Drug Cocktails and Sea Crossings

The spring festivals continue! Last weekend we went to a sea parting festival is Jindo, a southern island at the end of the Korean peninsula. For two days every year, the sea tides get low enough to expose a land bridge between two islands.  It draws large crowds of foreigners and Koreans! There are two times to cross, one in the morning and one in the evening. We were at the evening crossing, since Jindo is a 4 or 5 hour drive away from Daegu. My friends and I went with Enjoy Korea, our super dooper, handy dandy trip coordinators!

The festival seemed to be 'around the world' themed and had food tents representing different countries… We were a little confused about some of them. The German tent had sausages (fair enough) and coconut drinks… … … do they have coconuts in Germany? I was kinda under the impression that they don't, but I could be wrong.  Sadly, there wasn't a Canadian tent, but the American tent made up for it (not). They had spiral potatoes on a stick and the largest assortment of booze I have ever seen in Korea… This is what they think we do. Eat fried potatoes and booze. Haha.

Sea crossing

On sale at the festival were these awesome, thigh-high plastic boots to avoid getting a drop of water or mud on you. I, of course, opted for the questionable water shoes with wholes in them (think crocs) for my sea parting adventure. I wanted to feel mud between my toes!!!! I quickly realized that my mud aspirations were not to materialize as reality. The sea floor was surprisingly  solid sand and rock.  The Koreans (I'm assuming those who live near by)  immediately began digging in the sand for shell fish or sea crustaceans (or whatever).  It was a little strange but I'm sure they went home and cooked up an awesome meal afterwards.

my choice of shoe 

Diggers! and check out the boots!

Jindo has some sort of legendary grandma figure. I never actually heard to story, but there was a statue or a grandma and a tiger marking the entrance to the sea bridge that had some sort of significance. People could write hopes and wished on a banner that was then carried across to the other island (I think).

Grandma and Tiger

After all that, we hopped back on the bus and went to our spa hotel. Again, we were sleeping on floor mats in a large room. Someone my two friends and I ended up in a room all by ourselves which was nice. I apparently passed out really quickly, which makes sense since I was sick and taking a large amount of (prescription) drugs.

The next day we went to the Boseong Green Tea fields where we partook in a tea drinking ceremony (pretty cool) and walked around the tea fields for hours. It was quite beautiful. The weather was amazing and I came out of it with loose leaf green tea and green tea chocolates!  We ate dinner there as well and, of course, the dished were green tea themed.  Jenna and I shared a pork dish with green tea powder dumped on top (not a favorite) and Tilly had a green tea Bibimbap. Overall it was an enjoyable weekend :)

Tea Fields

Tea Ceremony

Now, back to being sick. I came down with tonsillitis a few weeks ago. The first antibiotic I was on had no effect whatsoever but the one I'm taking now seems to be doing the trick! I've come to realize that Koreans love drugs. They like treating the symptoms of the illness but also like to treat the side effects of the antibiotics. This is what being sick in Korea looks like:

The single pills in the packaging that you would see in Canada is the antibiotic. The intimidating packets of the assorted drugs and what they give you to make you feel better (and sleepy). In those packets, we have cough relief, fever reduction, pain killers, anti-indigestion, decongestants… I think I'm missing something but you get the picture. Then we have the cough syrup (I'm assuming. This one tastes like Banana) in individual tubes, a mouth gargle, and diarrhea gel packs (only to be taken if needed and then to be rded for future travels). Almost everything is taken 3 times a day with good. 

For a few days, the little packets of wonder-pills weren't doing their job.  I have never experienced more drug side effects in my life (really wishing I'd had the diarrhea packs earlier on. She gave them to me a week in)… Dry mouth sucks. I almost chocked on a piece of bread the other day because I couldn't produce enough saliva to swallow the damned thing!

Since throwing up in front of a student on Monday, I've been on a egg and rice diet, the only things I felt like eating and didn't upset my stomach more. I also took Tuesday off work because I barely made it through Monday without fainting. Even after observing me on Monday, the school still tried to make me come in on Tuesday (even though I had a doctor's note) but I refused and stayed in bed.