Hello out there! So, as seems to becoming a recurring trend, it’s been a while since I’ve written last, but I figured that my last quick spurt of posts would hold you over alright. Things here have been going pretty well for me. I’ve settled in nicely at work, so the teaching is getting to be pretty easy (if not a bit mundane). Two of the Interview classes that I teach (and honestly, probably my two favorites) have gotten cancelled, which means I’m down to teaching only five a week, or 15 hours. If you are saying to yourself, “wow, that isn’t very many hours, Mark must have a ton of free time!!” then you are absolutely right- it’s not, and I do.
I’ve still been struggling a bit with the whole quest to find something to fill my time. I was talking to a new friend the other day about running, and she told me that she was going to run a 10k in Seoul in the coming months, so I’m thinking about trying to work toward that. I’ve been running about 5 or 6 times a week pretty consistently since I’ve been here, so I feel like I’m in good shape to attempt a 10k, but I would need to start building up my distances; I usually only run a couple of miles, sometimes because I get tired but sometimes because I start to get a little bored and end up convincing myself I’m tired. I’m not sure how much the idea of running a race in the city smothered by thousands of Koreans really appeals to me, but at least it would give me something to work toward, and the first time I put my relatively new running routine to the test.
In any case, here is a story about another one of those, “Yeah, as it turns out I really am in Korea” moments: On Sunday, I was hanging out with a bunch of friends at their apartment in Seoul proper (the Seoulleong area) when we decided to head out for a visit to “Dr. Fish,” a place where you can go and soak your feet in tanks while dozens of little fish nibble at your dead skin. I’d heard about places like this from people who had already visited Korea before I left home, so it was definitely on my list of things to do. Based on descriptions from others and my own imagination, I had envisioned the place looking something like this: a bare, well lit room with steam coming up from the floor, soft Oriental music playing in the background, and a crew of traditionally dressed hajimas (older women) who would massage my shoulders as the fish took care of my feet.
Suffice it to say that I was a bit off. We got off the elevator and walked into the place to find…a coffee shop. And not just any coffee shop. A big, modernly designed coffee shop, packed with pastel colored fuzzy furniture, an all-you-can-drink coffee and all-you-can-eat bread buffet, and a menu of overly-priced drinks and gelato. The fish tanks were small and unassuming, pushed off to the side of the café and hardly noticeable if you weren’t looking for it. I was pretty shocked to realize that a fish-foot-massage parlor would be located inside a chic café, but I’ve come to learn that in Korea, the line between hip/modern and old-school/traditional is often hard to distinguish.
We ordered drinks (which we had to do to gain access to the buffet and the fish) and sat and talked for a while before heading over to the tanks. Once there, we disrobed (well, more like took our shoes off and rolled up our jeans, but I like that word a lot better) and were given 20 minutes to go at it. There were two different tanks, each of which was about six feet long, two feet wide, and a foot deep, and each containing two different sizes of fish: one with babies about an inch long, the other with slightly bigger ones, but still no more than a couple inches.
We started out at the bigger fish tank, and as soon as we dropped our feet into the water, the fish swarmed, going at the bottoms of our feet and between our toes with a ferocious tenacity. They especially liked my feet in particular, maybe because of their size but more likely because of the calluses I have on my toes and heels (Mmmm, tasty!). It took some getting used to for the first few minutes- definitely very ticklish, but actually pretty relaxing once I settled in. I can’t say the same for some of my friends who came with me, garnering some funny looks from the people sitting nearby because of their yelps and giggling from the fish-induced sensations. After about five minutes in the first tank, we moved to the baby-fish tank, which was pretty similar, although their biting felt more like a pins-and-needles effect than someone just trying to tickle your feet.
While I don’t think the fish really ate any of the skin off my feet, it was still a really interesting and surprisingly calming adventure, one that I promise to provide for anyone who decides to come visit me here (as if you needed any more incentive). To cap off the day in appropriate fashion, that night we headed to a huge wholesale fish market near the Jamsil area where we picked out a couple of large sole from a tank that were then cut up and prepared for us as sashimi and this ridiculously spicy (even for my quickly shifting standards) soup at a restaurant above the market. From fish to feet and back to fish; I guess it is true that what goes around comes around.
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