Falling for Autumn

Oh where to begin?! I am coming up on the end of my 5th month here in SK, which means I am almost half way through my journey. What a journey it has been! I have met some fantastic and not so fantastic people along the way so far.

I have been branching out on my own, going grocery shopping is no longer scary! I even travel to other cities where they have larger stores that have some of my favorites like cheese and tortillas. YAY! My friends have been showing me places in Seoul to visit where there is much shopping to be had. I don't know if it is a good or bad thing that the women's shoe sizes here are too small for me. Another odd thing, when clothes shopping, people are not allowed to try clothing on in the store....

Autumn is here, thankfully! It seems that in one night the temps have dropped at least 10 degrees and I am once again able to enjoy walking to work and sleeping. I even broke out the jeans again. My students are getting ready for their mid term exams next week, which means I have plenty of time with no classes again.

Yesterday as I was walking downtown from school I had a great fall... rather I decided that the ground needed to be taught a lesson but I lost. If you remember I fell a few months ago too, same thing happened except this time it was in the middle of an intersection with at least 100 of my students watching... yeah a slight bit of embarrassment!

Flash forward to this morning and my friends convinced me that I needed to go to the hospital to have my ankle looked at. Annie called a taxi to come get me and take me to the hospital, there are not general doctor offices here so everyone just goes to the hospital. Walking into the hospital I felt a huge wave of panic flow through me. Dozens of people waiting in lines, signs in Korean that I had no idea how to read, and no one speaking English. I fought back tears as I called Annie for direction on how to proceed.

Taking a number and waiting in line, I was finally called and able to communicate enough that I had fallen and had a "sick" ankle, give out my primary information and was then directed to where I would need to go wait for another 2 1/2 hours to see a Dr. My turn finally came up and again we stumbled through what was wrong, it took about 5 minutes for him to send me to x-ray. I only have a severe sprain, nothing is broken. I just have a half cast and crutches and have been told to keep it on for 2-3 weeks. Spending 5 hours in the hospital in a foreign country where you have no one to rely on is fairly stressful. I can chalk this up to one more experience to make me stronger! :)

I was also given a shot and some meds that the awesome taxi driver was wonderful enough to go get for me and take me all the way to  my house. I am not sure what concerns me more, the fact that I was given these pills and shot with no explanation of what they are or what they do and if there are any side affects or that I don't' really care and am just taking them... The things we do when given the choice of pain or comfort!

This is how I was feeling 2.5 hours at the hospital

 

 

 

 

The end result

A bit of a drink

Greetings! I suppose it's time for another post and as I have been doing quite a bit socially (as in going out dancing and a bit of drinking), I thought it an appropriate time to talk about some of the differences I have noticed here and at home.

Drinking in SK is HUGE. I don't mean just an occasional weekday drink with partying on the weekends. No my friends, here in SK it isn't uncommon to see construction workers guzzling soju (Korean alcohol) while in the midst of their duties. I kid you not, the workers that are building houses around me have a mini fridge outside that they keep stocked with soju. There are always SEVERAL bottles laying around and I see them drinking as early as 7:30 am when I am leaving for school. At first I was taken aback by this, however it seems to be so common that I don't even think twice about it.

Another phenom in SK is public drunkenness/ blacking out. In fact there is an entire blog devoted to the photos of people blacked out. For the curious, you can check it out here: http://blackoutkorea.blogspot.kr/
Most of the time the people that I have seen and are documented being passed out in public are males, but I have seen both men and women in this position. The thing that amazes me is how the Koreans mostly turn a blind eye to those sprawled out on the street/ sidewalk laying in their own filth. No, these are not homeless people either. I have seen businessmen in their suits sprawled out... CRAZY! The fact that people don't offer to help and that their wallets/ personal items remain in tact also boggles my mind.

Just two days ago I was with a friend, waiting on another friend, at the bus terminal. There was an older man so intoxicated that while two people were actually trying to help him get to the bus, he fell down pulling them down on top of him. The 50 or so other people standing around didn't even bat an eye at this. Next thing we know, the bus is starting to pull away while the drunk man is half way under the bus. Luckily they were able to get the driver to stop before running the guy over. Oh, that is a completely different topic that I need to talk about too... the bus and taxi drivers here. Anyway, my friends and I finally got on our bus and got back to Pocheon about 6 hours later only to see that the man was now passed out at the bus stop!

i hear of many teachers who go out with their co-workers on weeknights and get totally bombed. Luckily for me, many of my co teachers live far away and none seem to do that or if they do, I am not invited. Though I prefer to think they are a bit above the continual drinking. I suppose if I had grown up in this culture I may be more used to it, as it is I just do not understand.This isn't something that just happens in the big cities either, as my town is quite a bit smaller and I have heard from friends in even smaller towns that they see the blackouts too. I wonder how the "responsible" drinking campaigns would go over here?

Stay safe and drink responsible my people!

-Cheers! :)