Only in Korea:

Only in Korea would a routine health check be performed at your school. Yesterday I found out via my boss that I had to have another health check. I questioned the reasoning behind it to find out that since I've been in Korea for two years, it's required. blah blah. I was told that it was free of charge and it'd be performed at my school.

2 o'clock rolls around and I'm escorted to the 5th floor where a hospital has come and set up shop in our school. Between three different classrooms, three different stations were set up. In one room you had to have a one on one meeting with a doctor where he asked me a series of questions such as "Are you constipated?" and "Have you lost or gained weight in the past 12 months?" -- who hasn't?!

After my very amusing meeting with the doctor where he assessed me as being as strong as "Superman" I had the privilege of meeting the nurse that spoke zero English. She took my blood pressure which was very high and then weighed me and took my height. I had to take a vision test, which I passed with flying colors and then she measured my waist. Why it is imperative to known my waist size is beyond me! Is my size going to reflect whether or not I am capable of teaching Korean children?! Probably not!

After my series of evaluations she asked me to go pee in a cup. I brought it back to her and she put some piece of paper with different colors inside of it. It almost looked like a pregnancy test, but then again, that's impossible! After like .5 seconds she told me my urine was normal. Woo, thank god! Guess what I did next?! She made me go back to the bathroom and FLUSH it! ha! Paul had some difficulty with his pee test. As I was coming out of the bathroom he told me that he spilt his pee and had to go home and change his clothes. OOPS! Then she took my blood- I almost died, and I thought I was in the clear.

Here comes the BEST part. After we had our blood taken we were told to go to the bottom floor of the building to get a chest X-ray. Yes folks, you're thinking correctly. My chest X-ray was taken INSIDE of a van. YES, I know you're jealous. Let me tell you it's a lot of fun having a chest X-ray inside of a van, especially when you are much taller than the van and have to squat, kneel, etc. in order to line your chest correctly with the old fashion machine. And all of this because they think we have TB! Come on! Us Americans are as clean as a whistle.

All in all, I wish I had a video camera to record these mishaps. Next time you're looking for an X-ray you should just flag down the nearest van. You never know, they too might have an X-ray machine inside!