"doctor fish"

just for fun: did you know?

I knew you could stream radio stations online. I used to listen to my favorite, WERS, at work back home. But for some odd reason, it never dawned on me that streaming online really means "online." I can listen to the radio station I love from back home in real time HERE. I just realized that after almost five months.

BUT, I can't listen to Pandora. It's licensing doesn't allow it to work in Korea. Major bummer. If you don't know what Pandora is, Google it. You'll be glad you did.


january 24th - 27th / shanghai trip

This was Chinese New Year. In Korea, it is called "Lunar New Year," but in Korean, it is "Seollal." I had a break from work, a four-day weekend. I was actually quite broke. I bought a laptop in cash with my December pay check. This happened to be a 40-day pay-period instead of thirty. Consequently, by the end of January, I was undoubtedly in no position to be gallivanting off to other countries. However, a friend pointed out that this was the last break I would to have until May. MAY. No three-day weekends, nothing. So I decided I would go into debt a little further, thinking that I would rather have the memory of the four-day weekend I spent in Shanghai on Chinese New Year than the weekend I stayed home and saved money. (Unfortunately, or fortunately, this is generally how I always think, and thus, why I'm always broke; but I'm glad I went.)

I was in a group of eight, headed by the ever-competent, mother-like Maria. Maria arranged everything with our travel agent, researched her Shanghai Lonely Planet guide, and created a trip itinerary, (which was thrown out the window, of course). The first night, I uncharacteristically slept.

favorite memory:
Sunday morning we went to a "water town" that was touristy but not too much so. We absorbed some local culture and bought trinkets, took lots of pictures of statues and temples, architecture, and cuisine. Eventually, Jessica and I got hungry from all the walking around and curiously approached a man cooking some meat that smelled delicious. We motioned to our hungry bellies and were smiled at by the men standing near-by smoking their cigarettes contentedly. They sat us down at a plastic table with plastic stools inside a little room behind cook-man. Soon they brought us water and a delicious dish of mystery meat and green things. They brought us rice too, of course. We thought the whole-thing was just perfect at this point as we had an audience chuckling and motioning for their friends to watch us eat. "Look at the white girls eating!" I don't know what they were saying, but I'm pretty sure it was something like that. They asked us if we wanted a bottle of something on the shelf. As usual, I'm thinking, "We want whatever you got." They were trying to tell us what it was, but everyone was confused. I took a guess, "Soju?", which is a Korean alcoholic drink made from rice. There's always a moment of epiphany in foreign communication, or at least you hope for one. And this was ours. "Ahhhh! SOJU!" they declared with satisfaction. We drank a half-bottle of the stuff. It was rough, let me tell you, but you have to try everything, I always think. I motioned for the man that had offered it to us to sit down and share some. He did, and proceeded to try to strike up some Chinese small-talk. We only knew how to say "hello" and "thank you," and our "thank you" still needed work. I tried to explain to him that we were both from America but living in Korea. This was very tricky, and unsuccessful. Then I remembered my cigarettes. I pulled them out and pointed to the Korean writing on the package. "Ahhh, Hangul," he stated, and told his buddies. ("Hangul" is Korean for "Korean," and apparently also Chinese for "Korean.") I couldn't think of anything else to tell him. He brought us a plate of peanuts and candy. We ate some of that too and then got ready to leave our new friends. I guess China has more thieves than Korea, because He motioned to me to zip my purse and for Jessica to keep her wallet from falling out of her pocket. We bowed graciously, and we left.

new years eve:
Sunday night was New Years Eve. We went to a bar called Mural, hung out with some Koreans visiting there as well, some Irish girls, and a few Frenchmen. It was an eclectic night with DJs from LA spinning hip-hop, I believe. My girl Jessica and I got the bar dancing as we often do and rocked the place that night. Incidentally, Jessica and I and some of our other friends are featured in pictures on that bar's website now.

chinese new year vs. the other new year:
I have been to Times Square in New York City on New Years Eve before, so I was picturing Shanghai on Chinese New Year to be like that, only times a billion and more Asian. In actuality, it is the biggest holiday in the Chinese calendar, and a family occasion. Teenagers don't go out and rage in the streets 'til the wee hours of the morning. We were disappointed, but there were plenty of foreigners to rage with, and more fireworks than you could shake a stick at. (Do people still say that? "Shake a stick at"? Now, I'm picturing myself shaking sticks at fireworks in Shanghai...) Anyways, you couldn't drive through town that night without being startled every few seconds by an overwhelming "BOOM!" that sounded an awful lot like gunfire.

Fact: I hear that the largest single movement of people in the world occurs from Shanghai outwards on Chinese New Year. Literally, millions of people that had left to work in the city return home to their families. We went to a breakfast place that's menu read, "We apologize for our limited menu and hours during the New Year. Many of our staff have not seen their families in a year or more and have gone home to celebrate the holiday."

new years day:
We went to the Jade Buddha Temple in Shanghai. Since New Years Day in the US just means a day off work, it never occurred to me that New Years is a religious holiday, but it is in this culture. The temple was absolutely swarmed with people burning incense and asking for good luck, prosperity, and health for their families in the New Year. It was definitely an intensely beautiful sight. I didn't take pictures. It was clear the people there were having a religious moment and were there to pray. I tried to remain respectfully quiet and just peeked in some of the rooms packed with people bowing to various Buddhas. It was impossible to stay with your group. It was like a subway in NYC at rush-hour, you know, except more bowing and incense, and far more beautiful.

Sunday night, Jen and Heather and I went out by ourselves in a famous area of Shanghai, that I forget the name of. By this time, we had lost most of our group at some garden we were supposed to find but never did. (Jessica was MIA at this point and had been "kidnapped" by a DJ called "Elnomo" since Sunday night.) Jen had gone out to a bar on Friday and suggested we go there again. We were the only foreigners in the bar, well, the only white foreigners. Some Bangladeshis asked us to take pictures with them, which became a typical interaction throughout the rest of the night. No one was dancing when we got there, but again, leave it to us, we livened the place up and within a half-hour had a nice little dance party going. The DJ was Chinese but from Toronto and hung out with us for a while. He was really drunk and singing into his microphone mid-conversation. There were Chinese playboy bunnies dancing on the bar. There were magicians! There were girls with syringes full of shots that walked around and pumped them into people's mouths, just for fun. There were liquid fireworks falling down behind the glass windows. AND, it was "all-you-can-drink." It was pretty insane.

If you couldn't tell, it was a fantastic trip. The slide-show you've been watching is of pictures from my Shanghai trip, not pictures of Korea as many people assumed. (Korean characters look much different!)


feb 7th / "doctor fish"

It's hard for me to describe what this experience is like so that you can picture it yourself, but I'll do my best. Okay, stay with me. Picture a large cafe. Inside, you will find a serve-yourself coffee-pot, a nail salon, a spot to order waffles and ice cream, and "doctor fish." (There are also bottles of wine on display, but we found out you couldn't purchase wine there. It was really just for show. Odd.) You walk in and order a coffee or something. Anything. You have to order something if you want to purchase "doctor fish" as well. Doctor fish costs about a $1.50. You sit and drink your coffee and eat your waffles with your friends and then bring your receipt up to the doctor fish helper-man. There are two rectangular-shaped pools, about eight feet long, two feet, wide, and two feet deep. One has bigger fish than the other. Fish-helper-man motions for you to take your socks and shoes off and put your feet in another small wooden box in the floor and proceeds to wash your feet and shins off with a detachable shower head. He implies that you are ready for the fishie pool. You look down and see hundreds of fish about the size of your finger swarming around hungrily. If you hold your toes over the water, they all swarm to that area. It's freaky. Fishman sets a 15-minute timer and you oh-so-hesitantly lower your feet towards the water, cringing and shrieking a little in suspense. OH MY GOSH, this is the craziest feeling in the world! If you can stand it, you keep your feet still in the water, and let the fish do their thing. The thing they do is eat the dead skin off your legs and feets, they even get between your toes. They really nibble, or suck, or something. You can definitely feel hundreds of little fish mouths working your skin. It's one of the weirdest experiences I've ever had, hands down. It tickles like you wouldn't believe, but I wanna go back. I feel like I need to make this part of my monthly, or maybe weekly, beauty regimen. I left with a disappointing amount of dead skin still on my feet.


basically everything I can say in Korean:

please
thank you
hello
goodbye (two kinds of good-bye)
chicken
beef
water
milk
juice
cigarette
beer
"Cheers!"
Is it ok/cool?/Is it a problem?
It's ok/cool./It's no problem.
How much does it cost?
refill (re-pill)
coffee (cah-pee)
father
mother
brother
sister
together
Ma'am
Sir
teacher
tree ( I found out it's not "taree", it's "namu.")
apartment (apart)
where
Yay! (Ah-sah!)
cold
hot
one
two
three
cute
boobs
penis
sorry (two kinds of sorry)
remember (This was a really hard word to remember. It took me a month. Ah, the irony.)
sweetheart
"I'm cold."
"I don't know."
more
butterfly


current exchange rate:

Sucks. It's close to 70%. $100 USD = 153,000 KRW (Korean Won)
This means to send home 500 bucks, I need to send home almost half my Korean paycheck. This is not what I signed up for! Reminder: when I came here, the won and dollar were almost on par. In case you're still confused, the point is I'm making much less than I thought I would be!