(1) I agreed to meet Tracey and Sandy (both ex-pat friends) for a one-hour weeding party at 8am on Tuesday (we were trying to beat the mosquitoes). Tracey arrived about 15 minutes late, and I teasingly suggested her almost-habitually relaxed sense of punctuality may be due to her being Australian. She chose to ignore this comment and launched into a story of her morning. You should know that Tracey is the most deliberate, methodical, patient person I have ever met (including Nick's dad, which is saying something), and she does not tell stories quickly, so imagine her story unfolding over many minutes.
A few days ago, her husband Alex ad discovered an evil red-headed centipede in their shower. They live on the 4th floor (Tracey's family, that is), so this poisonous monster and its family members don't just wander in on a regular basis. Alex dutifully killed it, but apparently left a leg on the bathroom floor, which was a rather horrible shock for Tracey to find when she got up, but she bravely washed it down the floor drain with the shower hose.
A giant red-headed centipede from my garden in April (pictured with my sunglasses for scale) |
(2) We see many, many signs for English programs (private cram schools called "hagwon" in Korean), and some of them have unusual names or awkward English phrases that makes one wonder about the quality of said program. This week we noticed a new school name that really stood out with its bright yellow banner and bold title: "Butter English." What? WHAT? Did they mean "Better" (suggesting a not-top-flight English training program)? Did they mean "butter" as in "cheerful and sunny" like the yellow of their sign? Maybe - cute, but still kind of a weird name for a school. Nick and I chuckled every time we drove past (Butter English!).
{P. S. Yesterday I asked Grace, a Korean-American friend who has lived here about 12 years, about the possible meaning of this ridiculous sign. Oh, she said, that's easy. They mean "smooth as butter," so students will be able to speak English very well. It's from Psalm 55: "His talk is smooth as butter...." Oh. Yes. There is that.}
(3) I had minor surgery this week to remove some weird bumps from my upper eyelids (called xanthelasma; harmless lipid tumors, but ugly as blazes and fast-growing). I may write more about the whole plastic-surgery-in-Korea experience in a separate blog, but here's the part that I just can't stop laughing about. Of course, I couldn't understand what the nurses were saying to me or each other, and they couldn't understand English, so we used a whole lot of gesturing in the outpatient operating room (I had to leave my translator in the waiting room). Now, I have received no informed consent, no statement of risks, and no explanation of the procedure (Google was strangely silent on this matter), so I really didn't know what to expect. Well, I did expect to get shots of local anesthetic near my eyes (after all, it is eye surgery), but beyond that, I didn't know what would happen. Right after entering the operating room, one nurse insisted that I lower my pants and lay face-down on the operating table. Um, well, THAT seemed pretty strange, but ok, what option do I have?. She proceeded to rub and then repeatedly spank my bare right hip before finally indicating that I could turn over and pull up my pants. What was THAT about? Some sort of traditional pre-surgery religious ritual? A test of my pain tolerance? A test of my gullibility? Ah, no. None of the above. Apparently she'd given me a shot during the spanking; the shot would help with pain from the surgery, and the spanking was intended to distract me from the pain. My intellectual side was satisfied with this tidy answer, but my emotional side was torn between being mortified at my over-sized bum rippling with each of her rhythmic slaps and being delighted at this apparently very normal Korean technique for giving shots. In the end, I decided just to laugh and stop being surprised by this adventure.
Another wonderful post, Sherry. You make me homesick for you all every time you write. Elizabeth
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