Your Korea Word of the Day is…

Uisa (we-sah)

In English…

Doctor

Going to the doctor here can be hit or miss if you don’t speak Korean. When I lived in Yangsan, there was a health clinic right across the street from the school. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a regular staff, just rotating doctors from PNU (Pusan National University). I developed bronchitis early in the spring. I happen to have quite a few drug allergies. I told the doctor there that I couldn’t take penicillin (which was the first thing he prescribed). He then rewrote the prescription for Amoxicillin. Okay…. that would be a penicillin derivative. So I tell him that I can’t take that either. So he rewrites the prescription for Ampicillin. Ummm… yeah. That would be a penicillin derivative too. At that point I gave up. I had a broad spectrum antibiotic I had brought with me. So I just took that.

I was a bit anxious when I went to the clinic on Thursday. I had no idea how well the doctor would speak English or how competent he was (believe me, I’ve had quite a few incompetent American doctors, so this isn’t a dig at Korean doctors). So I get in there and explain what was wrong. His English was excellent. He worked on an American army base for a while.

Turns out that I had a sinus infection, two ear infections and bronchitis. Yeah. It was a great way to spend my one week of summer break. He ended up writing me a prescription for an antibiotic (one that I can actually take), a steroid, a decongestant, an antihistamine, a bronchodilator, and a cough suppressant containing codeine. Amazingly he didn’t include Tylenol in the mix. It seemed like every prescription I got in Yangsan contained Tylenol.

So between the steroids making me nasty (a common side effect), the bronchodilator making me wired (again a common side effect) and the codeine making me loopy (you guessed it, another common side effect), I’ve been in a strange mood.

I’ve actually spent the bulk of my vacation asleep in bed. It’s hard to do anything when you can’t breathe.

So tomorrow it’s back to work. At least I’m off the steroids so I won’t bite off the head of the first kid to bug me.

Bless the intelligent folks who are working on Babel Fish. On Wednesday I went walking around the city trying to find a cell phone store where the clerk spoke some English. The first challenge was finding a store that actually could do a KTF contract for me (stores that did LG were every place). The second challenge was communicating with said clerks.

I finally found a store that could do what I needed them to do. Given the insane number of cell phone stores on the main road, it took me a surprisingly long time to find one.  And happily it’s about a two minute walk from my apartment.

We got most of the contract figured out with a lot of pointing and pantomime. Even if I had brought along my “Korean in Plain English” book, it wouldn’t have done a whole lot of good in this situation.

After being stuck for 10 minutes I wrote down Babel Fish’s web address and pointed to the computer. We got on Internet Explorer and with the help of Babel Fish, we were done in five minutes.

I also needed a charger for my phone.  I was surprised that the battery was still almost fully charged after sitting in my closet in Ohio for nearly a year.  So I opened up the little charging dock on my phone and said “chu-say-yo” (please give me).  The clerk (wonderful woman she was), hands me a box.  I open my wallet.  She says “No.  Service.”.

I’ll explain service better in the future, but essentially, she gave me the charger for my phone absolutely free.

Koreans are some of the most generous people I’ve ever met.