Adjusting...

I dislike how much I've been neglecting this thing. The reasons for this are really threefold: most importantly, I am damn busy, specifically because I keep needing to e-mail loads of people back and inform them of my various adventures--something that obviously possesses an ironic element as if I would just give this blog address out to more than four people, a lot of the people I am writing these massive e-mails to would let me be.

The second reason is a lack of internet at my own apartment, which has me relying on Geoff's internet or my school's and my time with both of those sources is neigh too frequent.

And finally, I got brutally sick around Tuesday night of last week and have spent much time since then bed ridden or making my way slowly and carefully towards the toilet for the purpose of expelling things from my stomach via my mouth.

This lasted until Friday (I had Wednesday off thank god, but somehow worked Thursday with a 103 fever) when my friendly Canadian co-worker Chris mercifully took me to the hospital. The doctor was pretty amazing and spoke English and French. They gave me a saline drip and proper none vomiting pills and the director of my school Victor (who always looks like he is meditating on how awesome he is) took me home in his very fancy car.

It was a mark of how sick I was that they actually let me take a sick day. Koreans do not take sick days. For my year long contract, I am allowed a total of three sick days, but the other foreign teachers I've spoken to tell me that this is merely a formality, that usually if you call in to work and say you are sick, your school director will take you to the hospital, shoot you full of steroids or something and then send you to work.

At home, I stumbled to bed like a drunk and just lay there doing nothing for several hours. The medication zonked me out and gave me nightmares, all of them oddly about Geoff being happened upon by a gang of angry Koreans and being forced (American History X style) to bite the street curb. The dreams were intensely graphic and upsetting and I kept waking up in tears only to pass out and have the dream, in a slightly varied format, reoccur. Geoff had said he'd come to my place but I waited and waited and he wasn't there. I lay there counting hours and knowing he was dead, as obviously, what other reason could there be for such tardiness?

But a mere two and a half hours after he got off work, Geoff sauntered in all flushed with his enjoyable walk, a sort of man of the world spring in his step, the silly, self pleased expression that will drive a woman who is less than pleased with him wild. Except not with passion. And so passed my weekend. I ate rice porridge, which is rice and soup and which I never want to see again at the moment and in this respect, I do not have a prayer. Because as far as food goes in Korea, soup and rice are pretty big. I also bitched and then apologized a lot, because I hate being sick and because I was pretty damn sick.

Geoff went out Saturday with our friend from UCSC Guy (who was also a Creative Writing major) which was good because I got to watch movies and talk to myself inanely about the plot lines, like a regular, sick, crazy person. Guy--shit Artur, he goes by Artur now--came back from the bars with Geoff and slept on the floor. He proved as useless as one would expect in the kitchen the next morning and so I made him food and tea and generally was a nice hostess, while Geoff blatantly ignored his friend and went on skype and talked to Taum and Leo about DnD, which was honestly very comforting to listen to. I could listen to Taum rant randomly about things I don't fully understand for the rest of my life.

I am so happy not to be sick anymore. It is so easy to just take feeling normal and healthy for granted. But my god, as soon as its not there, you notice. Being able to just ingest food as you feel like it or to just take a sip of water on a whim, ahh... These are the fine things in life. Even walking to catch the bus is some kind of blessing.

One of the children in my gifted class is having a birthday today. I am considering bringing party stuff to class, because these kids have been working hard as hell and because I like this class the best...I have no idea though if this is an acceptable thing to do in Korea. I guess I'll find out...