Blame It On the Rain

The lack of foaming agents in Korea has started to come to my attention these last few weeks. It's by no means a serious issue, or even something that bothers me at all, but it's a strange thing to continually come across - go wash your hair, and you get no suds. Brush your teeth, and your mouth never gets as foamed up. The body wash we have, rather than getting all sudsy, just coats your body with a "silicone gel" that's put into it.

On the other hand, when given beer the locals just can't seem to give me enough foamy head whenever they pour me a drink, so I suppose it all balances out in one fashion or another. All right, enough meandering for now.

I number of months ago I went into some details on a pain in my hip that had come up and brought about a number of trips to the doctor, including my local "herb" doctor. Well, the pain has come back again, and I'm onto Round 2 of trying to sort it out here in Korea. I'm starting to think perhaps it's a pinched nerve or something up with my back, but my self-daignosis is by no means the interesting part of this story.

I've been going to physiotherapy for a few weeks now, which I think is pretty similar to Canadian standards. My doctor however is a little out there for my liking. He doesn't speak much English, so we get by in a mixture of our two languages to figure out what's going on. The other day though, his English came through just fine.

I was having a rather painful day yesterday (which has carried over to today), so I went in to try and see if we could better diagnose my problem. I told him that my leg and buttock was getting quite painful, and I was even having some difficulty walking today.

"Ah, yes," he says, "that's because of the rain."

The rain? I'm in a great deal of pain and you're blaming it on the weather? Ridiculous. Anyway, I did my physiotherapy, and things still aren't any better. Today I'm going to a new doctor, and if he can't help I may end up going to the hospital to get some much more in-depth testing. I'll keep you appraised on my progress, since I'm sure there are a few people or family members who are concerned for my health and well-being.

On a more fun and bizarre note, I got a new haircut this week. Normally this wouldn't be noteworthy, but since we've moved houses, I decided to try someone closer to home, and went with the nearby "stylist". Well, what an experience that was!

As you may be able to see, the stylist, a young guy who I was hoping could speak English, spent very little time actually "cutting" my hair, and styled it instead. And not to my liking. When he did cut, he would jump around me, waving his hands, thrashing though my hair, sliding his leg out to one side to crouch low and cut juuuuussssst the right piece of hair to make it look right. I asked him three or four times to cut it shorter, but he just kept saying "No, no - Wax!" The final product is like no hair style I'll ever wear, but when not styled that way, it doesn't look so bad on me.



All right, that's all for this week I think. I'm not working for another week or two now, so I don't expect much to happen here besides reading books and relaxing. Bye for now.