Dr. Fish

Today I was supposed to go to the Seoul Tower, but the teacher who's leaving,
Boo-ryan (it's actually Brian, but he claims Koreans have a hard time with his name), was going to show his friend around Seoul and did I want to come? Yes, I did.

Don't ask me where we went, I'm not entirely sure. After transfering lines three times, I lost track of names of stations and direction. However, we did go into the heart of Seoul. South of the Han River, anyway.

It was phenomenal. Amazing. Being underground in the subway and suddenly coming above-ground to see water and buildings and bridges... it was great!

We went to a pretty touristy (I guess) part of town. I am going to go ahead and admit this now, I get really excited when I see other foreigners. I want to go up to them and talk to them "Oh, are you here teaching English too?" but I haven't because it's not the thing to do.

I don't really notice I'm surrounded by Koreans 24-7. Which probably isn't such a good thing. That aspect of living here is not especially overwhelming, until it's rush-hour on the subway and there's a flood of people trying to fit in the same subway car. And I don't notice if people stare at me because I'm a starer and I look at everyone and everything, which also probably isn't such a good thing either. Oh, well.


Back to my adventure. After meeting up with Brian's friend, Juanita, we headed over to a sort of different part of town where we looked for a restaurant. Juanita is Korean-Brazillian-American who's a photographer and just content with traveling the world right now.

The places were a lot more expensive than what we're used to in Eunpyeong-gu. In our neighborhood, 5,000 won for a meal is about average. We got fried chicken (which is a big thing here), which was about 15,000 won per plate (but one plate pretty much fed 3 people). FYI, though the exchange rate is plummeting, 1,000 won is/was about equivalent to US$1.

After eating and talking we headed over to what is the biggest bookstore in Korea. It was great and the section in English was pretty substantial. I took this awesome picture as we were leaving (as seen above).

Walking through the area there were so many different American and European shops, such as Baskin'Robins, Krispie Kreme, The Body Shop, Lush (I saw it in Canada first but they had it in England too), etc. It was out of this world!

*This message is for 141/Reading folk: They had an Accessorize!!

Onto the highlight of the day! I'd heard about this and now, I have finally gotten to experience it first-hand: Dr Fish!!!

What this place is, is a cafe where you can have the experience of having fish nibble at your feet. In fact, they nibble dead skin off your feet. If your name is Carrie, or if you have ever seen Ugly Betty, maybe you know what I'm talking about. It SOUNDS kinda interesting/kinda creepy.



The fish.

After you enjoy your coffee (that you have to buy in order to participate in the Dr. Fish experience, you go to a part of the cafe where you sit and put your feet into these pools of water.



My feet.



The fish nibbling at Brian's feet.



It tickled.

In fact, we couldn't stop laughing for about 5 minutes. Or that was just me. But the fish really liked me. Or rather, my feet. Which actually isn't such a great thing, if you think about it. So let's not think about it. After awhile, when I stopped laughing it stopped being quite so ticklish, until they nibbled the tops of your feet, then I had to just pull my feet out for a few minutes. Being tickled boardered on being painful.

This was simultaneously hilarious and bizarre. But such a fun experience.

Other pictures from the day:

Art sculpture thing that I thought was really neat.



And... Seoul.



This is where I leave you. We had a wine and cheese party tonight for Brian because he is going back to the States on Monday. Cheese is quite an exciting thing because it's pretty much non-existant here. The only cheese I have been able to find is processed cheese and even that is pretty expensive. I brought a cheap KW3,700 bottle of sparkling wine, which the other teachers laughed at and called juice. Upon a closer look, we can't be certain if the bottle is .6% alcohol or ALC. <-- (alcohol abbreviated) 6%. Ok, now this is where I really leave you.

Good night (although it's actually tomorrow, the 30th) from Korea.