Just a quick note to say I’m back home.
After 10 days of IV antibiotics the doctor judged my chest sufficiently better enough to let me go. That’s not to say everything is hunky dory. I have to go back on Thursday for a follow up. Hopefully my lungs will behave and have improved even more.
I swear if I see a tray with rice, soup and kimchi on it any time soon, I’ll scream. Ten days times three meals a day is a heck of a lot of rice.
I was doing a lot better by Sunday afternoon. My cough had pretty much gone away and I was sleeping a lot better. By Monday evening, I was back to square one.
I think a big part of it is all the dust from the renovations at the school. I can smell something odd on the first floor where they’re doing a lot of sanding of the plaster.
So the doctor (a different one) upon hearing my hacking cough (and me possibly blowing out his ear drums by coughing while he had the stethoscope in his ears) ordered a chest x-ray.
It came back and all he said is that he saw non-specific changes on the x-ray. To me, that doesn’t sound particularly good. But I was relieved to know I didn’t have pneumonia or anything like that.
So he sent me to the infusion clinic for IV steroids and antibiotics. I sat there for an hour or so with the IV in just reading a magazine (Scientific American, if you’re interested). He then wrote me a prescription for more of what the last doctor prescribed, but with a higher dosage and longer course of steroids.
So I’m back to bouncing around between nasty, loopy and wired. On top of it, my stomach is killing me. I’m not a happy camper right now.
Luckily, the kindergarteners are off at a camp for one more day. So I don’t have anything until 12:50 tomorrow, and that’s just a meeting.
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.
We had some thunderstorms roll through the area a few hours ago. It went from pretty close to 100F to 70F.
The storms were pretty nasty with a lot of lightening and thunder and heavy rains. I shut down the computers and disconnected the DSL modem and router. I’m not much into frying them for no good reason.
I opened up the sliding door on my balcony and let the cool air in. It’s still raining off and on. I might just take a walk in the rain and grab some dinner from the Kimbob restaurant.
Yesterday I went to Lotte Mart to finally do some grocery shopping and buy some much needed things for my apartment (a wireless router being the primary one). With two large pillows and three bags of groceries and my bag full of work stuff and my purse, I wasn’t eager to walk the mile back to my apartment. So I caught a cab.
Now I have had extensive experience with the cab drivers in Yangsan, where I lived the last time. They generally drove like nuts, but I never feared for my life. Last night, I really thought I was going to die.
It seems like the little things we take for granted in the US don’t apply here. You know, the small things, like stopping for red lights and not driving the wrong way down one way streets.
The part of Ulsan I live in is dominated by one major road and tons of one way back streets. I live and work on one such street.
So this cab driver last night did a u-turn onto that very large, very busy road. Then he turned left on red. Then he started weaving through the back streets going way faster than I ever would (and I’m not known for driving particularly slow).
I’m sure this cab driver is a very nice man. But I think I’ll pass out if I ever see him again. I was shaking so badly, I could barely get out of the cab and into the apartment building.
I was struggling to get all of my stuff up three flights of steps. A nice gentleman who lived on the second floor saw me struggling up the steps and took pity on me. He carried all of my stuff from Lotte Mart up to my apartment for me and brought it into the kitchen (thank goodness it was clean, LOL). I must have said thank you about twenty times.
I know how to cook exactly one Korean dish. And as I had it for dinner tonight, I decided to take some pictures along the way and teach the rest of you how to make Kim Chi Chun.
Kim Chi Chun is like a savory pancake. It’s extremely easy to make. Heck, even I can do it. Sorry about the fuzzy measurements below. I do this by eye as I have no measuring cups or spoons. And it’s not like baking where all the amounts need to be precise. As long as your batter is about the same consistency as pancake batter, you’ll be fine.
Start by assembling your ingredients. You’ll need flour (just plain old white flour will do), water, Kim chi, oil and salt (optional).
Then get all of your tools together. You’ll need a frying pan, a spatula, a cutting board, scissors, a spoon and a bowl.
Dump some flour into the bowl (I think I used about a cup) and pour some water over it (a 1/3 of a cup maybe) and mix. The consistency should be the same as pancake batter.
Open the bag of kim chi and pour the liquid into the bowl. Then take your scissors and shred the kim chi.
Dump the Kim chi into the batter and mix well.
Now put a couple of tablespoons of oil in your skillet and heat it up. Once it’s hot, pour some of the batter into the skillet. They should be the size of small pancakes.
When they have cooked a minute or so, flip them. This is the same as if you were making breakfast pancakes.
Cook until no more batter oozes out when you press on them with a spatula. Put them on a plate and sprinkle with a tiny bit of salt. This, of course, is optional if you’re watching your sodium intake.
Serve with soy sauce for dipping. Again, this is optional if you don’t like soy sauce or you’re watching your sodium intake.
Personally, I prefer them without the soy sauce, but I was having some serious salt cravings this evening, so I decided to go for the dipping.
And there you have it. Your first Korean dish in nine easy steps. Enjoy!
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