So I haven't updated in quite a few weeks. I was on the bus to Muguk one night and deleted some pics off my phone, and suddenly they aren't on this site anymore, so I'm gonna find another place to host them and just link to that. The good news is that I haven't taken a bunch of new pics or anything, so you really haven't missed a whole lot.
Nothing has really happened in the past few weeks. Not that I can write about, anyways. No trips to Gwangju, a couple to Seoul, but that's about it. I am going to do this update differently and do it personally instead of chronologically, so don't be alarmed. Lets start inward and work our way outward I guess. I got sick this week. Really sick. Really really sick. I haven't had stomach cramps like I was having in a couple years is what I would say. I hung out with Phillipa and the crew on Thursday and felt fine. Friday it felt a little funny after lunch, but seemed to be ok. Friday night it hurt like a bastard, and I was stuck on the toilet all through the night and into Saturday morning. I had plans to go to Gwangju for Mike Dispignos birthday, and had to cancel those plans because it felt like I had a belly full of tiny fishbones trying to poke their way out. Saturday I tried to take it easy and just have a little bit of kimbap and soup. That seemed to work and by Saturday night I was feeling much better. At about 8 o'clock I decided that if I didn't get out now I wouldn't get out at all, so I hopped a late bus to Seoul. While in Seoul I felt fine, but made the mistake of eating a lot of various things like a hamburger and some eggs and bacon and pancakes. Sunday I felt funny again, but not bad. Monday was ok, and Monday night I went out with Graham to wish our Korean friend in the Navy, Nam Wu, a safe voyage for the end of his term of service. I didn't necessarily eat strange food, just grilled chicken and ramyeon, but I was munching on peanuts, and I think the tiny hard peanuts is what must have done it. Tuesday was the worst. I almost vomited on the way to school and was doubled over in pain for most of the day. It wasn't like a "my appendix is going to burst" sort of pain, but it felt like I had a cramp all morning. Once again, it wasn't like "get me to the hospital now" bad, more like "it comes and goes about every hour for about ten minutes or so" bad. Either way it was bad enough that I was not hungry and didn't want to eat at lunch time. My co-teacher was quite alarmed by this, so he took me to the doctor. I agreed, and if I agree to go to the doctor, you know I must be sick. The doctor actually spoke almost perfect English, and agreed to see me on his lunch break. He pressed around on my belly and there was tenderness at the top right under my xzyphloid process at the base of my sternum. He diagnosed me as having "gastritis" and gave me a prescription. I basically didn't eat anything at all on Tuesday except for some tuna fish and crackers late in the evening. Two days out from that and I feel much, much better, though still not one hundred percent. The whole doctor and then pharmacy interaction cost me about 7,000 won, which is about 6 bucks and change in America. This only reinforces my position that Americas healthcare system is messed up and should give coverage to everyone. If I am sick, it would be much cheaper to be treated over here in Korea than to have the same procedures done (even under insurance) in America. Anyways, I am feeling much better now, and am looking forward to feeling 100 percent soon.
Another person who got sick recently was Phillipa. I can almost assure you that it had little or nothing to do with me, as I didn't see her since Thursday when I hadn't even been feeling bad, and everyone else with us hasn't gotten sick. Hers seemed to be more violent and abbreviated than mine, but she still had it pretty bad. Things with her seem to be going swimmingly. I can't really talk about it a whole lot on here like I want to, because she would effin' kill me, but I will speak about it a little bit. We see each other maybe once or twice a week, three times if all the stars align. I obviously dig this girl a lot, and it seems that every vibe I have sent her way, she has sent right back to me. We have both been hurt quite a bit in the past and are not looking to repeat that hurt, but we get along rather well, and you cant argue with that. So we take it slowly, and if everything goes according to my plan, there may be a relationship in our future, although I seem to have a bad habit of messing up sure things. We went out a couple of weeks ago for some fried chicken and beer (our choices were that or pizza and soju) and sat around talking. All night she told me how she didn't want to like me, and things would only be complicated, and how if we started dating that I would get possessive over what she did, or hurt by the fact that she wouldn't be able to spend much time with me when she went to see her sister, or when she picked up a new hobby, or was busy at work, or started to learn more Korean, or went home for a month at break and couldn't talk to me all the time. So many reasons for us not to see each other and it went on for so long. I sat back and smiled, knowing perfectly well who she was, and what she was like, and not worrying about anything she was saying, because if we liked each other, it would all work out in due time. So we agreed, nothing official, nothing serious, and nothing public until after winter break. By then almost all of the people from our district will be changing, and there will be a lot of new faces. During the course of the night she comments about how awesome I look after shaving, and takes a picture of the new awesome. She took one of me with a beard earlier in the month, so I am sure this provided some good contrast. Fast forward a couple of days to when we are going out with our group of friends and meet up to get some coffee. We are discussing what a good time we had the previous night, and she is texting someone on her phone. She sets it down on the table and what picture is there in the background? "Whose picture is that?" I say. "What? This? No one" and she starts blushing. It obviously makes me feel good to know that she is thinking about me on a regular basis. She tells me over coffee how she talks to many people throughout the day, but with me it's "different", like she doesn't have to try and talk about cool things or try and keep the conversation going, it just kind of moves itself. I actually think that part is kind of funny, cause we don't talk about anything interesting at all. It is always "Hi. How was your last class? How many more do you have? What are you teaching them? What did you eat for lunch? What are you doing tonight?" I think the bulk of our conversations revolve around what we have for our school lunches every day. Apparently my school feeds us very well, a fact which does not really surprise me. Anyway, I put her picture on my phone, and since then a couple of my co-teachers have been very direct. "Is that your girlfriend?" "Not really, I am not quite sure." "How can you not be sure?" "It's complicated, but let us just say for now that we are very good friends." "So she is your friend, and a girl." "Yes but not my girlfriend." "You should make her your girlfriend." "Yeah, I'll get right on that." "Get on that?" "It means I will work on it." "Oh... Work hard. Fighting!" Who would have thought fighting with a girl would be a good thing :p
I guess next in the scheme of things is my group of co-teachers and students. I am officially finished with after school classes, which is nice, so I get to go home every day at 4:30. One of the last days of after school classes was me making up for one that was missed due to voting, and I had to make it up on a day when I normally didn't teach them. You don't know difficult teaching in Korea is until you are debating with about thirty twelve year olds who don't speak your language whether you are supposed to be there or not. "Oe nega yogi isoyo?" A truly existential question. "Why am I here?" Eventually after a couple of trips to the teachers office I was able to convince the class that I was indeed supposed to be there, and we had a nice lesson of them not understanding most of what I was saying, and me trying to keep them from playing "angry birds" by throwing a pillow around the class. If classroom management is easy when you have a Korean co-teacher, you pay for it double when you don't, because they don't understand anything of what I say. I have had to learn some basic commands though. "Yedara! Hajima! Joyongi! Anjo!" "Hey you! Stop that! Be quiet! Sit down!" I have to use the last one waaaaay too often. In my other classes though it is going fine. There was an awkward moment though when we were playing a version of connect four where the kids had to make sentences. You had to pick a square, then make a sentence with the word I gave you. One kid picked a square and the sentence had to use the word "buy" in a question. "Can I buy a condom?" "NO POINT!" the teacher screams out, "No point." "Ok. No point." I say. After class she apologizes to me for their behavior, and I tell her "It's ok, I have taught teenagers ever since I was one myself. I understand why it happened." She stayed behind to yell at them as I left. They weren't a problem the next week. My favorite class is by far the girls that I teach on the second to last period of Friday. I like teaching girls more than boys anyway. The energy with them is more transferable, and they get my sense of humor more. With boys it's all about ego and showing them who is boss. With girls you can play the pity card and they will eat it up. When we were playing that same game in this girls class one of them got the word "Shut" and had to use it in a question. "Will you please shut up?" she said. I made this overly happy face that she got it right and was about to congratulate her, then turned it into a displeased realization of what she said with a big show of closing my mouth mid sentence formulation, followed by an overly sad face with a pouting lip, sunken shoulders and sad posture, as I slinked over to the board to give her the point. It was all obviously planned but everyone in the class was like "AWWWWW!!! Joke! Joke! Game!" While the other half were squealing in delight that I would respond so seriously to what she said as an answer. Or the other day, when I had to explain why I cut off my beard, and I pantomimed zipping up my jacket and getting my beard caught in it. They were screaming with laughter at that. Just a good group of girls who is very energetic and, as I said before, is the perfect way to end the week. Speaking of the beard, when I first told some of the students I was going to shave it, they quite literally yelled at me to not do it. I thought they were going to cry. They were really upset that I would even consider it. I arrived the next day at school and couldn't walk ten feet without someone saying "Cute-u" "Handsome" and when I arrived in the teachers office it was "You look very handsome" "Smart" "Young" "Very good." I like the beard and everything, but it feels nice not to have to worry about how my hair or beard look every morning.
I have to say I love it over here in Korea. I am not sure when this honeymoon period is supposed to wear off, but I don't know if it will. I mean, I think I already went through the toughest part, when I was alone and had no internet or TV. Ever since then I have met wonderful people, and have done wonderful things. This culture is all around me, and makes me feel thankful for everything that I had back in America, not because it is better or worse, but because it is what made me who I am. I have only been here about four months now and I just am absolutely blown away by how much I love the food and the music and the people. They keep telling me that I am going to go through a sort of depression, but I don't know if I see that happening. Obviously I go through little ones that sneak up on me, when I see all the facebook posts of someones birthday, or think about what I left behind, or what I could be doing in America right now, but those only last for a night or so. I just feel like I love this culture. I think having a friend like Graham who enjoys everything about Korea so much helps this situation greatly. We go and get a beer or two a few times a week, and all we can do is talk about how much fun we have with our students, or the newest K-pop hits. Obviously our conversations are colored by what it was like in Scotland or what American politicians are saying to dig themselves in a hole this week, but he is a very positive person, and his love of Korea is really keeping me afloat. I am glad to have a friend like him. If you need any more reason to love Korea than the ones I just gave you, I highly suggest you check out this video. The song is Arirang, the traditional Korean folk song that I love so much, and is set to a time lapse video of Seoul. I know you are fiending for K-pop, and I assure you I will update next week and maybe drop some new stuff on you.
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