The West Commences: Jay's school

Today is Wednesday and the market stalls were being set up across the street when I first went out on the porch this morning. This cold has worn me out to such an extent that I am content to either lie in bed or sit on the porch and do nothing but entertain the odd vague thought that passes through my mind. This morning it was about old women and how they seem to get bent differently with age in different countries. At home osteoporosis usually effects women’s necks and they get a kind of hump high on their backs, but here in Korea I’ve noticed that old women often have either bowed legs or lean forward from the bottom of their spines, their whole back approaching the horizontal. I haven’t any idea what leads to the bowed legs; Korea has hardly any horses. But this morning as I watched a grandma cross the street to the market pushing an empty kids’ stroller, bum in the air and back almost parallel with the road, I began to idly entertain a theory. She seemed to know one of the women selling vegetables, so she pushed the stroller right under the canvas roof and then crouched beside it for a conversation. I noticed that in the squatting position she looked completely normal, like the many other women I see every day in the community gardens or selling things on the street. I can only imagine that they squat at home too. They seem perfectly comfortable in this position, but it strikes me that it does damage over time. Now that I think of it, it might lead to the bowed legs too because who knows what effect having your knees bent much of the time and your body leaning forward between them might have. After the chat she rose about a foot and a half and started checking the vegetables. This position appeared painful, but it didn’t deter her from closely examining each pile of kimchee cabbage and every bunch of onions and leeks before making her choice, putting them in her stroller and pushing her labored way back home.

Yesterday Dave and Jo picked up Jay and me at the apartment. We drove with them to the outskirts on Incheon, a beautiful area with bright green hills and gardens on every flat piece of land, where we went to a restaurant that specializes in ‘samgye-tang’. It’s a whole free-range chicken cooked for a long time in a pottery dish. The chicken is stuffed with uncooked rice, chestnuts, ginseng and some kind of fruit that looks a bit like a small prune. Once cooked, it is cut down the centre of the breast with scissors, the Koreans use scissors a lot for cutting meat, and served with spicy side dishes of kimchee, marinated mushrooms, hot peppers and many more. It was delicious and perfect for a person with a cold. The dessert was sliced oranges and the ever-present small cup of sweet coffee that I am becoming addicted to. After that we drove to the Song-do area where Jay’s school is. We took a small ferry all around a man-made canal that is part of the whole reclaimed area. Song-do has been reclaimed from the sea since 2005. It’s a vast area that was planned as an upscale business and residential location. Many of the buildings are tall and very well designed and much of it is in use now, but there has not been the rush to establish businesses there that the planners had counted on; much of it is unoccupied or unfinished. They still hope it will take off soon, especially as the Asian Games will be held in Incheon in 2014. From there we went to the school, and I sat in on one of Jay’s classes. He was disappointed because it was supposed to be the class in which he began reading Alice in Wonderland but the books weren’t in so he had to fill the time with a exercise book that he doesn’t like. I know what it’s like to have to switch lesson plans at the last minute and I thought he did well. He’s lively at the front of a group of kids and made the most of what could have been a dull exercise. I’m going to go back next Thursday.

Andy took me to the clinic right next to the school, and I saw a doctor quickly. Right from the outset I knew the visit was not going to be a great success. The doctor gave me a look that I interpreted as suggesting that I was the cause of my cold. Andy’s translation of what he said confirmed my suspicions. He suggested that I was not properly dressed for the weather. Just my luck, I usually wear clothes and shoes that are sensible to a fault, but for this special lunch and visit I had chosen one of my best blouses. It’s rather light and décolleté, but it had been sunny when we left Jay’s. However, closer to the sea it was cooler, misty and there was a bit of a wind. So I don’t know how seriously the doctor took my complaints. He sprayed a little something up each nostril and down my throat, gave my back some perfunctory taps and had me breath in and out as he held a stethoscope to my back. Then he gave me a prescription for some pills, which I had filled at the pharmacy next door. I take them after breakfast, lunch and dinner for three days and should expect a miracle but don’t. I’m sleeping a lot, drinking water and doing very little. Tomorrow I’m going to go into Seoul because the palace that I most want to see is open for self-guided tours on that day only.