Dr. Fish, Harvey and Bi Boy

Dr.Fish:

I heard about this place before -- so I was pretty stoked to finally be able to go. Essentially, what Dr.Fish Cafe is a cafe where there are fish that eat your feet. I'll write that again...fish that eat your feet.

For about $10, this cafe offers a choice of one drink (smoothies, coffee, beer and more), cake, as much time in the pool as you want and "aromatherapy," which was washing our feet with lavender oil.

Step 1: Wash your feet. This was pretty standard (for Korea). Sit down in front of a sink and make sure your feet are clean before you get in the pool.















Step 2: Dip your feet inside the pool with hungry fish. The fish are essentially starved, so when given the opportunity to eat dead skin and such, they leap at the chance. There were four of us there: Youna, me, a woman from France (who doesn't spend much time with the international students), and the German guy pictured above. The German guy was used to it quickly and said he was perfectly relaxed in the pool. Youna and the French woman were both struggling to keep their feet in there for long. I was able to keep my feet in the water for a pretty good time, but I was unable to really relax. When the small ones were eating, it felt like I was being tickled all over my feet. When the big ones bit, I could tell and it wasn't quite so ha-ha funny. It was much easier to relax when I wasn't watching them because it was weird to watch a fish like leave the leg of Youna and start swimming for my toe. The big ones would find a spot on my foot, bite me, back up and then bite the same spot. The little ones seemed to move around a little more.
















Step 3: Enjoy some expensive and good food. I got tiramisu cake, Youna got strawberry. My drink was a Kiwi smoothie and hers was an iced mocha.















Step 4 (not pictured): This was where we sat back down in the foot-washing sinks and washed our feet with lavender oil. After we received the oil, we could not go back into the feeding pool, so it was the last thing we did.

After it was all done, my feet felt pretty good. I plan to go back to Dr. Fish someday with the hopes that I can relax a little bit more, but it feels so weird to be tickled in like a dozen different places at once.

Harvey:

I was invited after Korean class on Friday to attend a play at Ewha put on by the Department of English Education. I didn't really know anything about the play other than it was going to be in English and tickets were only about $2.50. It was interesting and the actresses were amazingly talented to act for two hours in English. The play was also pretty funny and I would likely be willing to see it again.

Bbbbbbuuuuuuuutttttt, for some reason, the theater had seats with no backs. As in, it was like sitting in bleachers for two hours. There was also no intermission. My back was so sore after sitting like that for two hours that I resolved to be very choosy about which plays I will attend in the future.

Bi Boy:

The PEACE buddies have a couple official events for the term. One of them was to see this play called something close to "The Ballerina that loved a Bi boy." I knew nothing about it other than I could understand what was going on despite the play not being in English. Actually, I was told it was a "silent play, but you will understand it." I was interested, but hearing about a silent play turned me off to the idea...thankfully, I was told that after I bought my ticket.

"Does it at least have music?"
"Yes."

Okay, so I figured it was going to be somewhat bearable. I walked into the theater on Saturday to see, yet again, the seats had no backs. It was going to be another uncomfortable two hours...

The play was actually really really good. It was like a dance show, hmmm, I guess it is hard to describe.

It starts with some break dancers that dance. They were very good and I was thoroughly impressed. Then it had some hip hop dancers who impressed me. Then it had some ballerinas, but I was not very entertained by them. It was a story about a ballerina who fell in love with one of the break dancers, but for some reason, was disallowed from seeing him by his friends. So she joined the hip hop dancers and all was good. I think that synopsis makes it sound stupid, but the dancing was so cool that I would see it again.

One thing that I got used to back home was a basic level of theater etiquette. Small things like no cameras, turn phones off and avoid eating and drinking. I was surprised that these didn't apply in the previous two cases. In Harvey, I would estimate that about a quarter of the audience ate their dinner while sitting in their seats. I also saw several people taking pictures coupled with a cell phone going off at least every half-hour. At Bi Boy, I could understand that maybe phones had no influence on the performance because there were pretty much no times when there wasn't music. But there was quite a bit of photography; both pictures and recordings.

I think if I were to ever drop out of college, I would become a break dancer. I would also write poetry. I would call myself a "warrior poet" like the Scotsmen of Braveheart. Just wanted to make sure I shared that...