"I'm rich, bitch!"

So today I took my medical test to make sure I'm up to Korea's standards.  My boss knocked my door literally 2 minutes after I woke up so I jump in the shower, go to the bathroom, and we were off to the hospital.  So the first test is a urine test.  OK, let me recap:  I woke up, PISSED, and then came here.  I haven't drank anything.  I explain the situation the best I can (they speak very little English) and just start downing water during every other test.  I had some x-rays, they measured me, blood test, etc.  Finally at the end I was able to squeeze out about 4 drops of pee, hopefully that is enough for Korea; they seemed satisfied.

So I have to read an eye chart... in Korean.  I mean, I could see the characters just fine but I'll be damned if I knew what they were.  Maybe I should have said "circle with a line through it over top of an upside-down T"  After about 30 seconds of painful silence they realized their mistake and pulled out the English eye chart.

Also, my blood pressure was high.  Perhaps because I'm stressing over the fact that I can't pee, I just had blood drawn, and I'm going up and down flights of stairs like I'm training to climb mountains.  This isn't exactly a relaxing scenario and my blood pressure probably reflected that fact.  Also, it was one of those self-inflating machines except this one looked about 25 years old. I would guess if they took my blood pressure manually it would have been lower, but I'm just speculating.  My boss told me they might actually give me a perscription for high blood pressure--hilarious.

I got paid today for the TWO days I taught in the month of March and I'm pretty sure the envelope contained more money than I've spent in the time I've been here.  Two days of work for two weeks of enjoying myself?  How can this be?  Basically, in Korea, I'm rich.  I can easily live off about 1/4th my salary so the rest just goes in the bank.  I mean, I eat out every meal, take cabs everywhere, and drink beer regularly and I still just have tons of money.  It is really an unexpected consequence of teaching in Korea that you get paid like a king and the cost of living is so low.  Also taxes are only 3.3% so the Korean version of Uncle Sam doesn't screw you over as hard as his American counterpart.  Korea has figured out that big government with high taxation stunts the growth of an economy and verges on socialism... maybe Obama could learn something?

No school tomorrow because of Korean elections.  I honestly think the teachers were 10 times more excited than the students.  I'm especially happy because on Wednesdays I teach a full schedule of 6 classes so it is a good day to miss.  Charlie and I are going to check out another Korean town in hopes of buying some sports equipment and seeing the sights.  We're saving our trip to Itaewon for Saturday when we'll have the whole day to explore.

Take it easy, but take it.