Korean Job Discussion Forums

[andrew]

.....

[ulsanchris]

good hygenie is hard to find sometimes in korea.

[Ekuboko]

I don't know about the students' bathrooms, but the staff bathrooms at my school have hot air dryers that are unplugged [read: Unused].
I take my own handtowel and stash it under my desk.

The students have to take their own toilet paper in my school, so I can't see how the school would pay for paper handtowels - one can picture them wasting it all away in a day...

[mindmetoo]

I wondered if pinkeye exists here. My GF has no problems whatsoever just applying sample makeup at Face Shop or whatever to her eyes. In North America, a woman gets one bout of pinkeye (and she will get it sometime before her 18th birthday) and she'll be forever paranoid about makeup hygiene. Made me wonder if Koreans get pinkeye. The eyes are pretty much the way viruses and germs get into our bodies. The mouth and nose have evolved their own defenses against invasive bodies but the tear ducts are a virus highway.

Hell, I don't even like to the public bar soap. I always keep a pack of water tissue and a stash of starbucks napkins for such hygiene crisis situations.

[denverdeath]

Oh, they get pinkeye. They sure do. Almost the whole friggin' nation had it in 2002(I think). Some of the foreigners where I worked had it too. There was nearly a whole month where I didn't touch anything and I was always running from the people with their nasty, painful looking pink eyes.

OP, my recommendation with the punks: Tie their hands(and feet if necessary) to their chairs.

[Wrench]

I had pink eye. My coworker had both eyes infected.

[nrvs]

Call me obsessive-compulsive, but I treat my classroom like the "red zone."

I wash my hands with soap between classes (but not with hot water because there isn't any ). I try not to come in contact with anything the students touch. I never, ever touch my face once I've started class.

It seems to be working. I've been almost 100% healthy since I've been here, even through last winter season.

[funplanet]

I get it two weeks ago from some barbarian of a student coughing in my face (got sprayed in the eye) and voila! el pinko eyo...

went to the doc and said nothing to do but ride it out...

Last weekend I was in Singapore, went to the hospital and the doc gave me antibiotic eyedrops and cream...the redness was gone in a day!!!

are Korean docs really that worthless???

[Draven]

Go to a different doctor, I guess. There's certainly medicine for pinkeye here; about a month ago I had it in both eyes and the drops the doc gave me cleared it up in a day or so.

I hear what you're saying about doctors here though. When I had the pinkeye, I was generally feeling like crap: sore throat, coughing, runny nose - the full deal. The doc, after a 30 second examination told my I had a respiratory infection and gave me a 7 pill concoction to take three times a day. When I saw no improvement after a week, I went to an ear, nose and throat specialist and he diagnosed tonsilitis. Once I got on the right meds, I was better in a couple of days.

[bijjy]

gross. i hate the single communal towel at our school too. it's always soggy. in the preschool washroom theres about 30 toothbrushes crammed into one cup on the sink, all the bristles touching each other. a toilet overflowed once and ran down the stairs out the front door. smelled great.

[rvintage]

Keep paper towels in your room or your own towel. NEVER USE THE COMMUNAL TOWEL!! In the states that would be a health code violation. But, welcome to Korea.

[Demonicat]

We don;t have a a hand towel. Until recently we didn't have soap either- bathroom sinks were just for waegooks to water wash/pants dry and for Koreans to brush their teeth.

[fidel]

[blunder1983]

What IS pinkeye? I've never heard of it outside South Park.

Is it like Conjunctivitus? Or do we just not have it in England?

[mindmetoo]