bleargh

It's one of those days. I was feeling a lot better over the weekend (despite Australia's embarrassing loss to Ireland in the Rugby Union World Cup) but then my allergies went haywire yesterday and I couldn't stop coughing and sneezing. Last time this happened a week or so ago, I had some horrific sneezing bouts where I couldn't stop for something like 15 or 16 sneezes, making me feel nauseous. Just to be clear, these aren't little ladylike sneezes - these are those huge convulsive "ACHOOO!"s that feel like a light punch to the stomach every time it rips through your body and makes every nerve in your nose and tear ducts tingle, one after the other with no break. It was so painful I actually thought that I was going to burst a blood vessel in my nose and start spraying blood everywhere. Luckily it only happened twice in one day, and then not again until yesterday, and then not so bad - just a sneeze every couple of minutes, enough to thoroughly annoy the person sitting next to me in the cinema who moved away (possibly from fear of contagion too). What with that and the coughing though, which continued all night, every time I tried to lie down, interrupted by my nose filling with mucus, it's hardly surprising that I got a grand total of 3 hours of sleep, nor that as a result, I was late to school and had to take two naps at my desk before lunch time. I ate about a quarter of my lunch and peaced out. A nap this afternoon before bellydancing (I just started last week and love it!) might be in order.

I guess that's the one good (?) thing about Korea though - they have very different attitudes to sickness here, so I haven't had anyone actively trying to avoid me yet. The kids don't really care, whereas at home I'd have had a "ewwww!" by now. Even with the facemask thing, most people only wear that to stop other people infecting THEM, not to stop them infecting YOU. It's annoying most of the time when you're healthy, as it also means that people have no qualms about coughing directly on you, and don't cover their mouths or noses when they cough/sneeze, a fact to which I'm attributing at least part of this most recent illness. To be fair though, I think it's also the air-conditioning that's set this one off, as well as the schizophrenic weather we've been having lately. (It's raining and cold right now but it was boiling hot last week.) At any rate, I've been sick with it for two weeks and all of the medicine I've tried has either made me feel worse, or only made me feel better for a few days, so I'm not keen to go back to the doctor so I think I'm just going to have to hack it out.

Luckily I had Min-Seok's class today.. wow, never thought I'd put 'lucky' and 'Min-Seok' in the same sentence. Min-Seok is one of my ADHD boys who has in the past blown me kisses, asked me out on a date, tried to get out of class by hiding in the girls' bathrooms (apparently he forgot that as both a girl and a teacher I have no problems going in there to pull him out), pretended to be me and start a lesson, taken his shirt off in class numerous times and thrown a worksheet out of the window because he didn't want to do it. He's very cheeky, and normally a handful, so I guess I'm lucky that he quite likes me and so will normally actually be quiet when I tell him to (albeit for less than 5 minutes), just because he's happy that I know his name. Today's performance involved him walking in, striking a 'sexy' pose with one hand on his hip, winking, sticking his butt out and yelling "TEACHER! I AM SEXY, YES?". If I could find a picture to show you without having to trawl through soft porn I would, as it truly made my otherwise bleary morning. If you want to try and fix the mental image, he's 11, with the usual bowl haircut, thick tortoiseshell glasses and freckles. Haha, thanks Min-Seok^^


In other news, things that I found interesting today - an article on Korean adoption which I think is interesting because it hints at how Koreans see adoptees, as 'international Koreans' rather than as 'real' foreigners, regardless of how the adoptees see themselves. If I were to do a masters in Anthropology or Korean studies, I think there's an interesting thesis in there on racism, nationalism and perception of nationality in Korea. Which has probably already been done and is circulating on the internet, but anyway. Something else less serious and more silly that I liked was the All K-Pop website for my daily dose of all things K-Pop and gossipy. Although to be honest, I just go to the 'eye candy', 'lol/wtf', 'rumours' and 'scandals' sections... obviously in that order of importance ^_^

Haha, anyway, that's it for today. Just for you visual people, here's a photo from the match on Saturday, just because I liked this guy (Kurtley Beale) and I like seeing photos of the dumb faces sportspeople pull when they play.

Happy Monday everyone! I hope yours is doing better than mine.