Korean Style or How I swallowed poop
I'm sick. And not the perverted kind of sick that turns everything into a euphemism about sex. It's been two weeks and I still feel like I'm going to vomit every time I put something in my mouth. I get dizzy on cue at 10 am and it lasts until just after one o'clock. Every time I eat, I feel it starting to creep back up my esophagus, threatening to cover everyone around me in stomach bile. I stopped eating, but that only made me faint and feel like I was in some sort of slow motion movie. I'm not pregnant (although I'm sure some of you reading this would like to argue that maybe I am, I can assure you...I am not) The trouble with curing this pesky little problem is that I have no idea where it came from or how I got it.
It started after white water rafting. Well, maybe "rafting" is the wrong word. It was more of a cross land adventure. For one of the two three-day weekends in May, the director of my hogwan and my supervisor, organized an overnight rafting trip on the mighty Han Tan River. They rented a pension, which I later learned is really just a fancy way to say a condo stripped of all furniture, cooking utensils, toilet paper, and any other bare essentials one might need for an overnight adventure.
On Saturday morning, after loading three cars full of meckchu (beer), soju, fish flavored pringles, orange juice, cookies, 8 wide eyed foreigners, and 8 overdressed Koreans, we headed out on the road.
After an hour of driving, staring out the window, waiting to see some sign of untouched nature, I saw something else instead. Lying in the middle of the road, with a car in front and a car in back, was a man, curled into fetal position, his bike a mangled pile a few feet from his body. The drivers of the vehicles were yelling at each other, both trying to point the blame on the other, while the man on the road lay motionless. We all stared in hushed horror, until we noticed the police car behind us, assured he had been summoned to the rescue. But as we passed the scene, so did the police officer, after craning his neck to get a better look at the carnage. We kept driving, the policeman in close pursuit, until several minutes later he turned off on a side road in the opposite direction of the accident. I don't know the protocol, but it seemed like a bit of an oxymoron.
Once we arrived at the Han Tan River, we suited up in our "one-size fits all" life vests and helmets. In pictures, you can see my helmet was apparently not a "fits all" type, as it is hanging lopsided off the back of my head. Thankfully, white water was nowhere to be seen. As was water in general. Our raft guide explained in Korean, as we all trekked our raft down a steep embankment, that May is not the season to white water raft and that the river is extremely low. Unfortunately, he explained, there would be a few places we would have to get out and walk. It may have been the understatement of the year.
Two minutes after piling into the raft, rowing our way to the other side of the river, he told us all to get out and walk. We did, watching our 5'2'' guide try to maneuver a 10 person raft over two inches of water and large flat rocks, as we plodded along in our life vests. Back on the raft, our guide informed us that the Han Tan River was the cleanest river in South Korea. I looked down at the murky, green water, with its layer of brown scum over the top. Just as I looked up, he began pushing us all in and we plopped off the raft like Humpty Dumpty, and into the depths of the murky Han Tan. This is where I think I swallowed some poop, as my helmet bobbed above the water and my cheap five dollar sun glasses sank to the bottom.
The remainder of our rafting trip was spent jumping up on the count of three every several minutes to get us unlodged from some rock we'd managed to high center our raft on and getting out of the raft to scale our way over some rocks as our guide tried to push our raft over all the low water spots. I think 2 out of the 3 hours was spent on dry land.
But, the scenery was amazing as the river meandered through deep canyons of flat granite, past a jutting rock with a Korean temple overlooking the river, and purple hyacinths sprouting from the cracks in the rocks.
Upon our return to the pension, we discovered that all 16 of us would be sprawled out on the floor to sleep, like one giant slumber party, complete with ghost stories, told by yours truly. No one got much sleep, with all the groaning of sore backs, and exclamations of "It's so hot," as the floor heated up throughout the night.
Two days later, I felt sick. It started with just an aversion to food, everything making my stomach threaten to expel its insides. And by that Friday, I was so cranky and tired from not eating and constantly feeling sick, that I told my last class of the day, a group of rambunctious eleven and twelve year old boys, to, "Shut up!" They stared at me in stunned silence as I glared at them, only to start laughing. "Teacher, bad word," they said, pointing at me. I hated them, mocking my nutrient starved brain.
I spent the weekend in bed, too weak to muster up the energy to move, let alone bathe. I ate Korean porridge, forcing myself to eat even though it only made me feel worse. When it came time to return to work, I felt so sick, I fainted. I called in sick and they took me to the hospital. A Korean hospital, where their procedures are a term I dubbed, "Korean Style." A doctor felt my stomach for 30 seconds, prescribed me some pills and told me if I didn't feel better to come back in two days. This seems to be the norm. As if trial and error is better than doing nothing at all. I returned to work the next day and have spent the last week forcing myself to eat.
I went to another doctor, who finally asked more in depth questions and was somewhat annoyed when I told him I didn't know what the cause of my nausea was. (Wasn't that what I was doing in his office?). On Monday, I'll return to see what the results of my blood tests were, but so far, I think the whole poop explanation is the most plausible.
It started after white water rafting. Well, maybe "rafting" is the wrong word. It was more of a cross land adventure. For one of the two three-day weekends in May, the director of my hogwan and my supervisor, organized an overnight rafting trip on the mighty Han Tan River. They rented a pension, which I later learned is really just a fancy way to say a condo stripped of all furniture, cooking utensils, toilet paper, and any other bare essentials one might need for an overnight adventure.
On Saturday morning, after loading three cars full of meckchu (beer), soju, fish flavored pringles, orange juice, cookies, 8 wide eyed foreigners, and 8 overdressed Koreans, we headed out on the road.
After an hour of driving, staring out the window, waiting to see some sign of untouched nature, I saw something else instead. Lying in the middle of the road, with a car in front and a car in back, was a man, curled into fetal position, his bike a mangled pile a few feet from his body. The drivers of the vehicles were yelling at each other, both trying to point the blame on the other, while the man on the road lay motionless. We all stared in hushed horror, until we noticed the police car behind us, assured he had been summoned to the rescue. But as we passed the scene, so did the police officer, after craning his neck to get a better look at the carnage. We kept driving, the policeman in close pursuit, until several minutes later he turned off on a side road in the opposite direction of the accident. I don't know the protocol, but it seemed like a bit of an oxymoron.
Once we arrived at the Han Tan River, we suited up in our "one-size fits all" life vests and helmets. In pictures, you can see my helmet was apparently not a "fits all" type, as it is hanging lopsided off the back of my head. Thankfully, white water was nowhere to be seen. As was water in general. Our raft guide explained in Korean, as we all trekked our raft down a steep embankment, that May is not the season to white water raft and that the river is extremely low. Unfortunately, he explained, there would be a few places we would have to get out and walk. It may have been the understatement of the year.
Two minutes after piling into the raft, rowing our way to the other side of the river, he told us all to get out and walk. We did, watching our 5'2'' guide try to maneuver a 10 person raft over two inches of water and large flat rocks, as we plodded along in our life vests. Back on the raft, our guide informed us that the Han Tan River was the cleanest river in South Korea. I looked down at the murky, green water, with its layer of brown scum over the top. Just as I looked up, he began pushing us all in and we plopped off the raft like Humpty Dumpty, and into the depths of the murky Han Tan. This is where I think I swallowed some poop, as my helmet bobbed above the water and my cheap five dollar sun glasses sank to the bottom.
The remainder of our rafting trip was spent jumping up on the count of three every several minutes to get us unlodged from some rock we'd managed to high center our raft on and getting out of the raft to scale our way over some rocks as our guide tried to push our raft over all the low water spots. I think 2 out of the 3 hours was spent on dry land.
But, the scenery was amazing as the river meandered through deep canyons of flat granite, past a jutting rock with a Korean temple overlooking the river, and purple hyacinths sprouting from the cracks in the rocks.
Upon our return to the pension, we discovered that all 16 of us would be sprawled out on the floor to sleep, like one giant slumber party, complete with ghost stories, told by yours truly. No one got much sleep, with all the groaning of sore backs, and exclamations of "It's so hot," as the floor heated up throughout the night.
Two days later, I felt sick. It started with just an aversion to food, everything making my stomach threaten to expel its insides. And by that Friday, I was so cranky and tired from not eating and constantly feeling sick, that I told my last class of the day, a group of rambunctious eleven and twelve year old boys, to, "Shut up!" They stared at me in stunned silence as I glared at them, only to start laughing. "Teacher, bad word," they said, pointing at me. I hated them, mocking my nutrient starved brain.
I spent the weekend in bed, too weak to muster up the energy to move, let alone bathe. I ate Korean porridge, forcing myself to eat even though it only made me feel worse. When it came time to return to work, I felt so sick, I fainted. I called in sick and they took me to the hospital. A Korean hospital, where their procedures are a term I dubbed, "Korean Style." A doctor felt my stomach for 30 seconds, prescribed me some pills and told me if I didn't feel better to come back in two days. This seems to be the norm. As if trial and error is better than doing nothing at all. I returned to work the next day and have spent the last week forcing myself to eat.
I went to another doctor, who finally asked more in depth questions and was somewhat annoyed when I told him I didn't know what the cause of my nausea was. (Wasn't that what I was doing in his office?). On Monday, I'll return to see what the results of my blood tests were, but so far, I think the whole poop explanation is the most plausible.
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