Dr. Fish

Like I said, Tara called and let us know she had quit her job. Her quitting was a little more dramatic than Kendra's and involved walking out in the middle of the day, an insanely scary director at work, and a groveling school owner. We had tried to meet up later on Friday night, but Tara ended up pow-wowing with her coworkers to try and figure out what to do about the crazy director.

I got more of the story from Tara on Sunday at church and from what I heard then, she plans on staying through April as a favor to the owner who has promised to pay for her flight home and give her her pension if she continues through the month and doesn't leave now. Awesome.

We decided to go do some fun things on Sunday to get our minds off of stuff. Tara had a great idea: Dr. Fish!

Never heard of Dr. Fish? Ah, well let me enlighten you to our fantabulous adventure.

We headed over to Gangnam which is where our whole Korea adventure started! The school had us in a hotel in this area so it was a little strange to go back to Gangnam and see it with new eyes. Fun.

Tara directed us to a building with a cute, non-assuming little cafe on the second floor.



Waiting for our order.



Hot chocolates and endless cookies and bread all around!



Mmm...



Tara enjoying the bread and jam. Yum!



What is this? Dr. Fish?



Well, for the price of a beverage and 2,000 extra won (about $1.75) you get a very special 15 minute pedicure.



You go up, the guy sprays your feet down, and then you stick your feet into a tank of FISH who then CHEW on your FEET. Okay, so they don't have teeth so they are really just sucking on your feet, but sure as heck felt STRANGE.





I first tried the tank with the big fish but couldn't keep my feet in. It was just too much. So I headed over to the little fish tank. Still strange. I kept twitching my feet and it would scare the fish so I never got quite the crowd that Kendra attracted. That was just fine with me.

I cannot tell you what a strange feeling it was to have these fish swimming all over our feet and nibbling all over. It tickles so much!!



Am I going again? Heck YES I am! This is a must see for the peoples who come visit me, if only so I get to watch them go through the same torture I did.

After the pedicure (and another foot bath with sanitizer and lotion) my feet felt like I had pumiced them really well. Quite nice. I'd rather use a pumice stone than fish, though. At least on a regular basis.

Although we had snacked on bread and hot chocolate, we were still hungry so Tara and her friend (who showed up a little later during our pedicure) directed us to a place that serves breakfast foods practically 24 hours a day! Now, I usually only eat two meals a day: lunch and dinner. I've never been much of a breakfast person and the fact that Western breakfast foods aren't a big item here, I haven't had pancakes or anything since I've come to Korea. We were really excited for breakfast.

The place was called Butterfingers Pancakes. I don't think this was a reference to the candy bar, though that would have been cool.



The waitress had a bit of difficulty. I think Tara's friend really confused her when she tried to do some switch around with the sides on her. Personally, I try not to get complicated. I am more of the point and hope strategist when it comes to ordering food.



Omelets!



Breakfast potatoes!!



The item I ordered first caught my attention with the name: "The Morning After." What!? Walk of shame breakfast? I was cracking up so I read the description: Chive waffle topped with two eggs over easy with caramelized onions and cherry tomatoes with bacon. It sounded delicious so, in spite of the interesting name (let's face it... maybe because of it) I ordered up a "Morning After" *snicker* and my first Dr. Pepper in 7 months. Oh, Dr. Pepper. How I miss you. :)



Um, it was DELICIOUS. No one mentioned the DILL PICKLE! So tastey. Think Dad will take me here when he visits this weekend? Maybe? Or should we stick to Korean food?

Perhaps the best part of the night was the taxi ride home. I know, right? How could a taxi ride beat Dr. Fish and breakfast with Dr. Pepper?

Ride a taxi with Tara and you will know. This girl is hilarious. She talked the whole ride with our taxi driver. She knows a little Korean and he knew a little English so she practiced on him. I can't really describe it. She knows the words for grandma and grandkids so she was telling him she was a grandma ans we were her grandkids. He was cracking up and kept telling her "Anee!" No! She also knew the word for bathroom. And the word for here. I won't go into that one. I hope we at least entertained him. He laughed enough and taught Tera to spell her name correctly in Hangul. I hope he went back to his "jib" in Anyang and told his wife about the crazy American girls.

As I got out of the cab, I had to throw my own 10 won in there. I leaned in and said, "Ahjushi, byaneo. Agashi, SOJU, SOJU SOJU!!" or, in English (basically) "Sir, I'm sorry. The miss, SOJU SOJU SOJU!!" Note: soju is the alcohol of choice in Korea. Tara yelled, "AnDE!!!" "Forbidden!" but I assured him, "Nay, nay. Yes, yes. It's true."

And that's how I ended my weekend with none of my work done for research and development, my lessons left un-prepared, and an apartment still insanely dirty while my dad is coming for a visit this weekend.

So what am I doing with my two days off this week? Oh, just another full weekend of touring with Kendra. Hopefully I'll get to clean my bathroom, do my laundry, do two weeks worth of R&D work, prepare next week's lessons, and, oh yeah, sleep sometime before Saturday when Dad gets here. Then I get to do it all over again! Yay!

Next weekend. Next weekend, I will rest. It shall be a restful, boring blog week after Dad leaves. In the meantime, I expect that I will have some good pictures and stories to tell about this upcoming weekend. Speaking of which, I should probably go to bed since I'm supposed to be in Insadong around the time I usually wake up. Loves!