Year-End Dinner

December and January are probably the busiest period for most people as lots of people are preparing presents for Christmas or settling the company’s year-end finance accounts or planning where to go for the holidays. When I was in Japan, December was the time to have year-end dinners to celebrate the ending of one year and to put the past away and January was the month to have New Year parties and to celebrate the New Year. Korea is pretty similar too with many people having year-end dinners with friends and company workers to celebrate the ending of one year and also to patch up any bad relationship between people so that they could look forward to a new start in the next year.

Of course, we also had our year-end dinner last Wednesday to celebrate the achievements of our clinic for 2010. The menu was Korean beef as Korean beef is actually the most expensive beef in Korea and on such occasion, it is important to provide the best for the employees to show thanks and gratitude for their hard work in 2010. During dinner, presents were also presented to many co-workers for their hard work including The Early Bird Prize for 2 workers who arrive to work early every morning, The Best Idea Prize for 3 workers who contributed successful ideas to provide better service for our patients, The best Worker in December and another team leader was elected for our surgery room. Congratulations to all of you and keep up your good work!

One of our directors, Dr. Lee, also made a speech that in the New Year we would all stay healthy and work hard to ensure the clinic would continue to prosper under our hard work. As for Dr. Kim, he moved around the tables, making sure that he gave a toast to all of us and presented a short speech hoping that we would continue to cooperate and work as a team in the clinic, mentioning that without team spirit, the clinic would not be able to prosper and flourish. He also emphasized the importance of team spirit so that our personal knowledge would improve and help each other as a team, not just for ourselves. Finally he thanked everyone for the hard work and hope that we would all have a good year ahead.

Personally I would also like to thank Dr. Kim and all workers for their patience since I am not Korean, they need to spend more time to explain things to me and try to understand my broken Korean^^. Thank you all very much!! 

My Vietnam trip - By Grace Seo

8 o’clock in the morning… I wondered what I could do for the people here.

I was finally standing in front of NgỌk Linh Hospital in Vietnam~

After asking around the hospitals in Vietnam, we finally decided to liaise with NgỌk Linh Hospital as it was big, equipped with facilities similar to Korea and it looked like a hospital in the rural area.  

The hospital was packed with people …..not just some…. but many people ….

At 8 in the morning, we went earlier to the hospital to prepare so that we were ready to cope with the large number of patients and in fact, we thought that there would be no patients at this time. However it was not what we thought. The moment we reached there, we saw young children staring at us, the foreigners, with wide eyes and they seemed amazed with our presence. (I guess I was the same when I saw foreigners in Korea.) …. Wanting to say ‘Hi’ but shy…. I could hear people talking noisily in the background, curious about our presence.  

Treatment started…There were many patients needing vision examination and eye examination. Occasionally there were patients needing eye drops to dilate their pupils and many patients needed help walking due to poor visual acuity. It was just like what we did during voluntary activities in Korea. 

At that moment, a group of children wearing same clothing appeared… I realized it immediately as they were all friends from the same orphanage. The shocking truth for this group of children was that they were born without eyes… not just one but all of them….  Later while we were at the countryside, Dr Kim told us that the poor water quality could be one of the reasons leading to children without eyes as it was as black as waste water and there were a limited number of days where Vietnamese people could only get clean water. Not only that, due to insufficient crime prevention measures in Vietnam, there were many unplanned pregnancies and these pregnant women tried to abort the fetuses by taking abortion drugs that didn’t get rid of the fetuses and the eyes of these babies were not developed due to these drugs. This group of children was the outcome….. 

However this group of people was children themselves. Like us in Korea, they joked with each other and laughed together, these young children were no different from us… Indeed they should be the same as us. However when I saw these children, they all seemed to carry a serious expression like they were criminals with their heads down. I could feel my eyes streaming with tears as even though they were young, they had to be treated like disabled people and listen to people talking about them being their backs constantly. They were blind but not deaf. I could only provide them my warm hand during the examination and greet them warmly whenever I could. Maybe I felt that it was the best thing I could do for them.

We connected with each other through our hearts...

Another unforgettable friend entered the room ….

This friend still remained in my memory even though she was of no difference with the other friends. Looking at her reminded me of the horror movie, ‘The Ring’ where the main character climbed out of the TV and her eyes were opaque. Our friend was like the main character with opaque eyes. At this young age, which was the best time to see the beautiful world, she could not due to the white membrane covering her cornea. Actually, it was like the elderly people who had developed cataracts in Korea.

As expected, she could not see anything except slight light rays…. Yet this child didn’t forget to put a pure bright smile on her face throughout the whole treatment process and thanked us for what we did. Numerous thoughts flowed by my head…..

All this while, I was grateful for what I had, so why did I always complain about what’s insufficient? I was born with two eyes and through these eyes I was able to see many beautiful places, through these eyes I was able to see thousands of facial expressions and through these eyes I was able to share the tears and laughter with the people around me. Maybe I had forgotten about this fact for a moment... I had never felt that I needed to feel grateful for what I had till now… The connection with these friends actually awoke my inner heart.

In the morning when I was standing in front of the hospital, I worried about what I could do for these people. It was really unnecessary as through these friends, I was able to experience something I couldn’t feel in Korea. The heart-to-heart communication with people…

Kimchi~Kimchi~Kimchi~

Going to a foreign country means exploring the local traditions, trying to adapt to the environment and answering similar questions. Every country has its special touch and being able to enjoy or try to explore the local dishes/culture show respect to the locals and the locals will usually be extremely happy of our presence. In Korea, there are many traditional things that a foreigner could learn including taking ceramic classes, doing craftwork, making kimchi and even wearing traditional Korean dress, Hanbok.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to make Kimchi at Our Lady of Mercy Rehabilitation Center (성모자애 복지관)in Seoul. Basically there are about 180 types of Kimchi (fermented vegetables – check out the Kimchi Museum in COEX) and they vary from non-spicy to very spicy Kimchi with various types of vegetables. Koreans always make kimchi during this period and depending on the size of the family or organization, they will make enough to last for the whole winter or for the whole year. Making kimchi is not an easy job as the recipe varies according to the family recipe and the taste will never be the same. As for the younger generation, their mothers will usually make kimchi and send to them if they are not staying at home. Kimchi is their staple dish and Koreans usually eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner along with rice.  

When we reached the center, there were 2 teams at work, one was washing the cabbages and the other was drying the cabbages and mixing it with the kimchi paste. Kimchi process usually starts with sprinkling sea salt on cabbages to remove its water content for about 2 hours and then washing the salt off the cabbages. And then, the second part will be making the paste by slicing green onions, garlic, onions, ginger and radish, blending hot pepper flakes, salted shrimp, fish sauce and rice water together and then, mixing the paste and vegetables together.

Since the paste was already made when we arrived, we were assigned outside to squeeze the water out of cabbage in the morning and we had the chance to spread the kimchi paste on the cabbage after lunch. Working side by side with the older ladies meant getting the chance to learn how to make real kimchi. Making Kimchi was just not about getting the right ingredients and portion, it was also about applying the right amount of paste on all part of cabbage. Started from the outer leaf of the cabbage, slowly rubbed the kimchi paste inwards making sure all leaves were covered with certain amount of the paste. Not too little but not too much, just enough as the amount of paste would also affect the taste.

The older ladies worked really fast and that is Korean culture. While some of us were doing the spreading, others were making sure that we had enough paste, cabbages and plastic bags to contain the Kimchi. It was like in the wet market. Thank goodness the kitchen was big enough to contain us and we didn’t have to do it outdoor. Finally we finished after two hours, and then we started to clean up. By 2:30 pm, we were sitting down and eating some snacks. ^^ It was fun and for foreigners who have been in Korea for awhile but yet, haven’t tried making kimchi, I would recommend checking online for the opportunities to make kimchi.  Have fun and immerse yourself in Korea~