SICKO

The lady at the kimbap shop knows my order now. This pleases me obscurely.

In other news, being sick in Korea is THE WORST. I've been very ill twice now in three weeks, and man, it sucks. A breakdown for the viewers at home:

a) you are not at home, so nobody you know can take care of you. the worst.
b) doctors do not generally speak your language, and if this is Korea, they offer you a variety of creepy placebos like shots - without having diagnosed you yet - or caffeine pills, so you can keep working. the worst.
c) if you work in a hagwon, you're going to work no matter what, baby. the only sick day I managed to wrangle out of all of this was actually 2/3 of a sick day, I had to teach for three hours anyway. THE WORST.

I'm working on a theory about the virulence of foreign germs which is less a "theory" and more really obvious, but man - I was not expecting to get attacked this way. I was okay in England! So clearly I should be IMMUNE to foreign germs.

Sigh.

The first illness (flu or food poisoning? you decide) probably arose from a bizarre occasion three weeks ago on which the owner of LCI and his wife took the teachers out for seafood barbecue, which in Korea means throwing live seafood on a grill until it is dead and then eating it. We were all extremely polite and ate at least some of it. And we were all promptly sick afterwards, although I think I'm the only one who actually had to see a doctor.

That outing was bizarre not really because of the food, which was not the biggest Korean surprise I've come across (live baby octopus is the biggest surprise. it was that) but also because the owners invited us for a walk on the beach afterwards, so they could take pleasant group photos, and then out to some early afternoon noraebong, or karaoke. (Noraebong - and Japanese karaoke, I hear - is like American karaoke on acid. Colored lights, weird sound effects, bewildering animated music video clips - it's a queasy experience.) The whole excursion took basically the entire day, when we'd thought it was just lunch. It was like the weirdest date we'd ever collectively been on, and man, watching your boss and your boss's boss sing watery pop songs at 3 pm at what is clearly intended to be a nighttime activity is pretty strange way to spend your afternoon.

They day trip did finish on a "Hey, cool!" note when we ran into some Korean celebrities! The upcoming (just released?) Korean drama "Birth of the Rich" was filming right around where we ate lunch. AWESOME. We stalked the stars and snapped cameraphone pics, even though we weren't sure who they were (we saw one of the guys and one of the girls on that poster; don't ask me who), and we asked a million questions of this one cameraman who spoke English. He said he couldn't get us any bit parts on the show as Westerners. So sad. But we speak ENGLISH! Isn't that exotic?!

So that's one of the weirdest experiences I've had in Korea so far. I still have the secret hope that some drama producer will see me on the street, notice that I'm American, and cast me in something, as that appears to be how they hired the Westerners who are already in dramas. A blonde in "Boys over Flowers" who was supposed to be a world-class chef read her lines like it was a ransom note and she was being videotaped at gunpoint. I could do that! Call me, Korean producers!