Happy 2012 everyone!

새해 복 많이 보내세요! (Much good luck/many happy wishes for the New Year!) ^_^

How was everyone's NYE? If you were lucky, I'm sure it was full of love and hope, spent with those dear to you. If you were super-lucky, I hope it was also full of fireworks! And possibly also at least a little alcohol. Because let's face it, that's what NYE is all about, right? Or maybe that's just the Australian in me talking... hehe^^

So I had quite a lovely weekend! Even lovelier because I took Thursday and Friday off so it was actually a four day weekend, and I got to pack some things to start sending home, Skype my parents, and (even better! Sorry Mum and Dad!) Skype my favourite Busan ladies, Nat and Christy! Even though Nat isn't actually there any more, I hold out hope that she'll be back before too long ^_^ This was a big thing because many failed attempts to navigate time differences and personal schedhules meant that Skyping opportunities have been few and far between. Oh and I also went to the boardgame cafe and actually WON a game of Settlers of Catan against Carey-Ann, aka Grand Catan-Master, and two others.

And then on Friday the real weekend started - Ryan and I set off for Deoksan, Resom Spaland and Moong Pension. I don't know if you know this about me, but I actually really like road trips, especially when they are to somewhere new. I love seeing the landscape change and looking for interesting buildings and natural formations, as well as having the chance to talk and listen to music and just chill productively with someone I like. Sound boring? Haha, maybe a little^^ Simple mind, simple pleasures I guess. The upshot was that the drive seemed to go pretty quickly, since it was only about an hour and a half away anyway, and we found our accomodation pretty easily too. It was a really nice place! Except for the fact that there was a distinct smell of gas in the kitchen (five minutes with everything open and some tissue stuffed up the gas nozzle later that night cured this) and we hadn't thought to bring any sauces or condiments for cooking (a good excuse to eat out!), it was lovely and very homey. There was plenty of space, and since it was an ondol style pension, the heating was fine and I think even the bathroom floor was heated a little too. Sadly we didn't have the time to really try the jacuzzi in the bathroom, but since we went to the Spa Castle anyway this wasn't such a big thing.
And OMG was the Spa Castle amazing! By the time we got there, it was getting a bit crowded since it was a Friday afternoon, and you could see why! We only really wanted to try the different spas, for which you pay the base rate of w24000 (our tickets were included in the cost of the pension), but if you want to go on any of the rides like the Tube Ride or the Wave Pool Ride, you have to pay extra for that - around w1000 or w2000 on average - as well as to rent the life jackets, so the cost can go up pretty quickly.
Oh and you have to wear those weird little Korean swimming caps, but you can wear a normal cap over it and frankly it wasn't a very heavily policed policy. But if you just want to kick back like us and relax in the many spas, there are plenty to try, inside and out. Warm water gets piped over the floor and stairs between levels outside so it's not so bad, but you can also just use the ones indoors if you want which are like big communal swimming pools.

Outside, as well as the various 'special water' ones like the blueberry and bokbunja (raspberry vinegar) ones, a hinoki spa (to help with skin irritations apparently) an 'alcohol' spa, and a green tea spa, there were 'themed' ones like the massage pool, the classic pool, the jazz pool, the gayageum pool and such, most of which just meant spas of various temperatures in some sort of special setting, like having classical or gayageum music played. There was also the 'romantic' spa, which could only fit about three couples in it, a really hot spa, a lukewarm spa, a spa-cafe (yes, the cafe is IN the spa), a dry sauna room, a 'health road' foot bath where you walk with one foot in the hot water and one in the cold (or if you do what we and most people did, you just want to sit in the hot water you can just about squeeze yourself in) and the most interesting one, a doctor fish spa!

It was only w5000 for half an hour or until the doctor fish ajumma kicked you out, and a full body thing, so we gave it a whirl. If you're like me and extremely ticklish, and also easily freaked out by things nibbling at you, it may take a while to get used to it, as the fish get spooked when you start giggling and will all swim away, but if you're like Ryan and quite calm, then you'll probably really get your money's worth and the only thing you'll have to worry about is fish swimming up your shorts. Some of the fish were quite big and not so cute (big as in maybe 5cms long) to have nibbling all the dead skin off you, but after we got used to it it wasn't too bad. Ryan even took the dare to put his face under for 30 seconds, but the fish were a) too scared or b) too smart to come near ^_^

So we spent a good few hours there. We might have tried some of the rides but it was getting late and had already gone dark and the temperatures were dropping - the attendants had actually started salting the walkways to stop them freezing over - so we went in search of dinner and had some delicious smoked samgyopsal and kalbi. The next day, we made good use of our kitchenette before we headed out and had a semi-English breakfast of baked beans, bacon, fried bread (no toaster) and fried tomatoes but since there were no knives or forks, or flat plates come to that, it was with a slightly Korean twist :) Ryan then headed off to his parent's place and I to Busan for NYE with Christy.

You know what I realised? I think that this is the first and only time I've stayed up to watch the sunrise for NYE. I stayed up all night last year, but that was just so we could catch the first bus back from Seoul and I was in a nightclub in Seoul anyway so the rising sun could have been the Teletubbies baby for all I knew. At any rate, it's also definitely my last, at least my last in any Northern Hemisphere country where you risk freezing various parts of your anatomy off to wait for the bloody sun to take it's sweet time to haul itself over the horizon at 7.34am. Unfortunately it was a bit of a disappointment, and we never actually saw the sun or any kind of sun-coloured glow in all the fog. The only reason we knew it was sunrise (apart from the lightening sky) was when they let off all the golden wish balloons people had written their wishes on, which is supposed to co-incide. Apparently it's a little foggy every year, but this year was particularly bad.

And no, I was not wearing a skirt that said "skirt" too :p

Anyway, at least we had a fun night waiting for the non-sunrise. We had some yummy tacos for dinner, played Apples and Apples (a word association game), let off fireworks at midnight on the beach (freezing our arses off), went to a hole-in-the-wall makkolli place that did particularly yummy bacon-wrapped ggochi (꼬치 - snacks on sticks; I don't even know what everything was, besides wrapped in bacon!), and, of course, noraebang. I think all of us bar the superstrong Christy and Jessica micro-napped at some point in the night, and Tom and Bailey headed off home around 3am (now that they're an old married couple and all we could excuse them^^) but the rest of us more or less made it in one piece!

Midnight at Haeundae beach with Bailey, Danielle, Tom, Val, Dan, Jess, Christy

Christy showing off her incredibly long limbs - "It's like you're not even a real person - you're a cartoon character!!" (Jessica)

Rockin' it out at the noraebang!

Trying to use breakfast at Breezeburns to stay awake... ㅠㅠ~~~~~~*

So all in all it was a good NYE, and although there was no actual sunrise to see, it was fun seeing in the New Year together and a good start to 2012 to spend the last night of 2011 in such good company.

Which I suppose brings up New Year's resolutions - old hat I know, but it seems to be expected, going from everyone else's blogs. Let's see how many I can write with a straight face, haha :p

1. Ok, this sounds a tad bitchy, but it's one I've made every NYE for the last three years and the only one I've actually managed to keep and find useful. Don't waste time on people who aren't worth it. Conversely, spend more time with those who are and who appreciate it. I know I don't seem like it at times, but I'm kind of sentimental and an old-fashioned romantic about some things, and one of those things is about believing in people and friendships. So up until I made this, I found myself committing a lot of myself to certain people and certain friendships that ended up being a waste of time and energy, and finding myself ultimately disappointed when I should have been more realistic. People are sometimes unreliable, or two faced, or use other people to get what they want, or just plain jerks. It happens, move on, appreciate the ones who aren't.

2. Be more health conscious. Now I like to think that I do fairly well on this in general - I'm not and never will be an exercise junkie, or a gym person, so making a resolution to go to the gym every day is just unrealistic, but there are other ways I can keep fit and that are more than feasible, like resolving to exercise at least three or four times a week, even if it's just taking an hour long walk or going to a bellydancing class, which by the way I am keen to continue when I get back! This also involves being better about keeping to a low-GI diet (which I pretty much gave up on when I came to Korea, a.k.a. white-rice kingdom) to keep my IR in check, and making sure I get enough vitamin D, folate and zinc to help keep my immune system up. I haven't made much effort with those last three either lately, which may or may not have made any difference since I'm exposed on a daily basis to those little germ hotbeds known as 'children' and have had bronchitis three times this year, tonsilitis/throat infections twice, numerous colds, hayfever and gastro-enteritis. I've actually got bronchitis again now, which makes it twice in three months, and had an awful, nauseous, painful and very disgustingly mucousy two days when I ran out of medicine on Monday night until Ryan took me to see an ear nose and throat doctor yesterday who gave me some sort of nasal spray and bronchial steam thing, as well as more drugs. I don't know what the spray was but it was incredibly painful, so I'm glad it at least helped. Anyway, sorry for the digression! Upshot, be healthier, avoid germy children when possible.


3. Spend more time with my loved ones while I can. Good lord that sounds awful - ever since reading Evelyn Waugh's "The Loved One", those words make me think "corpse". But don't worry, I don't have a stack of corpses I keep and dress up and have tea parties with, I just mean close friends and family, especially in light of the fact that I've spent the last two years away from home, even though it's been great and I've made many new friends that are just as dear to me :)

4. Travel to at least one new country. Haha, there's always a selfish resolution in there somewhere, right? What's the New Year without a bit of self-indulgence? ^_^

Ok, done. I'm not going to ask for your ideas about anything I've missed, since I'm sure there are many things I need to improve about myself. But any constructive feedback is always welcome :)

Happy New Year y'all!

Just another Thursday

So tired...헐... I think I've got another cold coming on. This is particularly annoying because only yesterday, my office 부장님 (kind of like the head of our office) was commenting that I didn't have a cold, and how unusual that was because I'm always sick with something or other. Bahhh! I guess he jinxed me :( I think it also might be the exhausting effect of 3 hours of bellydancing a week - it's fantastic fun but yesterday she really punished us with some particularly challenging routines to really fast songs by Outkast, Jay-Z and Britney Spears. Anyway, I shouldn't complain about it - I love it too much :) Anyway, I'm going to see if I can find a better doctor than the one I have right now, since he won't admit that he doesn't understand English and also for some reason seems incapable of listening to me in Korean, even for very simple things that I know I'm saying correctly, like "I have a fever" or "I don't have a sore throat", and so persists in prescribing me what I'm sure is the same medication for everything, regardless of what I actually have (he told me he didn't need to do any tests when I went to him with a UTI and just prescribed me stuff that masked the symptoms, the result of which I ended up with crippling cystitis).

So apart from the general bitching, sorry, don't have anything particularly interesting for you today. But I didn't want you guys to feel forgotten, so here's some cute pictures that will hopefully bring a smile to your day :)

P.S. thanks to Lara for the rainbow and Yinnie for the cavvies pic! ^_^

Eeeeee! ^_^

Cool Korean version of Alice falling through the rabbit hole

Ziplining with Christy last weekend

My first real friends in Korea - <3 you guys!

I miss my KBFF :(

Happy Thursday everyone! ^_^

Meanwhile....

Since the other post today was quite long and I have other stuff I want to blog about I thought I'd break it up into two so you can choose which looks more interesting and read-worthy :)

So tomorrow is our long-weekend, which is why I have the time to blog on a weekend instead of sleeping or doing house-work or homework etc. I thought I'd throw in a few random thoughts and updates.

First one: a random update. I've lately started bellydancing three times a week and so very quickly noticed that my ankle and wrist joints are not really up to the quick turns and turned hand/foot positions required. My back has also been hurting a lot more since then, and I've also noticed how much my ankles and wrists click when I simply flex them... or when I walk. I don't know if it's because I never realised it before, or that I did and have just begun to take it as normal background noise, or that it's more noticeable now that it's getting colder here, but when I got up and walked to my bathroom this morning, I was accompanied by a series of noises from my ankles that made it sound like I was walking on bubble-wrap. Which when I thought about it was kind of weird. And last Friday at bellydancing, I also noticed a kind of weird pulling feeling from the tissue over the joints in my shoulder when I had to lift my arms into "the snake" position over my head. The week before, I'd freaked my teacher out when I hadn't done a position right and she'd turned my hand into position for me (arm in front of your chest with your hand turned outwards) and felt the bones in my wrist grind together and make quite a loud noise. Although this was possibly also because I yelped a little and she thought she'd broken my wrist. I'm assuming that this is all the result of a slight calcium deficiency, and a quick trawl of our trusty friend the internet suggests the usual inclusion of more leafy greens and seafood (I've heard that the Korean anchovies myeolchi [멸치] are especially good). It also suggests more orange juice and nuts, which I didn't know were good for that, so there you go. Of course, the obvious answer is a calcium supplement, but these usually have lactose or soy bases, to both of which I am intolerant and currently trying to avoid to see if it helps with other health issues. If the clicking (which freaks me out now that I'm aware of it) continues or gets worse I think I'm going to have to go for them though, as the list of related health problems REALLY scared me. Hopefully I'm young enough that I can change my diet to help my health enough to avoid these completely - cooking and eating at home would probably be a good idea rather than going out for dinner all the time. Fingers crossed that my laziness and reluctance to venture out into snow will actually work in my favour in this case as winter progresses. But if anyone knows of any additional ways that I can up my calcium intake easily (especially in Korea) or of any non-lactose, non-soy supplements, please let me know!

Secondly, a food update! As in something you can try, not just me niggling about my very lazy diet :) Yesterday I went to Daejeon to hang out with a friend, and got to try something new and yummy - jjajang ddokbokki! 짜장떡볶이 is just like normal ddokbokki but has the slightly salty black bean sauce you usually get over noodles at Chinese restaurants instead of the spicy red sauce. This one was especially cute as the ddok (rice cakes) were shaped like little stars, hearts and clubs, and there was ham and cabbage in the sauce like you'd get with jjajangmyeon. Very cute!


There was also a guy giving free hugs, and who can say 'no' to a free hug? Of course, the fact that he was quite good looking may have had something to do with it. I probably wouldn't have been as keen on a hug from a hairy wall-eyed midget in his 40's ㅋ ㅋ ㅋ ㅋ You can't see the girls, but the kids you can see in the background had been standing there giggling for about 5 minutes trying to get up the courage to go for one, and when I was going for my hug a five foot ajumma pushed me out of the way to get in first :)


Lastly but not leastly, some more from my students. A couple of weeks ago I gave them a writing task where they had to draw a picture personality test. The picture had to include a house, a tree, a sun, some water and some flowers. You've probably done this before, and so know that the house = how you see yourself, the tree = how you see your mother, the sun = how you see your father, the water = emotions, flowers = your friends. They usually all look more or less alike, although I did have quite a few of my students draw the water as a glass or a bottle rather than an actual body of water which I thought was interesting, as none of my students who did it last year did that. These were some of the rather terrifying results from the boys.

 

 Oh and just for good measure, any of my readers who are in Cheongju or at least Korea, make sure you check out the bingsu at Lovestory Cafe downtown at least once before you leave. Bingsu is a yummy summer dessert with shaved ice, fruit, syrup or condensed milk, tiny rice-cakes, jelly lollies, Frosties, and traditionally also red-beans. This one had ice-cream instead of condensed milk but no beans because it was just a fruit bingsu (과일빙수) instead of the usual ppatbingsu (팥빙수), the ppat being the red beans. Anyway, Lovestory does some really good ones. They also have a good variety of coffee, milkshakes and herbal teas (which are ridiculously overpriced in my opinion at 6000 won a pot). Below is a photo of a giant green-tea sundae that the waiter had made bingsu style (but with about seven scoops of ice-cream instead of ice as a favour because he's a friend) I had with Shelly the time she visited from Busan, and then another more recently of the lovely Tiffany enjoying a strawberry Oreo milkshake and our fruit bingsu :)

Tiff and yummies^^

녹차 sundae

So happy Sunday everyone! If you're in Korea, Happy 개천절 (?), the public holiday no-one can explain, tomorrow! If you're in NSW in Aus, Happy Bank Holiday! Hope you're doing something fun and/or eating something yummy ^_^

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.

Summer Birthdays and Summer Shenanigans

So I have no idea what 'shenanigans' means in Minnesota, but apparently it's something big enough to get into a tizzy and storm out of a bar over.

Oh and hello readers! <insert half-arsed excuse for not updating my blog more frequently to cover reality of extreme laziness here> At least this month I have a valid excuse or two to keep the lame ones company though - principally, the end of semester and the simultaneous start of summer camp, and secondarily, my birthday! (huzzah!) As a testament to my ageing faculties, and partly in defence of my long absence, it did actually take me a while and a random question from a teacher about my exact age to remember that it was in fact my birthday soon. Having failed to remember that, it was also a bit of a trial to remember exactly how old I was turning and the difference in age between 23 and 25, possibly because of afore-mentioned failure to remember exactly how old I am. (Darn math! You kids these days with your subtractions and divisions and whatchamacallits!) Celebrating a joint birthday with a borrowed KBFF (since both of our originals have left!), Christy and I had a lovely day of manicures, pedicures, Harry Potter movies and cake around Nampo-dong in Busan. Luckily, Christy doesn't seem to have been afflicted with early-onset dementia like me, and was most gentle in her mockery of my extremely blonde weekend, even when I was surprised that the cherry and almond ice-cream cake we had chosen after much discussion in the store had cherries in it. Later, we went out for Christy's birthday with her friends and had a quiet but fun night out at a nearby bar and of course noraebang, topped by the most magnificent night-club I've ever been to! Aptly named Superdome, the culmination of the evening was the roof opening to music from the Star Wars movies and being showered in fake snow. Beautiful! (I just realised that I didn't in fact get a video of this like I thought so you'll have to go there to see this wonder for yourselves!) It was also quite entertaining  - singing and dancing from the stage-shows, and an ajumma being physically dragged out of the club by five bouncers after getting mouthy, throwing beer all over people on the dance floor and then trying to take them all on and refusing to leave. Haha, Busan never fails in fun^^


The next weekend (last weekend), birthday celebrations were set to continue with a trip to Pohang, a coastal city in Gyeongsangbuk-do. Looking for a quiet weekend after a cocktail party on Friday night that had featured some particularly lethal drinking games, things didn't quite go to plan. Mostly due to the afore-mentioned drinking games and a challenge to the theme of "I don't get drunk. Drunk is for people from weak countries", a friend that I'll call Irish Pride (IP) barely made it to the bus (she had our tickets so we were very lucky that she has a conscience!) and having made it to the bus, trooper that she was held it in for 2 hours before we got to the rest stop before hurling her guts up. Off the bus at the other end and another chuck up, a run to the chemist (the fastest I've ever been able to explain a problem and buy the correct medicine for it!), another 40 minutes on a city bus, and 15 minutes walk with a stop or two along the way, and we were at the beach.

At this point, the less hungover of us wanted to get something to eat, so we continued down the beach. IP definitely needed a rest so she decided to hang back and have a nap as was. Being too hungover to take stock, the place she chose was unfortunately right in the middle of the beach with no shade. Being good friends that we are, when we'd eaten and come back to find her, the first order of business was of course photographic evidence of her solitude amongst the crowds. I'm sure at this point that the Korean tourists around were wondering what kind of people we were to be sniggering and taking photos of this poor hapless person evidently not very well that we'd apparently just stumbled on. Even after we'd woken her up and all gone off together, I'm sure they were still unimpressed, as we were also the only ones wearing bikinis (the usual Korean swimming outfit being not that much different from normal clothes, i.e. fully dressed), and after taking a dip we all promptly fell asleep on the sand, then after waking up took more photos of others still asleep.

IP on IV

Anyway, so after an otherwise relaxed afternoon on the beach where we'd all been at least a little burnt, it started getting cloudy and sprinkling, so we decided to leave and go find a motel. Getting up however, IP (at this point as red as a lobster, mostly from the walk from the bus) started getting the shakes. Protesting that she was ok, the rest of us got bossy and called a taxi to take her to a hospital. It was revealed at this point that she'd also had a bit of a cheeky chuck on the beach and buried the evidence. Which meant that she hadn't been able to keep down any water. The first taxi took us to a hospital nearby that proved to be closed, but luckily a woman (who must have been a nurse that normally works there or something) saw IP's state, called us another taxi and gave us some good advice to stop us freaking out that IP's hands were turning blue and she couldn't stand up by herself. Luckily IP was ok when sitting down, so she didn't redecorate the taxi. Whether it was to the driver's credit for understanding the urgency of the situation or just because he was afraid of that happening, he got us back to the city in under 20 minutes, where it seemed like it would normally take at least 30. Fortunately, a nurse at the hospital spoke enough English that they could figure out some treatment for IP (since the gaps in my Korean medical vocabulary are more like crevasses and the others don't really speak Korean). An injection of something miraculous for her migraine and a litre and a half of IV fluid for the dehydration later, things were looking less dire. Possibly gazing at the handsome English speaking male nurse and discussing the link between education and good looks amongst Korean medical staff for a couple of hours helped. At any rate, it was more than enough time for her sympathetic friends to take another photo. Hehe ㅋ ㅋ ㅋ


Anyway, so a steak dinner and the obligatory noraebang later, and it was a good birthday weekend where no-one died! Sadly it was drizzling that night so the fire work we tried didn't do anything and we were all to scared to go pick it up, but I did get a 'Happy Birthday' song from the staff at Outback Steakhouse and a commemorative photograph so it was all good :)


As a follow up, yesterday I went to the dermatologists with IP as her face had puffed up and started blistering quite badly - kind of like 3rd degree burns. They gave her some medicine, an injection, and some magic ointment though that seems to be doing the trick. She's sworn off the tipple but we'll have to see how long that lasts!


And that's the saga of my last two birthday-related weekends :)

If you're reading this, I have already been killed..

Haha, anyone remember that ridiculous Pauline Hansen video she made? What an idiot. In oh so many ways.

Actually, this is just a follow up post to my one yesterday whinging about how sick I was. I went to the doctor and apparently it was just gastro-enteritis. Surprisingly, this was the first time I've been to see him this year when he HASN'T suggested that my illness stemmed from constipation. Tonsilitis? And constipation. The flu? And constipation. At any rate, I am taking a bunch of medicines (seriously, there are like 7 in each dose) and feeling better every day. Luckily today is also 초복 or chobok, the first 'dog day' - there are three in Korea (삼복 sambok or 복날 boknal - I've heard it called both), each marking the supposedly hottest days in summer (today it was about 28 degrees and rained like the sky was flooding for about half an hour then just as abruptly stopped) - so we got summer chicken soup (닭곰탕/삼계탕 - dakgomtang/samgyetang) for lunch so I could actually eat something. The long and short of it is that I'm ok. Sorry for worrying people :)

By the way...

Just to add, for those of you in Cheongju, I'm pretty sure it was something at MJ's that made me so sick as that was the last place I went and where I started feeling ill. It was either that or the lime mojitos at Roadking (they are frozen so maybe they didn't defrost them properly?) because that was the only thing I had that was different to everyone else, none of whom got sick. I shudder to think what it was that made me ill there too - it must have either been the sliced lemon in my drink or even worse, the glass itself. And apparently MJ's is also a lot cleaner these days than it used to be too, which is a worrying comparison. So be careful Cheongju-ites!

Warning: possible overshare ahead

What have I been up to since last week I hear you not actually ask? Well, Saturday was an interesting night in which I almost got assaulted by some random Korean girl that one of my friends befriended out of pity that we then couldn't get rid of. Very friendly, but very agressive. Some things she could have done with knowing: if people want to leave, let them leave - pick up the clue that they may in fact be escaping; don't try and pimp your new friends out to your old friends and think that this is funny; affectionate is cute, grabby is not; 'holding on' to someone's bag to prevent them leaving is not a good idea unless you want things to end very badly, and throwing a temper tantrum as a last resort in a packed bar when that person wrestles their bag back and goes to leave will not make said person want to stay any more. Luckily, it was also Emma's birthday and this was only after we'd done the majority of the fun stuff celebrating already. As she had sent us all a text message saying "What are you doing tonight? I want beer and a face full of cake!", she got her birthday wish and the subsequent face full of blueberry preserve and egg tart. So at least the night started out well!

Warning: the story ahead may be a little more than you ever wanted to know. In fact, I just remembered that a bunch of us were talking about this only last night and I actually specified the rule that any detail about bodily emissions was an overshare, so I apologise for my slight hypocrisy. Don't worry, it's not that specific.

So I say started, because it ended with me going home after a couple of hours feeling a little queasy, despite not having drunk an inordinately large amount of alcohol. Nothing that couldn't be fixed with some cup 짜파게티 (jjajangmyeon ramyeon) I thought - little did I know that my night wasn't over yet and that I was going to wake up again repeatedly sweating with a fever over the next six hours continually running to the bathroom and trying not to hurl my guts out. You could say it was an improvement when I finally managed to, except that I then spent the rest of the morning pretty much sitting on my bathroom floor sobbing into the toilet and wishing it would stop between bouts of whatever else was pouring out of my body at the time. Part of this melodrama might have been the fact that I couldn't even keep any water down, and since I had had a few drinks the night before, I was getting pretty dehydrated.

Anyway, thankfully the vomiting stopped after four hours, and I managed to have a shower and some sleep. Later on, watching "Killing Bono" with some food and tea with Eadaoin also helped - great movie by the way! Stars Ben Barnes as Neil McCormack (Prince Caspian) and Robert Sheehan (Nathan from 'Misfits') as well as Martin McCann as (according to Eadaoin) an eerily lookalike Bono. It also had Pete Postlethwaite in it in his last role before his death from cancer earlier this year, looking tragically remission gaunt rather than cocaine-chic gaunt, but doing a great job (as always) nonetheless. By the way, best quote of the movie from Pete Serafinowicz: "Don't boo me, I went to Eton!" haha^^

Monday saw me with more stomach pains and sleeping through both my deskwarming and the two classes I had (they were watching movies anyway) and Tuesday slightly less so (probably because I skipped two meals entirely and didn't have any carbs or dairy) but still sleeping all afternoon at my desk. I'm feeling much better today so I'm going to see how I go with lunch and if it comes back then it's probably doctor time. One of my co-teachers kept trying to get me to go home yesterday but I didn't want to go since a) I've already taken a few sick days off, b) my vice-principal doesn't like me as it is, and c) I can sleep just as easily at school as at home (there's a very comfortable couch in my English room office). So instead she's been giving me a bunch of extra medicines and a kind of back massage-pummelling to help circulation or something. Another got me some 죽 (juk) or rice porridge for lunch since I didn't want to risk the kimchi fried rice and hotdogs that were today's lunch, so I am being very well taken care of :)

At any rate, I can easily say that of all the indigestion meds (소화약) I've tried, by far the best have been these herbals ones called 보화환 (bohwahwan) and 생록천(saengnokcheon). I think that 보화환 might actually be a generic name for that type of medicine, but it basically looks like little choco-balls, or really big brown silica gel balls, and goes with the 생록천 drink. Apart from dried orange peel and ginseng, I have no idea what is in either of them, but they work really fast and last for a good couple of hours at least. You can take them three times a day and were 3000 won (about $2.80) at my local chemist.

So that's the update on the state of my digestive system. Hopefully things get better and I don't have something awful like the last couple of times I didn't think I was sick and ended up having tonsilitis and then a kidney infection. If you don't hear from me, assume that I've got stomach cancer or appendicitis and have been hospitalised... or more likely that I'm fine and just lazy about blogging. Peace out y'all! Hope your tummies are feeling less grumbly than mine :)

ㅊ_ㅊ z z z ~

Something funky for your face - I've seen a 35yo man wearing the lips one

Don't you think that Konglish emoticon looks sleepy? I do, which is incidentally how I'm feeling. Yes, I'm sick. Again. I got some awful 24 hour bug last Tuesday and almost fainted in class, but a visit to the doctor and lots of sleep (every free period, lunch, and as soon as I got home for the whole evening for the rest of the week) sorted me out. Until Saturday. Ok, so maybe it has something to do with the green beer I had on Friday (St Patty's day dontcha-know?) and then going out again in Hongdae on Saturday (although I didn't really drink any alcohol and barely made it to 1am) but I have a feeling it's more to do with the Yellow Dust. Apparently it was really bad on Saturday, so bad that a lot of people in Cheongju didn't even go outside. In my little absent-minded cocoon I didn't even notice! I thought the air was a bit dirty because of smog or something, but barely anyone in Seoul was wearing a facemask, which is the usual indicator, and it's a lot further north than Cheongju so you'd think it would be worse. Mind you, Koreans get pretty fanatical about the Yellow Dust - don't go outside, close and seal all windows and doors, if you have to go outside wash your face and hair when you get in and shake your clothes, etc. - and with good reason. For those of you unfamiliar with such a lovely sounding Spring phenomenon, the Yellow Dust is a potent mix of dirt, dust, sand, and largely industrial chemical waste blowing down from Siberia and Northern China, thanks to growing erosion, drought and deforestation. Because there are a lot of Easterlies in this area, it gets pretty bad around Beijing, North Korea and South Korea, and if there's a strong enough carrying wind apparently it can even make it as far as the West Coast in the USA. On bad days, it looks like yellow fog, and you can usually smell it if you go outside. This is an article about a bad bout of it last year in Beijing and another about the growing toxicity of it this year.

Anyway, so walking around in that all afternoon in Seoul certainly didn't help my cough and my throat looks red raw as a result. Luckily I always have my students to cheer me up :) Those of you on Facebook will have probably seen my post about the very smooth year 7 boy (1st grade, 13 yo) who tried out this gem of a pick-up line: "Teacher, I am very handsome guy! Let's have conversation... you know, me, you, we have secret meeting, so-gae-ting, ok? *waggles eyebrows at me Groucho Marx style*" to which I replied (trying not to laugh too much) "Ok, well if you want conversation you can come to my conversation class after school on Wednesdays." He looked very deflated and sadly told me "Oh ...no after school because I must go to hagwon.Sorry." (So-gae-ting/소개팅 or 'meeting'/미팅 = date).


My other favourite this week was from two of my third year students in my Monday conversation class that gave me a nice start to the week. Because they don't have me for regular classes any more, apparently Monday is their favourite day of the week "because I can meet you!" This may or may not have had something to do with the candy I'd given them that lesson, but they are generally sweet girls so I am choosing to believe not :) 


And one more - as part of my first year conversation class students' placement test I asked them to tell me about a place they'd like to go and why. This was my favourite response (although I couldn't really mark it as correct):

Hello? Amy ^^
I'm Su Jung.
Nice to meet you.
I'm sorry... I don't study English very well... But I will be smart!!! looking for me!! HA! HA! HA!
Amy!! I like you very much!!^^
Goodbye~ :-)
Your student, Giyomi ♥ Su Jung.


Oh and my favourite - discussing 'frequency' and asking the 2nd graders (yr 8) for things they never do, as well as the usual "kill, smoke, drink alcohol", the fat kid (his name is 으뜸/U-Ddum - doesn't that even sound roly-poly??) shouted out "DIET!". Hahaha ^_^


Anyway, hope that brightens your day as much as it did mine. Jenkins out!

Thoughts of a Dying Atheist

.. not really. just thought i'd throw that song title in anyway because i love muse.

not quite dying, but i feel like i should be. got a horrible cold from SOMEONE... I'M GLARING AT YOU CHANEL! but actually it's been going around so it was only a matter of time. then and again, pretty much everyone who had contact with her last weekend seems to be ill... hmmm... :p luckily i don't have it too badly in that i'm not coughing up any blood or throwing up like some of the others. evidentally i look terrible enough to warrant a sick day from school though (although they are in our contracts, they're virtually non-existent in Korea) because as soon as i walked in to the staffroom today, my co-teacher took one look at me and started organising with my other co-teachers to take my classes for me, then got the vice principal's permission to send me home after a whole 26 minutes of being at work. seeing as i am also losing my voice, i probably wouldn't be able to run my classes very well today anyway. i have to add here that i love that she takes care of me, without me even needing to ask. last time i was really sick in may, she took me to the doctors, then looked up a recipe for chicken soup on the internet with my neighbour the school nutritionist and they made me a pot of it.

so here i am at home now, on the first of many cups of lemon tea i plan to subsist on today (seeing as i have no appetite and eating makes me feel gross and a little nauseated right now) in between some much needed sleeping. hopefully i can snooze this thing off.