that everyone at the blood clinic really appreciates our desire to contribute. Next, here are the other requirements for foreigners who want to donate blood. There isn't much information on whether Korean-Hyphenated expats will have an easier time of it than straight-up non-Korean foreigners, but this lady had no trouble.

1. you need to have been in Korea for at least a full year. The person interviewing might take that to mean continuously (without leaving) or they might take it to mean you've lived here for a year with a few excursions, as long as you haven't traveled to those malaria-risk areas mentioned in the donation interview linked above.

2. you must have an Alien Registration Card.

3. you must be able to speak enough Korean to answer the questions in a personal interview about your medical history. There aren't English speakers in the clinic who can interview you, and we tried to suggest some work-around options, but we couldn't get it done. Sorry folks, but that's just the way it is at this point. I'm sure by 2015 there'll be workarounds in place, but for now, there aren't. Sorry.

So if you're stuck at "멕주 하나도 주세요" then look forward to hanging out at the photo exhibit.

If you're confident enough in your Korean that you could still donate blood, here's the next thing.

There are several types of blood transfusions. Our man Yoo-woon needs a different type of transfusion than the regular blood donation, because of his situation. It's a bit more involved than a normal donation: it takes 1-2 hours, and it can rupture blood vessels in some donors, so if you've given blood before and had no problems, you're eligible for this one. If you haven't given blood before, even if you're B-, the nurse suggests giving a regular, 10-15 minute donation on Saturday, and getting your name on the list of people they call when they need B- platelets (there's a list that they have, kind of a volunteer group of people whom they regularly call when they need it; the nurse says the B- supply is not reaching dangerous lows, but the larger that pool of volunteer donors is, the better off everyone is).

The nurse recommends this, first to check that your blood vessels will be robust enough to handle the more involved donation, second, because the special kind of donation Yoo-woon needs is perishable, so they can't keep it in storage: collecting a week's worth of B- platelets doesn't help much when it only lasts 3 days, and third, if we have a group going, it'd be really hard to process a bunch of 1-2 hour donations at the clinic's busiest time of week (Saturday afternoons) - we don't want to overwhelm the clinic on our first try, so that they decide "Forget it. Accommodating foreign donors is too much trouble. And start rejecting us out of hand, rather than just putting us through a rigmarole" If it's a smaller group and people meet all the criteria, they might be willing to go for the long version, but if we have a big group, I think that the best thing we can do is make this a really positive experience for the clinic, so that they think, "Yeah, we really SHOULD make it easier for foreigners to donate, if they're all as nice and cooperative as that group was."

So, given that this is going to be a first-time experience for this clinic, let's make sure this is a positive experience for them, so they'll be more amenable to accepting foreign donors in the future, and will be more likely to see the value of finding workarounds for that Korean language interview that, for now, rules out a lot of healthy, eligible donors from donating: I think that kind of long view is a good one to take, because it will enable us to help out more people in the long run, than if we come on too strong this time, and cause a negative reaction.

So, on Saturday afternoon, at 2PM, meet me on the second floor of Twosome Place, to the right of Exit 1, Anguk Station. At 2:30 sharp we'll head out to our various destinations.

See you there!

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

A Very Special 2S2 on Saturday (possibly)... Korean/English Bilingual Person Needed

Hey there.
You've probably heard about this guy: There's a Korean student, about 19 years old, who's suffering from lymphoma, a kind of blood cancer. There's a page for him on Facebook. Basically, he has B- blood, which is extremely rare in Korea, and also a bad blood type to get sick with, because it can only receive from O- (in certain cases) and other B- types. There's been a push to get some help for him, and because so few Koreans have B- blood, word has been circulating among the expat community.

Now, on Saturday, for 2S2, I'd really like to bring a group down to the blood clinic to donate blood. If you have B- blood, especially, really, seriously think about coming out and helping out, because this kid is not doing well. Even if you don't, giving blood is a cool thing, and, frankly, a powerful symbolic action that projects a really positive image at a time when English teachers in particular are taking a beating.

I've located a blood donation clinic in Sinchon, and I even went down there today with a good friend to talk with the people. After a bit of talk, here's the score:

They don't usually take blood donations from foreigners, because of communication problems, concerns about where we (typically well-travelled folk) have been, and maybe also other... um... less scientific reasons, that aren't the focus of this post.

Now, we might be able to go down there and give blood on Saturday, but before we do, the lady we talked to gave me her phone number, and has asked me to have a bilingual friend contact her, to make sure she can explain the process in detail, and have that information accurately relayed to any would-be expat donors. She spent a lot of time talking about the correct process for donating blood... fair enough.

So, readers, here's where you can help: I really want this to happen, and I have a phone number, but not the language skill. Is there a reader out there who's fluent in Korean, and able to talk to this lady, and then explain the "process" to me, so that I can clearly pass that on to anyone else who needs to have it explained? I'd totally owe you a beer at the microbrew of your choice.

And that's our tentative 2S2 for Saturday: Meet at Anguk station Twosome Place (same time, same place, every month), go down to the donor clinic in Sinchon, and give blood... IF we can get the communication issues cleared up. This means that if you can talk to the lady tomorrow, I need you to send me a message tonight, to roboseyo at gmail dot com, with your phone number, so that we can clear up her concerns about misunderstandings or improper adherence to due process.

Also, if any of my bilingual readers are free on Saturday afternoon, please accept this as a gentle nudge that your presence would help de-stress these poor, nervous nurses at the clinic. It would be hugely appreciated, even if you're not B-!

If you want to donate blood, here's the nitty gritty:
1. You need to have an Alien Registration Card. Bring it, and be ready to present it.
2. You need to have been in Korea for a year.
3. You need to be able to answer some questions about your medical history... this part was a bit murky, and this might be the deal-breaker which will decide if we can go ahead or not. The guy at the Seoul Global Center, while very helpful, was pretty sure that if you don't speak enough Korean to answer the medical history questions yourself, you wouldn't be able to donate; hopefully we'll learn a way that we still can tomorrow, even if we can't speak all the Korean. I'll keep you posted.


If this doesn't work out, we'll do something else for 2S2, probably involving really, really good food. But I hope we can make this work.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Bumped into a Blockade today.

In my last post, I wrote, "Hundreds, maybe thousands of North Koreans die weekly in death camps or of starvation, and South Koreans save their outrage for American beef imports???" but it's a little more complex than that.

So as far as I can tell, the SeoulPodcast is pretty sure that the mad cow/US Beef/FTA thing is just a bunch of public panic over lies; they frame it in terms of nationalism and leftist manipulators bending facts for a bunch of credulous schlubs.

If you want to give the Korean people a little more credit than that, Gord Sellar gives a really thoughtful look at the way the public approaches a political issue, framing it as the sign of a still-developing democracy -- that's really worth a read. People are taking part in democracy here, which is interesting, even though they're doing it based on wrong premises. The one thing missing in this issue is informed discussion of issues . . . but the fact there's discussion this time, is actually a step forward, sez Gord.

President Lee Myungbak has gummed this situation about as badly as he could (which could also be applied to pretty much his entire first half-year in office): he recoursed to "Because I'm President, that's why"-type rhetoric, leaning on presidential authority in a kind of arrogant way, rather than by leaning heavily on facts, science, and dry information. This gives his opposition a chance to turn this into a suppression of dissent issue, rather than a mere safety/science issue. It's no longer a question even of mad cow beef or the FTA, but of how Korea's leader is going to lead the country, because the president pitted his authority against the protesters, arresting them and threatening legal action against the people spreading disinformation, instead of using dispassionate science, and overwhelming the hearsay with plain facts, while keeping his leadership style out of the discussion. Instead of facts vs. myths, it's now public emotion vs. presidential authority -- it's disappointing than neither side has turned to information, but that's not what it's about anymore, I think, to most of the people still holding candles.

Frankly, the whole thing's been beaten into the ground on the English language K-blogosphere (probably even more on the Korean one, but I can't read Korean well enough to get my finger on that pulse), but this whole thing has gotten bigger than American beef, the Free Trade Agreement, or even nationalism, I think.

I was on my way back home from a Salsa Dancing lesson in Hongdae (dang, that was fun. . . next time I really need to drag Girlfriendoseyo along), when the taxi just couldn't go any farther, right next to Gyungbok Palace.

This is why:


For whatever else it's worth, I had to walk fifteen minutes out of my way to circle around the scads of protesters holding candles and (interestingly) singing songs and shouting chants I last heard at a Korean soccer game (singing the Arirang and doing the Dae-Han-Min-Guk chant), along with other slogans.

Walking through a crowd of people protesting something at least tangentially (via the FTA) anti-American is a bit nerve-racking, because I look like an American, and you know, it only takes one angry drunk to shout, "There's one! Let's GET HIM!" and I wouldn't have a chance to defend myself. If it were a protest about China or Japan, I'd've gotten a bit closer, to take pictures with my crappy cameraphone, but for now, what a mess. I got home alright by doing my low-profile walk (stare at the pavement, make no eye-contact with people, but when no-one's approaching, glance around and check for people giving me hairy eyeballs). Things are off the handle here, ladies and gentlemen. It's a bit wild and woolly in the downtown these days.

I don't know where it's heading, but this thing is snowballing, this issue has way more legs than it ought to, and I'm not sure what to make of it.

Yellow dust: dust from China's Gobi Desert, spiked on Friday. It was pretty awful, and the facemask actually worked. Y'all Canadians from CleanWaterFreshAirtopia can't even imagine this.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Interesting article for a conversation (class)

Life is risk. . .




After an exhaustingly long post/response cycle on the "Korea Herald" post...

I read this: some very interesting food for thought.

soundtrack: Cat Stevens

Where do the Children Play, with clips from "The Lorax"

Rosa Brooks, a columnist from the LA Times:

Remember 'go outside and play?'

Overbearing parents have taken the fun out of childhood and turned it into a grind.
May 15, 2008

Can you forgive her?

In March, Lenore Skenazy, a New York City mother, gave her 9-year-old son, Izzy, a MetroCard, a subway map, a $20 bill and some quarters for pay phones. Then she let him make his own way home from Bloomingdale's department store -- by subway and bus.

Izzy survived unscathed. He wasn't abducted by a perverted stranger or pushed under an oncoming train by a homicidal maniac. He didn't even get lost. According to Skenazy, who wrote about it in a New York Sun column, he arrived home "ecstatic with independence."

His mother wasn't so lucky. Her column generated as much outrage as if she'd suggested that mothers make extra cash by hiring their kids out as child prostitutes.

But it also reinvigorated an important debate about children, safety and independence.

Reader, if you're much over 30, you probably remember what it used to be like for the typical American kid. Remember how there used to be this thing called "going out to play"?

For younger readers, I'll explain this archaic concept. It worked like this: The child or children in the house -- as long as they were over age 4 or so -- went to the door, opened it, and ... went outside. They braved the neighborhood pedophile just waiting to pounce, the rusty nails just waiting to be stepped on, the trees just waiting to be fallen out of, and they "played."

"Play," incidentally, is a mysterious activity children engage in when not compelled to spend every hour under adult supervision, taking soccer or piano lessons or practicing vocabulary words with computerized flashcards.

All in all, "going out to play" worked out well for kids. As the American Academy of Pediatrics' Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg testified to Congress in 2006, "Play allows children to create and explore a world they can master, conquering their fears while practicing adult roles. ... Play helps children develop new competencies ... and the resiliency they will need to face future challenges." But here's the catch: Those benefits aren't realized when some helpful adult is hovering over kids the whole time.

Thirty years ago, the "going out to play" culture coexisted with other culturally sanctioned forms of independence for even very young children: Kids as young as 6 used to walk to school on their own, for instance, or take public buses or -- gulp -- subways. And if they lived on a school bus route, their mommies did not consider it necessary to escort them to the bus stop every morning and wait there with them.

But today, for most middle-class American children, "going out to play" has gone the way of the dodo, the typewriter and the eight-track tape. From 1981 to 1997, for instance, University of Michigan time-use studies show that 3- to 5-year-olds lost an average of 501 minutes of unstructured playtime each week; 6- to 8-year-olds lost an average of 228 minutes. (On the other hand, kids now do more organized activities and have more homework, the lucky devils!) And forget about walking to school alone. Today's kids don't walk much at all (adding to the childhood obesity problem).



Increasingly, American children are in a lose-lose situation. They're forced, prematurely, to do all the un-fun kinds of things adults do (Be over-scheduled! Have no downtime! Study! Work!). But they don't get any of the privileges of adult life: autonomy, the ability to make their own choices, use their own judgment, maybe even get interestingly lost now and then.

Somehow, we've managed to turn childhood into a long, hard slog. Is it any wonder our kids take their pleasures where they can find them, by escaping to "Grand Theft Auto IV" or the alluring, parent-free world of MySpace?

But, but, but, you say, all the same, Skenazy should never have let her 9-year-old son take the subway! In New York, for God's sake! A cesspit of crack addicts, muggers and pedophiles!

Well, no. We parents have sold ourselves a bill of goods when it comes to child safety. Forget the television fear-mongering: Your child stands about the same chance of being struck by lightning as of being the victim of what the Department of Justice calls a "stereotypical kidnapping." And unless you live in Baghdad, your child stands a much, much greater chance of being killed in a car accident than of being seriously harmed while wandering unsupervised around your neighborhood.

Skenazy responded to the firestorm generated by her column by starting a new website -- freerangekids.wordpress.com -- dedicated to giving "our kids the freedom we had." She explains: "We believe in safe kids. ... We do NOT believe that every time school-age children go outside, they need a security detail."

Next time I take my kids to New York, I'm asking Skenazy to baby-sit.


http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-brooks15-2008may15,0,3304418.column

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Little did I know. . .

Dear Melissa, who updates her blog almost daily, which is amazing to me, says that people will post more comments if I post more often.

:)

but I'm not gonna start apologizing. I have my own things going on these days.

Among them,

1. Yoga class! I'm taking a yoga class and it's great! It's ALL in Korean so I just have to keep popping my head up to see what everybody else is doing. That's fun. I park myself as close to the center of the room as possible, so that whatever direction my spine and limbs are twisted, I'll still be able to crane my neck and see someone. I'm starting to recognize some of the regulars. That's fun.

The yoga building's elevator is so slow you have to either laugh or punch something, or (best of all) laugh and take the stairs. Punching the stairs hurts.

The upshot of this is I feel great. I eat lunch early, do my last morning class, spend two hours writing, go to yoga, spend an hour writing, eat, teach my evening classes. Those kinds of days make me happy.

But they keep me away from my house, where I can post on my blog.

Sorry, eh? You'll be happy to know that, while I'm tantalizing all of you with the missing details of my life, I AM enjoying those missing details immensely.


2. I'm not ready to tell everybody about number two yet.

3. The weather's beautiful, so Im back in exploring-my-neighbourhood mode, trying new restaurants and sandwich joints and tea rooms, and finding the most comfortable place to bust out my word processor and type.

4. I got a word processor. Did I mention this before? It's a little machine simpler, sturdier, and cheaper than a laptop, that I can carry with me ALL the TIME and type on it, so that I can work on my stories or plays any time I want, instead of having to wait till I get home to my laptop, or carrying my laptop everywhere and worrying about a rainstorm, or a thief, or a dropping incident (of the clumsy mishandling brand OR the petting zoo brand), or any such terrible thing ruining my laptop. This is great. Every week I'm typing about ten pages on my word processor that wouldn't have gotten written if I had to return to my room to work.
Along with all the pages I would have typed anyway. It makes my writing SO mobile.

5. I get to plan going back to Canada.

6. I just had a perfect weekend. I saw Ocean's 13 (I enjoy both George Clooney AND Heist flicks, so the Ocean's films are great for me -- kind of like eating Barbeque Chicken and talking with Matt -- two things I like teaming up together!) I saw my old friends from SLP, and had a great time with them -- they're so comfortable, because we worked together and travelled together. Then on Sunday I ate a Canadian style truckstop breakfast with Anthony (who's a class act), and next I climbed a mountain with Matt and Heyjin in my old neighbourhood, after which I sat outside a 7-11 and drank Japanese beer in big cans, talked and laughed with my best friend and his wife, and when that was finished, we went to a sauna, and then we had GREAT barbeque pork for REAL cheap in Matt's neighbourhood -- the good things just kept piling up this weekend. It was almost unbelievable, how much ultimate awesomeness can fit into a weekend. A bit like this video (if you're not up on your pop culture, don't bother, but if you are, your head might just explode):






Fun conversation class:
The Would You Rather Game. My favourite this week was
"Would you rather be intensely aware of others' body odours, OR have a bad body odour, but not realize it?"

Love you all!

Take care, eh?

Rob

Sunday, May 06, 2007

my most asinine post yet. (don't worry: the end is better than the beginning)

ok, dont bother watching, but hit play on this clip when you start reading this post: that way, you'll be listening to good music (well, good by MY measuring stick) while you read. More about the band at the end of the post. Push play, and then move down. Dont watch (unless you really, really want to). Just move on and read with music playing.

Frederica, by Do Make Say Think



I think I'm stealing somebodys wireless, but the fact remains, I have internet at home today. (Goodbye free time. Sigh)

The upshot of my loss of free time is that I can show you some of the pictures I've been taking.

I'm doing well -- even looking well.

Compare.

Here's me giving the toast at my brother's wedding, July 2005. One of my girlfriends* looked at this picture and her first impression was "Wow. You're fat in this picture." Not long after that, she went away. Banished for life from the glorious land of Roboseyo.

(* now ex)




This next picture was me in September 2006, I think.



Work stress and things, yah yah yah. (In Korea, instead of saying "blah blah blah", Koreans say "shalah shalah shalah" - apparently THEY're the ones who put the Shalah in the Shamalama-ding-dong! (you may come over and shake their hands if you like; I still don't know who put the bop in the bop shabop shabop, but it may also have been Koreans, because bap means "rice" here, and Koreans put bap in almost everything.) Anyway, since starting my new job, I've been eating better, because my eating habits have been more intentional -- rather than eating a comfort food at the end of a tiring day, and vegging out, my new schedule helps me feel productive, so that I'm making intentional choices toward better health, rather than just choices that help me feel better (as a reaction to stress/exhaustion/boredom). I've been walking more, doing yoga more, eating fewer snacks between meals, and making healthier food choices. See the next picture: that's how I looked three weeks ago. (I also weighed myself: I'm lighter, too.) You may think I'm just sucking in better, but I assure you, I still havent learned how to suck in my forehead.



Now that I've started doing Yoga every day, you may notice a slight change, even from three weeks ago, to these pictures I took of myself this morning.






It's amazing what healthier lifestyles can do for us.

Enough self-congratulation, then. I have to admit some details of the last few paragraphs and pictures were slightly exaggerated or fictionalized; I haven't actually started doing yoga daily, for example.

Yesterday night, after my friend went home, I was wandering around Jongno, the party district, at about midnight, stone-cold sober, watching drunk people walk around and have fun, but not feeling like drinking myself. Then, this blonde fellow came up to the street food stand where I was eating (I was also eating street food), and started a chat. He was a Polish/German tourist named Raphael, who was on a one night layover between Australia and Germany, and he wanted to catch a sniff of Korean culture in the ten hours he had in Seoul. Little did he know he ran into exactly the right person. Anyone who's come out to Seoul to see me (that's two: Dad, and Mom, for all you keeping score) knows how much I love to give a tour, so I took him to eat one of the most traditional dishes (barbeque pork with soju, strange-tasting Korean liquor) (soju and samgyupsal is about eighty percent guaranteed to be the food and drink you'll have if you go out in a group with more than five Koreans -- it's like Pizza Hut, Earl's, White Spot, and Red Robin's all combined, and cheaper, in Korea -- the safe, inexpensive, inoffensive choice that nobody will disagree with, that eventually becomes the default "can't think of anywhere else to go" choice.)

So we had that, and it was fun, and I talked about Korea's culture and history a bit, and he talked about his desire to experience new cultures, and I talked about the odd sensation of being a white, visible minority in Korea, the unique solitude born of being in an ocean of people speaking a language one doesn't understand, etc.. Anyway, it was great meeting another world traveller, another culture-chaser. Much more interesting and edifying than getting half-hammed and sweaty in a dance club, just like a hundred other nights. This guy was really cool and open-minded, and if I'm ever in Germany, I'll definitely look him up, and he'll return the tour, and show me around his town.

These two sculptures were right next to each other in the park outside Seoul's city hall. I won't go into detail, but I think the symbolism is overt enough that I don't need to.



Konglish persists in Korea. Try and guess what this shirt means.



Once I saw a t-shirt whose caption actually was:

Ill gosdfsdfsdfsdf
jlkjlkjlkljsdkljfsf
ghdfhghg

It was awesome.

I want to be the one who writes the nonsense captions for Engrish t-shirts. I want to make up intentionally nonsensical phrases that seem to have just enough intention behind them to make people shake their heads and say "what are they ACTUALLY trying to say?" because the best ones ARE trying to say something, but get it wrong. I also want to invent captions for shirts where the main fun is trying to find letters that look cool together.

What do YOU think is the coolest word just to look at? My nomination is "ogopogo" -- so many circles (plus, it's really fun to say).

(The other best ones are the ones the people wear and have NO idea what it means. Innocent, sweet girls wearing t-shirts saying things like "Deep throat" (and a picture of a giraffe) -- this was a secretary at our school. She turned violent puce when I explained to her why she shouldn't wear that shirt to work again.



or "I like to get it on with guys who vote", or just ridiculous phrases, like the fifty-year old woman who walked by me with a shirt saying, "you be breakin' on me, I be breakin' on you")

Spring is here.


I like spring.

Here are some fantastic foods available for you in Korea: my old boss used to brag that Koreans used every part of the animal. Including. . .

The intestines. I found a special restaurant dedicated to eating cow intestines! You can also buy pig's feet here; it's said to be really good for your skin, so you'll see young women holding a big ugly pig's claw, trying to gnaw the meat off it (without getting grease on their cheeks), as if they were holding a corn dog that accidentally had bone in it. At the pig foot restaurants, sometimes you can also see the entire pigs face, set out to dry (for what purpose, I have no idea. Haven't gotten around to investigating yet. The day is so short, you know!)

Fortunately, if you don't like all that, you can buy a toothpaste that will kill your bad breath. . . and your calculus.



I have some packages that ought to be arriving soon. . . I hope they do. They seem a tad late. I hope I got my mailing address correct when I sent it out.

I went back to my old school the other day. That was nice -- to see the little ones. They were SO excited to see me! It was like being a Beatle. . . if the Beatles were twice as tall as ordinary humans. All the kids who knew me crowded around and tried to hold my hand, and they all tried to tell me -- something. Anything. Really, it wasn't important what, just that they were talking to their old teacher, of course. "Teacher! I have a loose tooth!" Basically means "I'm happy to see you again," in kid speak. I do miss those people. . . but not quite enough to go back. Caleb and Heather aren't there anyway.

As the blog goes, I'm thrilled that people have been commenting on my posts. It really helps me feel like people are reading it, and know what's going on. The site doesn't count how many people come and visit my blog (or at least, I don't know how to check), so if you leave your "footprints" as one person said, it helps me know that you've been here. And that warms my heart.

The problem is this: I now have a myspace page, a facebook page, and a blog, all of which have different people who check them, etc.. While facebook etc. is nice (if you want to put in the time) to create a "me" space more individualized than a mere e-mail address -- you can put links and lists of friends up and stuff -- it's starting to get harder to keep track again; instead of getting an e-mail from a friend which I can immediately open, read, and answer, I now get an e-mail from the facebook administrator, or the myspace administrator, saying "xxx sent you a message in Facebook" or "wrote on your wall" and I have to click a link and log on to read what I used to be able to read immediately. Just funny, is all. I'm not really complaining: I've heard from people I would never have gotten back in touch with otherwise -- including some grade school friends, and long-lost connections. That's neat, but I wish I didnt need five different logins and ids and passwords just to keep tabs -- it's sort of like having six different discount cards in your wallet, each for a different set of restaurants and shops, and having to sort through your wallet each time you make a purchase, for the right card to swipe. Time consuming.

I wish they could consolidate all those into a single swipe card (or just a thumb print), instead of making me wait in line for the person ahead of me who owns every discount card on the planet, and needs to know if she can save 18% by paying with her debit card, rather than just saving 15% by paying with her CocaCola Credit Card, along with the JLX Fast Food Alliance Membership Discount Card. Yug. So I want to consolidate all the "internet in touch" services, instead of having myspace, facebook, blogspot, and yahoo e-mail (as well as a g-mail address), I want to just have a "myblogface G-hoo mail account". With one password.

I just made a set of cds called my "joy of life trio" -- it's a collection of all the songs that put a big old smile on my face, whether from silly happiness, from some kind of reflective satisfied feeling, or from pure elevation. Music is so wonderful at taking us to another place. If you ask really nicely, I'll post the playlists, so you can find those songs and be cool like me. (And happy like me.)

One of my favourite bands for "elevation" these days is a Canadian instrumental group called "Do, Make, Say, Think". This is a live clip of one of their songs -- I highly, highly recommend their CDs "You, You're a History in Rust" and especially, "Winter Hymn, Country Hymn, Secret Hymn" Give them a try, if you like music that takes you on a journey. Really, seriously. You've been listening to a live clip of a song from "Winter Hymn Country Hymn, Secret Hymn" called "Frederica" that nicely shows how they play with dynamics and composition -- the sound quality's a bit poor (live recording), but the music is great.


Anyway, that's a little of what's been keeping a grin on my grill lately.

And here's one more music clip -- this might be the most beautiful live performance I've seen in my life. If you aren't into modern music, don't bother with "Do, Make, Say, Think", but if you love things of beauty at all, watch this one.

Landslide (Stevie Nicks) -- dead link. sorry.



Peace.

-Rob

Saturday, May 22, 2004

Knock-Down, Drag-Out (May 22nd 2004)

It's been a miserable, white-knuckled fight with a
cold for me these last two months (that's the
knock-down, drag-out in the subject line). So bad
that I've even taken Buckley's Mixture to poison the
cold out of my body. I'm in the midst of another one
now, one that features sinus congestion, a rasping
cough, and a ridiculous rate of tissue consumption
(tissue meaning kleenex, not any other kind of tissue
. . . I'm not THAT sick yet). (How odd that I can now
list cold features the way my students can list
features on their mp3 players.)

Last night I tried to write an e-mail to everyone, but
the computer managed to swallow the thing due to an
internet explorer/search engine glitch. This annoyed
me a lot -- I wonder what happens to all those e-mails
eaten by computers. Does some computer somewhere
store them? And why do computers only eat the
subtlest, wittiest, most brilliant, long (especially
long) e-mails? What do they want with the tastiest
bits of correspondence that makes them steal all the
best ones? I don't know, but last night in my
frustration, I sat there pondering what a
understanding computer could gain about humanity just
from the gleanings of the e-mails it eats.

On Friday morning we went to a zoo with our
kindergarten and preschool kids. This reminded me of
what a zoo should not be. (So far, most Korean zoos
I've seen have depressed me -- my jury's out on the
idea of zoos in general [Yann Martel had some
interesting insights about zoos in "Life of Pi" that
are worth turning over in one's head], but I fairly
roundly dislike Korean zoos -- too small,
uncomfortable, unnatural, crowded, and altogether
depressing.) The elephant was in a space that I could
have walked around in about four minutes, and she was
backed into a corner (where the only shade could be
had). It was obvious all she wanted to do was shrink
or be invisible. Meanwhile kids were lining up along
the fence and shouting -- screaming for it to come
out. Sad. Remind me to avoid Korean zoos if I get
another chance to see one. At least when Koreans live
in houses so small that they shove their mattress in a
closet in order to unfold the breakfast table, it's
their choice, and they could leave if the city or
emigrate if they've had it with living on the 16th
floor of a filing cabinet. The elephant didn't have
much choice about whether she wanted to be a country
elephant or a city elephant.

I'm doing mostly well. My students remain brilliant,
though I can't think, offhand, of some moment of utter
cuteness that I simply MUST share with you (sorry
about that). My brother got a good episode in an
e-mail a while ago, but I can't retell it without
losing the freshness. Recently I smirked when my
loudest student, upon my second loudest student
blurting out an incorrect answer, admonished him to
"think before you speak". Only through great
restraint did I avoid teaching them the word irony.
Nothing recently has quite reached the heights of the
boy who accidentally quoted Monty Python's Search for
the Holy Grail when he tried to sound out the bumper
sticker "I [heart] NY".

Things have been changing in my life. Recently, near
the beginning of lent, I realized that my love for
music was interfering with my progress on some of the
other passions and goals in my life. Some of you
don't know yet that I put myself on an indefinite
(until it's finished) music hiatus, as I sort out what
parts of my life I want as my top priorities. Since
then, I've been really encouraged with the way my
relationships have taken shape, and I've managed to
even meet some English speaking Christians who live in
my area. (This was something I never had last year,
but something I'm really enjoying -- I went to a bible
study on Thursday night without riding a subway for 40
minutes to get there!)

I'm also reading more, and reading the important stuff
more, and growing in my faith. So to those of you
who've been praying for me, thanks, and be assured
that there have been some encouraging results so far.
(We'll just wait to see what the next step will be.)

Other than hanging out with friends, reading, spending
time alone in thought (my journals and diaries are
filling up at about twice their usual rate), and
spending ridiculous amounts of time at school to get
all my marking done, and being amazed at how much
Korean pop one overhears in an average day, and how
much that singer/song sounds EXACTLY like Madonna's
single from last fall (except the vocals aren't as
strong . . . shudder), I'm wishing it were easy to
find NHL Playoff hockey on TV here (by the way,
congratulations, all my Albertan, and Canadian hockey
fan friends), and wishing I knew a place to find
certain favourite Korean dishes near my house.

And something else.

A pair of mondays ago (not long ago, really -- it
feels like longer) I got a call at 6:45 AM from Mom
and Dad. When the phone rings before 7 am, it's
usually not because somebody in their home church got
engaged.

They'd spoken to my sister and brother-in-law
(currently living in Germany). My nephew has always
been small, slow and a little uncoordinated for his
age: instead of playing fighting games like most 4
year olds, he would sit on the floor and play with a
train set; he preferred putting things together over
running places and climbing things. He was slow to
walk, and never really crawled. We suspected this was
because he was born 6 weeks premature.


********** if you're one of the relatives/friends who
has already heard this, and don't feel like getting
depressed by reading it again, you can skip reading
until the next bunch of asterisks.

******************************************

He'd been to a doctor, and they discovered an enzyme
in his blood that's usually found in patients whose
muscles are breaking down. The diagnosis:

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

This means his muscles will continually weaken until
his heart or lung muscles fail, somewhere in his late
teens or early 20s, barring an act of God. Duchenne
Muscular Dystrophy usually appears in young boys, and
there's no cure other than minimizing discomfort and
using various tricks to maximize mobility.

This is surprising and disappointing. It's difficult
to know how to grieve a situation that's going to be
difficult for the whole family, but currently isn't
too bad. It's hard to consider that for the next
twelve or fifteen years, this emotional process will
sort itself out, but it will take that long to unwind
itself. It hasn't, and maybe it won't, sink in, just
what the next twelve years will involve in that
aspect. I don't know how I'm going to have to support
my family, or when I'm going to need support. It's
just really . . . detatched so far.



******************************************

What I DO know now, is that my nephew is a really
loving kid, and he's surrounded with love from his
family and community, and that will lead him through a
life with more blessings than a lot of people with a
lot more longevity experience.

I don't know exactly how these things work in God's
plan, except to reflect in sadness that we live in a
hurting world, and that all things are not right on
this planet. (I'll say, though, it's difficult to
consider one's own nephew as a symbol of the whole
world's malaise. It isn't that impersonal. It's
impossible to be that impersonal with someone you
love. That's always the risk of loving someone --
that something will hit you right in the soft spot you
have for that person.) Right now my prayer is that
our family will have peace, and that however God does
these things, and whatever happens, that we trust Him,
and that His name will be glorified.

So those are a few of the things buzzing through my
head these days. I'm doing OK -- I think this whole
family thing is really hard on my Mom and Dad, who
feel really far away (it's all happenning in Germany,
where Rebecca and Frank are surrounded by support from
their church community.) So keep my parents in mind
too, if you're the praying kind.

Today I went to an amusement park with my co-workers,
and talked a few people into going on rides they
actually shouldn't have taken (not for health reasons
-- just for wooziness purposes). I forget that other
people have a very different feeling about rides than
I do. Roller coasters are like tickling: it's all in
your head, and its YOUR tension that makes the ride
scary, and the tickling tickle. If you can relax
through either, it won't bother you anymore, and (for
the rides) you can enjoy them, or (for the tickling),
you can say "stop it, that's annoying" with a really
dry, drop-dead voice. Speaking of which, I've learned
how to be a wet blanket for my students when they're
being too funny and not paying attention. It's weird
having to deflate jokes, when I spent so much time
learning how to make and enjoy them.

Today I was at a major intersection, and the green
"walk" sign had started flashing, so I had to run to
catch the light. I jogged along, when I nearly
stopped in my tracks, in the middle of the road, at
the sight of an old, toothless man who was running
hilariously (chest out, fists pumping up by his chest,
legs taking small, old-man steps very quickly, head
leaning backwards as if he were being pulled by a rope
stuck to the front of his shirt) across the
intersection in the other direction, even later than
myself. He had this delightful smile as silly and
excited as the grins of little boys running away from
the girl's bathroom at school, where they just soaked
all the toilet paper in the sink.

Six minutes later, I looked over my shoulder at a
group of five friends lined up to pose for a picture.
The photographer was counting down to take the picture
when the light turned and the "walk" sign came on, and
the five friends turned around and started crossing,
in unison, totally stranding the photographer with
nothing in her view lens. The image of the five girls
turning around without hesitation, and the lone girl
up the creek without a paddle, cracked me up for a
good five minutes more.

So life goes on. Again, I must weather a family . . .
I hesitate to use the word crisis, because it's a
crisis in slow motion . . . whilst eight time zones
away (for now) from anyone else in the family (as I
did when my father had a bout with cancer last year --
now that feels almost like family situation training
to prepare for this one). I wrote in an e-mail to my
brother last year, at Dad's cancer diagnosis, that
these kinds of things are exactly the stuff of growing
up. Maturing is borne of a million things happening,
some big, some small, some controllable, some
uncontrollable, some forgotten the next day, some
indelible. We define ourselves by how we react to
these million things that happen, and by finding peace
(or not finding peace) with the things we can and
can't change. Sometimes we're thrown into a
situation, and other times, we throw ourselves into
one. However those million things happen, hopefully
we're paying enough attention to notice them, and we
never stop listening, and never stop learning.

Bless you all.
Rob

Monday, March 08, 2004

Idle Thoughts During A Snowstorm (March 2004)

So anyway, I have no idea why I'm indoors right now,
except that I'm recovering from a cold. The snow
outside is, paraphrased from a friend's Ukrainian
saying, "climbing down ladders," a rare and beautiful
thing no matter where you are. It's perfect snow. It
crunches underfoot, and it makes perfect snowballs,
sticks to your eyelashes, but doesn't soak through
your shoes. I've been walking around the streets of
my neighbourhood in my green, snow-magnet jacket,
looking like a snowman and grinning like a cat who
just grew opposable thumbs, but hasn't told anyone he
knows how to unlock the sliding door.

I was literally blanketed in snow, when I got to the
Subway (not the transportation, but the sandwich
restaurant, which is two blocks from my house, and
SUCH a joy to have so close; all last year, I ate at
Subway ONCE, and missed it more with each Whopper I
choked down). Before stepping inside, I brushed a
small avalanche of snow off my shoulders and jacket,
and then shook my head and let fly another small
flurry from my snow-gathering curls. After clearing
almost all the fluff off of myself, I looked up, and
the three employees in the Subway were all watching me
and laughing away. I was in such a good mood I didn't
even mind. When I left the restaurant, I crossed
paths with another foreigner named Colleen, from
Portland, who said "how long have you been here?"
I said, "Just over a week."
She said, "No wonder you're so friendly."

(often foreigners in Korea start off with this "golly
gee whiz" feel, and go up to any foreigner they meet,
and say silly things like "Hey! You speak English and
I have no friends! Can I buy you a coffee? A donut?
A car? What if I just follow you around for a while?"
-- and then as they get used to Korea, they get more
and more surly, until they'll pass a foreigner in the
street without even nodding at them -- as if they were
in Paris or something.)

Then I explained that actually I was just in a good
mood because of the beautiful snow, and we talked for
a while about Autumns in Ontario (where I grew up) and
New Hampshire (where she grew up), and made each other
homesick for a while, but otherwise hit it off rather
nicely. It always helps to have friends who live in
your neighbourhood.

It's been an interesting week. I caught a nasty cold
in my first week back (last time I came to Korea one
of the first things I did was get sick as well -- I
think it's part of my body adjusting to a new climate,
diet, etc.). Monday was a holiday here -- Korean
Independance Movement Day (leave it to a Canadian to
forget whether Independence is spelled with an "A" or
an "E"), the day when a Korean started the uprising
that eventually ended Japan's occupation of Korea. I
took it easy that day (I'd already had a lot of fun
that weekend, including taking a friend to that Indian
restaurant (Swagat) I visited with my old roommate
Dave, where he scoffed when I told them "I'll be
back"), but I was up six times on Monday night with a
throat as dry as anything I'd ever felt. It hurt to
swallow, and the next morning I had such a nasty sore
throat/headache combination that I called in sick on
my first day of work. I had wanted to get started on
the right foot, but instead I got started flat on my
back, sucking on a humidifier. Not only that, I asked
my boss to take me to a doctor's office that
afternoon, and since I had no cash, asked her to foot
the bill as well! Turns out I had an ulcer (an
ULCER!) on my right tonsil (and I'm sure my med-school
buddy - you know who you are - will tell me all about
that shortly), but I'm on a few antibiotics and
painkillers and I'm actually feeling quite well
compared to Tuesday evening.

So in the end, I missed my first two days, ate nothing
but rice cereal and orange juice for half the week,
and rented a couple of mostly decent movies when I
couldn't sleep anymore, but reading still made my
headache worse.

I haven't even tried, but somehow my students, before
I even came into the classrooms, had me tagged as a
"funny teacher". I've realized that if I want a class
of kids to take me seriously at all, I have to walk in
the room with a sour, mean face, to let them know that
while we're in class, I mean business. Also, since my
throat is the source of my sickness, my voice is 50%
at best, so I absolutely can't shout over students
when they're noisy. I trained them all to hush up
immediately when I clap my hands twice. Even the
kindergarten kids got that. I think I'm going to hang
onto that. Or maybe even find something quieter
still. I've learned the best way to handle a class of
kids is not with a sledge-hammer -- by being even
LOUDER than they are -- but with a scythe -- somthing
quiet and sharp that stops them right at the root of
the noise.

I'd forgotten what a pleasure it is to teach. I
really do enjoy getting in the class. After a month
of being excited/terrified of this new school which
normally only hires people with education degrees,
which has really high quality/professionalism
standards, it was really a relief to just plain get
into the class with the students and do some
old-fashioned teaching. (That's old fashioned
teaching as in actual teaching with students, as
opposed to thinking about/reading about/worrying about
teaching; it's not old fashioned teaching as in I got
out the slates, straps and rulers and handed out some
good corporal lashings). Teaching really does make me
feel good. This school's students are SO bright
compared to my last school -- fluent, with great
attitudes! They'll have conversations with you
outside of class, speaking in complete sentences! If
not for the accents, I'd think I were teaching back in
Canada sometimes. This is really fun. And the stuff
they learn -- most of the classes are within a year of
studying the same material kids their age are studying
in Elementary schools in California! Except how many
Californian grade schoolers can tell you the
difference between a pronoun and an adjective (come on
Angela -- what's the difference? MY students know.
Do you (even though you're not from California)?)

I'm teaching Kindergarten, which is also really fun.
After my first class -- I hadn't met these kids fifty
minutes before -- two of the girls already wanted to
come up and give me hugs, just for being there and
making a noise like a chicken (or maybe THAT's why
they all think I'm a funny teacher. hmmm).

I think I'm really going to like this. A lot.

And golly, it's fun writing to a bunch of native
English speakers, to whom I can write as strangely and
colourfully as I wish, and who will almost all still
catch almost all of what I'm saying. (If you're
having any trouble, ask your mom. You know who you
are. Dan.)

heh heh heh.

It's been really nice being in Seoul this time around,
because I already know how to survive -- last year it
took me until March or even May to really feel like I
could get through a day without any big troubles, but
this time I arrived already knowing how to use the
busses, how to read a subway map, how to read the menu
at a restaurant, how to ask if it had dairy in it (it
never does), etc..

Anyway, this letter may match the tone of my first few
letters my last time around, except maybe now that
I've been around the block once (as well as through
the wringer), that tone is tempered with a little more
savvy. One of my friends wished my letters could
always be so chipper, and match those of another
friend who's now teaching in Taiwan, but I don't think
I'd be able to write anything other than how I'm
feeling in an e-mail like this, and I don't think I'd
want to anyway. Sorry (you know who YOU are, too.)

So maybe my next e-mail will be melancholy and
introspective, or thought-provoking and philosophical,
or bubbly and joyful, but I hope they're never flip or
trite, because I think I owe it to you, my loyal
friends and family in Canada/USA/Red Deer, to give you
slices of the real, no-punches-pulled me, in the real,
no-warts(or-wonders)-concealed Korea.

All my love

Rob "Now I'm going to go get more snow in my
eyelashes" Ouwehand

footnotes:
Dave: your e-mail was awesome, and I'll respond to it
personally soon.
Melissa: I keep telling everyone here how wonderful
Ayden and your family is.
Kristopher: This school definitely looks like a
keeper. I've only had one day of classes so far, but
I enjoyed it a lot, despite a headache and no voice.
Angela: I JUST got your e-mail now. E-mails take
longer to reach me because I'm asleep when you send
them, and you're asleep when I answer them, AND I
don't check as often now that I have to go to an
internet cafe to check. Korean kids DO only go to
school from 9-12 AM, but then they go to after-school
schools (Math, or Science, or English, or Piano, or
Taekwondo, or Soccer, or Swimming, or several of the
above) somtimes until 7:00 or even 9:00 at night! And
yes, they go to school on Saturday. But not to our
school. Most Koreans go to work on Saturday too. And
sorry, I don't have a saxophone you can borrow. But I
do have a purple walking puppet named Apostrophe Bill
you can use -- though I'll need him back when I come
home.

Dad (and everyone else)
My address (so you can send me presents, or even just
funny/cheeky/scenic postcards) is:

and, sorry to sound like a beggar, Dad, but could you
include in the package with the documents and
papermate pens, if you can, two more items? -- 1. a 2
ft by 4 ft (or something thereabouts) Canadian Flag
for display, and 2. a water bottle belt-loop hook,
like the one Mom gave you a couple of Christmasses
ago? That's all, I swear! Feel free to deduct those
amounts from money I send home, too. Thanks a
million.

a few English errors my kids made:
"Two small words coming together into one word is a. .
. "
"Complain word!" (compound word)

the book said "I see two hedgehogs."
he read "I see two hot dogs."

and for some reason they wouldn't stop laughing every
time I said the word "Judge" -- it was being used in
the "judge not" context, but they kept pounding their
fists like gavels on the desk. I explained that it
was the same word -- a Judge judges people -- but it
still cracked them up.

and one more for the road, for anyone with the
endurance to read this far (you brilliant troopers):

I didn't know why Koreans kept mispronouncing the word
"Doctor" and laughing, 'till a former co-worker
explained. Ddokk is the Korean word for chicken, and
Toll is the Korean word for fur or feathers. So if
you mispronounce "doctor" in a particularly Korean
way, it sounds like "It took two chicken feathers to
fix my ribs!"

one more time, as always with love,
Rob

Wednesday, July 16, 2003

Allergy Update (July 2003)

Because I've received some concerned e-mails. . .

I'm doing fine in regards to the allergy stuff. The
doctor gave me some pills to take for a few days, and
the lump in my throat went away nicely after about
twenty-four hours. My old roommate Dave (who goes
back to USA tomorrow to attend Medical School at . . .
I think Columbia in NYC), asked one of his doctor
friends about my allergy and she told him that an
allergy to the noodles I ate on Wednesday, and a shock
reaction like I had, is a common enough occurrence.
I'll also tell you what I hear from the allergy
specialist on Monday as soon as possible.

Regarding my ankle, the ligament that got pulled was
one associated with my fibula, not my tibia. The
fibula is the smaller of the two lower leg bones, and
it is NOT the weight-bearing bone; its purpose is more
for support and maybe balance. That means that now, a
week after my injury (almost exactly), I can walk with
barely a limp, and I only feel pain when I've climbed
too many stairs or bent my foot in a direction it
doesn't like. So within a week I am back on my feet
and (almost) as mobile as ever. I won't attack any
hiking trails yet, but my coworker (who recently ALSO
injured his ankle) agrees that I was really lucky as
ankle injuries go.

So things are going well; I have a vial of epinephrine
(adrenaline) and a syringe that the doctors gave me on
Wednesday so that if I have another allergic reaction
I can inject myself instead of first going to the
hospital. I feel a lot better having that on hand,
even though I'm now one of those people who has to
carry a vial of adrenaline with him in case things get
out of hand. But on Monday or Tuesday they'll give me
a list of things not to eat and you may never hear
about it again, so that's good.

The two new teachers at our school are remarkable.
They arrived on Tuesday night from Toronto Ontario and
Hull Quebec and on Friday night, because they have a
week off before classes start, they decided to buy
tickets to Bangkok leaving on Saturday! They also
headed out into Seoul on their own, armed with nothing
but the Korean phrase book they bought, and ran a
single errand on their own which is quite impressive
for the first week. They were sad not to finish all
seven errands they had meant to accomplish, but it
took me a week to buy shampoo when I got here (only to
find out at the pharmacy that the Korean word for
shampoo is . . . "shampoo"), so I think they'll do
just fine.

Anyway, I have to buy a going away present for my
roommate.

Thanks for your concern, and I'll write you again once
I've seen the allergy specialist.

God Bless
Rob Ouwehand