Health Check

As I have mentioned earlier, Nate and I both need to get our health check's completed before we are able to apply for our Alien Resident Card and subsequently open a bank account here in South Korea. Joseph has been promising that he would take us to the hospital ever since we got back from Fukuoka but the date remained elusive.

Finally, two Friday's ago he assured us that he would take us in for our health check the following Monday morning at 11:00am. By the time Monday rolled around I was more than sure that Joseph had forgotten this promise (he truly is an American who was accidentally and unfortunately born into the rigorous world of Korea) but decided to wake up early anyways. . .just in case! I called Joseph but got no response until later that day at work when he said we would be going to the hospital the following day, Tuesday!

As you will note a few posts back, we were also told not to eat or drink anything, even water, for the 12 hours preceding our visit. . .this made for a grumpy night and even worse morning!

I woke around 10:45am, not planning on giving myself enough time to even contemplate breakfast as it was clearly against the rules. By 11:00am I had called Nate and we agreed to meet downstairs, figuring Joseph would swing by in his car and pick us up. On my way down I rang Joseph just to double check where we should meet him.

I was greeted on the other end with a sleepy, "Hello? A-dam? One more hours! Then we go."

Ummmm, great. Thanks Joseph. I'm glad I woke up earlier than normal so you could have an extra hour of sleep! Rather than go back to bed, which would have been pointless, Nate and I decided to just take an early morning stroll around Junggye-dong, grumbling about Joseph's Americanized habits the whole way.

We wandered through two or three different small parks that seem to be very common throughout Seoul, even in towards the bustling city center. These parks are usually only a portion of a block but they are lined with relatively large trees and always have some sort of winding path weaving through with plenty of exercise equipment to boot. My favorite is the spinning disk that I assume one stands on and twists back and forth for some kind of abdominal workout but I have adapted to use in experimenting with accelerating rotational forces! We also came across a soccer field that was surrounded by a track! Not a bad find even though the field was entirely dirt and the track couldn't have been any longer than 300m. . . perhaps I'll make it back there one day either with my running shoes or a ball!

Eventually we wandered back to Dootavill to realize that we had only managed to kill a half an hour! Arggh, what to do!? It didn't take long for us to realize that the woman at the real estate office had opened up the video game systems outside so we plopped down on a tot sized bench and banged out a couple games of Tekken until Joseph called. . .at noon.

We met him and Bryn, also in need of a health check, in between our Dootavill buildings and piled in to Josephs car. To make the entire situation worse, we soon learned that Bryn had been eating all night and all morning as he mistook 10 o'clock to mean 10 am as the stop time for eating! So while Nate and I are sitting in the back stomachs growling, Bryn's cheerily telling us about his dinner, late night snack, and heaping breakfast. . .fantastic. It was only a short five minute ride to the hospital that stands right across from our ever familiar Hagye Station.

Inside one of the first things I noticed was the hospital's name. . .Eulji. . . not sure if it resonates with you but this is a little close to Eulogy, especially for a hospital! Oh well, I'm just here for a health check I figured. . .or was I!?

We filled out some brief paperwork and gave the completed forms along with our passports to Joseph who took them to the desk and told us to wait. I asked how long we could expect to wait and he simply shrugged, "Hoshpital, you know?!" Yep, I know, looks like it's the same everywhere!

About a half an hour later Joseph was ushered to the desk, picked up our papers, and led us on the first leg of our merry journey through Eulji Hospital.

Our first stop on Tour de Hospital was the Dentist! I hopped in a chair and was immediately examined by someone prodding around in my mouth with only a mirror, or at least I think that's all there was! No scrapping, no harsh flossing, no nothing but a visual exam! This I could get used to! Within five minutes I was up out of my seat and Joseph let me know that I had passed. . .phew! Nate and Bryn had the same thing done and then we moved onwards.

Next stop, the ENT Doc. We were taken into a small soundproof room where our hearing was checked via our response to audible (or semi-audible) stimuli presented through a giant set of old military headphones. As for our noses and throats, I guess they check those out from afar because they didn't seem to have any set procedure for examining the later two thirds of their ascribed field!

From the ENT we moved on to Ophthalmology. . .not my speciality! I wondered if I should remove my contacts so they could get a fair assessment of my eye sight or if I should at least inform them that I was wearing two pieces of two month old plastic that had by now grown tendons on to my eye's real lens. I decided against doing either and passed my eye and color test with flying, well, colors!

After examining my eyes it was time to check out my, well, I'm not quite sure. . .torso? We made it down to the X-ray area and lined up outside a large metal door where we eagerly read our astrological horoscopes, posted on the opposite wall. . .a seemingly superstitious item to be hanging in a medical hospital. . .but whatever! Our X-rays were snapped away in only a matter of seconds and I didn't quite understand what they were looking for. . . you'd think we'd notice if we had a broken rib, wouldn't ya?

From the X-ray room we made our way to my favorite part of the day, the blood test. I sat down at a table across from a nurse who assured me that Koreans are very good at taking blood. I assured her that she was by far my least favorite person of the day and he talking about it was doing nothing to help. . .all of this was lost in translation. I will be honest, as far as having a needle shoved in to your arm and having a bucket of blood removed, she did a pretty fantastic job. Must be those nimble Asian fingers. . .I'm going back to her if I ever need blood work done again!

The vampire nurse then handed us each to containers, one solid plastic with a locking top and the other a simple paper cup. Joseph pointed us in the direction of the bathroom and told us to fill 'em up. . .great. . .with all the water I've been drinking in the past 12 hours! A few hours later I emerged from the bathroom; in one hand I had a sanitary locked plastic vial and the other hand, a paper cup that was growing softer by the minute. . . not quite sure how they came to assign both these starkly contrasting receptacles but who knows!

Finally we made it to our last stop on the Hospital Loop, the general physical check. All I had to do was hop on a scale to get my height, weight and body fat recorded then make my way over to a blood pressure machine. I seemed to pass everything with decent numbers although my heart rate was way higher than either Bryn's or Nate's. . . .the vampire lady had quite a lasting effect on me!

Not quite sure where or two whom our paperwork went but from our last stop Joseph led us out of the hospital. . .and then back in as he had forgotten that his car was downstairs. As we pulled out of the parking ramp Nate noticed that it would have been substantially cheaper to simply take a taxi both ways but where's the fun in that now right!?

As we pulled away from Eulji, Joseph suggested that we go get lunch, his treat. No, no, we insisted that we would all pay for him as he spent the better part of his morning running us around a hospital worded entirely in Korean! Ah, but he reassured us that by his treat he meant DYB's treat as he would take the 'recheept' back to school. . .well, in that case, you name it Joseph!

We pulled over to the side of the road to discuss our lunch options which Joseph laid out before us. "You like Chinese food, bulgogi or cow shit?" Um, excuse us Joseph, what's the last option? "Cow sheet!" Uh, I think there's not a huge difference between the three but we'd be a little more comfortable with bulgogi!

Turns out "cow sheet," or something of the sort, is another way of saying Genghis Khan, which, is a specific type of meal here in Korea. We finally figured out that he was saying "Genghis Khan," which came out like "Chakalcballywoodinsadongville," and agreed that it sounded like a warriors meal. . .just what we deserved after half a day with no food! Oh the anguish!

Joseph pulled his car into a small parking lot, or really just the sidewalk, outside of our Dootavill Officetel. Ghengis Khan ended up being right in our own backyard and we had no idea.

Our meal was fantastic other than the fact that we had to sit on the floor, traditional Korean style. I'm not sure how or why this was invented or at what point in modernization someone made the conscientious decision to continue sitting on the floor but let me tell you. . .they messed up! Nothing ruins a good meal like back spasms, leg cramps and a sore buttocks!

Anyways. . .the Genghis Khan feast was consumed primarily out a large bronze bowl placed over a burner in the middle of our table. It was at first filled with broth that we let heat up while continually dumping a number of different green leafy vegetables into the mix. Once heated fully, Joseph began tossing in thinly sliced pieces of beef that cooked up almost instantly! Everything was delicious and after ploughing through our first round of meet Joseph order up a couple more orders, just to make sure we regained our strength after such a grueling procedure.

Towards the end of our meal, once all the meat was gone, Joseph dumped a plate of noodles and mandu, Korean dumplings, into the delicious broth. Once we had finished that it was onto round three; rice! White rice was then used to soak up the remaining broth and we split the savory porridge like result between the four of us.

For desert we were brought a cup of iced plum tea which is the sweetest and perhaps most wonderful taste I've yet encountered in Korea! Mmmmmmm plum tea!

After a long morning and an even longer day at work of doing nothing, Joseph let Nate and I take off early in order to meet my dad who he knew was coming in Thursday evening. . .little did he know that we had no intentions of traveling all the way in to the city center to meet up so we simply took the break for what is was worth and headed to bed early as our DMZ tour the following day required that we be up and out the door by about 5:45am. . .but boy was it worth it!