1st Korean hospital experience

I had to meet my boss's husband today at my school at 9:30am. He drove me to a hospital to get my physical done for my alien registration card. I need to point this out: I really do love all the forced awkwardness I daily stare directly into the face of. Riding in a van with a man I've hardly exchanged 10 words with, who speaks pretty good English but I still had trouble understanding him, was hilarious. I felt like a jerk when I asked him to repeat nearly everything he asked me, though.

The unfortunate thing about language barriers is that so much time is spent trying to simply formulate sentences that personalities get lost, and it's really difficult to pick up on all the little nuances that make people who they are. Mr. Park is a very funny man, but it took an hour of being in an enclosed vehicle with him for me to see that he is one of the funniest people I've talked to in a long time.

I want to talk about my actual experience at the hospital. And I want to say that I had a full physical done, bloodwork, urine test, eye test, blah blah blah, in approximately 20 minutes. I was ushered through about 6 different stations, very very efficiently. It was almost to the point of pushy. But it was welcome- as in the US this process would have been around 30 minutes of wait time, followed by another 30 minutes sitting in a paper gown in a cold room flipping through a tattered copy of Field and Stream Magazine wondering if you were supposed to put the opening to the front or to the back. And, 'Crap! Was I supposed to remove my undergarments?'

I don't want to be lewd, but the only confusing thing about this morning was when I was asked to do my urine test. I was handed the standard plastic cup, but inside the plastic cup was a long, thin vial. This vial was what I was supposed to hand back to the nurse. Erm... huh? With no explanations offered to me, I deduced what seemed a reasonable expectation. Without going into detail, I somehow managed to fill the vial. Having leftover in the plastic cup, I debated for a solid 3 minutes whether or not I should dump the remainder and toss the plastic cup, or exit the bathroom with everything in my hands. I opted for the former. Sidenote- never put yourself in a situation where you have a capless, pointed-bottom vial of urine in your hands and you still have the task ahead of you to pull your pants back up.

All in all, I'd say my evaluation of the Korean hospital that I went to is that it is an extremely well-oiled machine. Afterwards Mr. Park took me into a convenience store and made me pick out a chilled Starbucks drink from the cooler. "My treat. Drink one!"