Pictures from Saturday.

I finally had an excuse to wear the green silk dress I had made in Vietnam.

With my pal Gina, who visited me in the hospital and was in an AWESOME Charleston performance.

With my (getting tipsy) future husband.

Courtesy Dung-ee

I could have danced all night...

... well, not really.

I went OUT last night. It was the seventh anniversary party for Swing and People and my foot was feeling up to walking without the cane, so I got dolled up and headed downtown for THE swing event in Daegu. I will update with pictures when my friend posts them to the club website.

And it was awesome. Just connecting with people again. Made me feel human. I even was able to dance to a few slow/medium pace songs and didn't die. It felt great.

Today my muscles are punishing me a bit for the workout I gave them, but that's ok 'cause I'm stuck grading and planning five million things for work. My foot still seems ok. I can walk, albeit slowly and with a small amount of pain. I will continue the soaking/heating/massage routine over the next week as I (hopefully) regain full function of my limbs. I do, on the plus side, now seem to have pretty good control over my bowels.

Maybe, just maybe, I'll be back to my old, active self by the time my wedding rolls around in two months.

Here's hoping!

Ongoing Medical Drama

Grey's Anatomy ain't got nothing on me. Seriously, my first week back at work, and I went every day, taught all my classes, and even taught the extra three high school gifted classes that I missed while I was in the hospital. Peachy.

However, my body is broken. Some of the effects of the medications I'm on from my hospitalization include extreme muscle fatigue. So towards the beginning of this week, walking was difficult. Apparently so difficult that by Wednesday afternoon, I'd developed a case of tendinitis in my foot so bad, that I couldn't walk.

So Thursday (after confirming at the hospital it wasn't broken and getting some advice from the orthopedic guy) and Friday, I hobbled around school and my neighborhood with the assistance of the prop cane from the student theater festival competition.

That's right... I have a disease that makes it hard to control my bowel movements and now I'm sporting a cane.

Dammit... I'm like 90 years old.

More rest this weekend. Such an exciting life I lead. Perhaps I will one day climb out from under this backlog of work (grading) that missing two weeks of school and then being unable to walk and therefore too exhausted to think will cause, but I have my doubts about that.

Hope your lives are more pleasant.

Quick Note.

Just checking in that I'm alive. I've been working on a post about my hospitalization in Korea (so many interesting things), but as I'm still exhausted and going through crazy medication regimentations while returning to my job (with the natural backlog of work that's accumulated), it's taking a bit of time.

I look forward to blogging again one day. Thanks fellow bloggers for your well-wishes. I miss you all.

Still Sick.

Where have I been?

At home, resting. I am very, very ill. I have not gone out for about three weeks, been to the hospital three times, and missed three days of work. I have been struggling with going to work and adjusting to new medications my doctor is trying, but they're not working. Friday, he wanted to admit me to the hospital, but I freaked out and refused, so he said I could try bedrest this weekend.

My body has fluctuated, and I can tell the rest is helping, but I am still not well. When I woke up again at 3 a.m. today (notice it's 5 now) to spew out more of what resembles the parasitic alien creatures coming out the bottom of Stephen King's Dreamcatcher victims, I realized that I'm not going to just get better on my own. That my doc (who is quite awesome) knows what he's doing, and I have to trust him, even if I'm afraid I'll be like the freakshow in a room with five old Koreans and all their visitors gawking at me and trying to use me for free English lessons.

I sent a very pathetic e-mail to my co-workers and pray they don't hate me. If I'm not typing here, it's because I'm sparing you the gory details of the swamp creature death that expunges itself from my innards 10-15 times a day.

For now, I'm off to pack a small bag for the hospital stay.

Peace.

I'm boring, but I'm not bored

(Try explaining the above sentence to EFL students.)

My life has become dull and boring these days as I rest up and try to heal. On the plus side, I'm bonding with my kitties and fully caught up on Desperate Housewives. Then, on the downside, I have very little to write about and less energy to do it.

However, I am really excited about some upcoming projects I'm working on for my classes with William. Our last effort turned into the school's first English Theater Festival, which made the school look really good, so we've pretty much been allowed to do whatever we want with our classes since then. Within some limits (mostly placed by my least favorite person at the school, who is unfortunately also the most powerful).

I hope when I get a job in the U.S. next year I enjoy my co-workers as much as I do at this school. I've been pretty lucky in all three teaching jobs I've worked in that I had good people I could count on--both friends and bosses. Not everyone is so lucky.

Bad Chuseok.

Today is Chuseok. But I am having a BAD day. You can read about it here, but it's gross.

In other Korea news, Amanda sent me some resources about studying for TOPIK (Test of Proficiency in Korean) and a link to this book, Every Day Live in Korea by D. L. Gifford, available online. It's an account of Korea by a missionary who lived and worked here in the late 1800s. I've started reading it and it's quite fascinating, especially as he got to see Korea before the most recent Japanese occupation (1910-1945) , which in some ways defines many of Korea's modern characteristics.

How I know I'm marrying the right person.

Min Gi doesn't like to plan. He doesn't like to think about tomorrow or the next day, let alone six months or a few years from now. When we were first dating, I would ask him if he wanted to do something on the weekend, and he would say, "Let's just see what happens." I finally broke down and told him that if we don't make plans together, I will make plans with other people or to do other things. He responded, "Well, I don't want to disappoint you if something happens. If I make a promise, I keep it."

I pointed out that if he gets sick or something else comes up that is more important, he can tell me about it and we'll just change our plans, but that if we don't make them, we probably won't see each other often (which is what had been happening for the first couple months). He started making plans with me.

The day I knew that I wanted to marry him (April, 2009):

Min Gi: "Honey, you know how you said you wanted to go to the Boryeong Mud Festival, right? And you said it was two weekends?"

"That's right. In July."

"I think we should go the first weekend because the second weekend is the week before we leave for America. We might want to pack."

I was speechless.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong... It's a good idea... but it's just... that's in July! You're making plans?!?"

"I want to be a plan-guy."

How I know he's the right person for me:

Wedding rings are not a tradition in Korea, but we decided we want them. We've selected a style we like, and I did some comparison shopping.

Me: "Hey look at the deal I found on these rings like the ones we wanted. Just $50!"

"Wow! Are you sure they're real?"

"Yeah, the design we're getting is not that expensive. Jewelry just has huge markups."

"Are you sure you don't mind? Don't women usually want expensive wedding rings?"

"I'm not like that. You know that." [Editor's note: This is one of the ways he knows I'm the right person for him. Haha!]

"Yeah, but I also wanted them to have a special meaning."

"Hon, they have a special meaning because they symbolize our love for each other, our promise."

"Or... we planned to spend more money on them anyhow. Why don't we donate the difference to a charity?"

I'm speechless, again. I then show him the website for Amnesty International and we agree to donate $200 (the money most other websites were charging for a similar design) for each ring when we purchase them.

Korea vs. America: Finances

I've been spending a little time on Dave's ESL Cafe Korean Jobs Discussion Boards, a place full of vitriol and bile from some very pissed off English teachers living (mostly) in Seoul, but also a resource many people contemplating the big move from America (or another English-speaking country) to Korea use to get questions answered by those of us who've been around the block a bit. While I really hate the caliber of discourse on most of the forums (recently comments insisting that Korea is an undeveloped country because it is racist and that white women who are overweight are lazy and make excuses have been getting my goat, so to speak), I do feel indebted to do my service by the "newbies" to Korea as many people helped me by posting their insights about Korea back in 2007 when I was researching the place obsessively.

Someone made a comment about how Korea and America had the same cost-of-living, and I responded rather strongly, but then realized it would probably make a decent blog post.

As a teacher in the U.S. (especially now that I have my master's degree and live in the DC metro area), my salary would be more than $50,000/year (substantially more if I taught extra test-prep classes, which I sometimes did). This is about twice what I earn in Korea (Currently base salary is 2.4 million/month, plus a lot of money from the after school classes I teach and extra duties, like writing essay prompts for district contests or interviewing for high-up positions in the BOE, which at the current exchange rate works out to USD $26,000 with the end-of-year bonus), and while housing being covered in Korea makes up quite a bit of the difference (I pay less than $40/month in rent for my posh new apartment), there are still major ways that Korea's COL beats out America and makes it easier to live a good lifestyle here.

Things that are cheaper:

--Transportation: Public transit is cheap and excellent. Even if you decide to get a car or scooter, gas is more, but insurance and maintenance are WAY less.
--Health insurance: Medical costs here (unless you get cancer, which is not covered by the National Plan) are cheap, cheap, cheap. I have a chronic condition that requires 6 pills a day of one medication, 2 of another, and monthly doc visits with a specialist. My monthly medical costs? About $30--this includes my birth control pills.
--Utilities: Gas is cheap, except sometimes in winter if you blast the floor heating, and electricity is cheap, unless you blast the AC in summer. Cell phone is about the same, but high speed internet is WAY cheaper, as is cable.
--Hobbies and activities: I pay ~$80/month for DAILY tkd, in the US I'd be lucky to find a studio that did three days a week for that price. I pay $5 at my swing dance bar, in the US I usually have to pay $10-$15 for the same thing. Skiing is cheap for skiing (about $70 for rental/lift pass for a day). The only thing I've heard might be a LOT more is golfing, but I don't have that particular vice. Gyms are about the same price.
--Dining out: A decent meal out costs between $7 and $20/person, drinks included, NO TIP. Home delivery is cheap, cheap, too.
--Taxes: Comparing the 3-5% I pay here with the 30% back home? Please...

However, living abroad has taught me that there are a lot of things I thought were "necessities" that are not actually necessary, like bathtubs and clothes driers. When I come back to the U.S., I might not be inclined to pay out the behind for cable services and snazzy internet, when I will have access to those things from the library or my parents' house. I will definitely be living cheaper than I did (and I lived pretty frugally before).

I hope that helps some of you folks thinking about expenses in Korea.

Fun, Sad, Crazy, OK.

Fun

After Korean class on Saturday (yes, I'm doing that again--the cute teacher is the advanced level teacher, score!) and teaching at the girls' shelter, I hopped on a train and went to visit my friend Big White Barbie out in Busan. We had not seen each other in quite some time due to alternating medical issues and incompatible schedules.

I had a fabulous time with her and a friend from her job who has been in Korea for three months. We ate Thai food (not really available in Daegu), put our feet in the sea at Haeundae, and went to a not-horrible bar in a gross area of the city. The plan was to wake up in the morning and be tourists at some cool historical sites around the city.

Sad

However, when we woke up, it was raining. I checked my e-mail to find three voicemails from Dad. This is not typical.

I used BWB's phone to call my dad only to find out that my mom was on her way to emergency surgery at the hospital. NOT GOOD. VERY, VERY SCARY.

When you live far away from your family and there is a crisis of this kind, you feel a kind of terrifying helplessness that makes you question everything. It drains the life right out of you; at least if you were back home, you could feel like you were doing everything that there was to be done, but from thousands of miles away... you're just... lost.

Crazy

And so, while my mom went through two hours of complicated, life-threatening surgery, BWB and I went to McDonald's to eat comfort food. This was a brilliant idea, of course, until crazy dude showed up. He sat at the next table, drinking water (no food), staring at us the whole time we were talking. We did an admirable job ignoring him, but we got up to go refill our drinks downstairs at the counter (and ok, yes, for me to order more emotional void-filling, fatty french fries), he followed us. Really creepy following. And then stood in line behind us.

We were freaking out, so I tried to ask the cashier to ask him to leave (he wasn't a customer). Note to self: Learn the words for "creepy" "follow" "stalking" and how to request that the person please ask said creepy following man to leave in Korean before my next public outing. As soon as I started talking to cashier, the dude actually hid behind a column. The cashier finally understood what we were saying, took one look at the guy (who looked like a creepy stalker), and kind of freaked out. In America if a non-customer was harassing two customers, management would have kicked him the heck out of there. However, of course, being younger than said man, the cashier couldn't say anything to him--thanks Korean culture for that one.

We went back upstairs to finish our meal. Dude follows us a few minutes later. He hovers nearby. Then he goes to the bathroom, and we just bolted for the exit. Seriously, left our tray with uneaten food and drink on the table and just hightailed out of there before the guy could come back out of the bathroom.

Dammit. We were in a restaurant FULL of people, and no one would help us by asking this jerk to leave us alone. WTF? Thing is, we have both been here long enough to know that if we had confronted him directly and yelled at him (as we really wanted to do and would have if we hadn't gotten our out), we would just have been the crazy foreigners assaulting/berating the older man. As it was, one or two girls gave us dirty looks as we ran out for leaving our tray at the table.

OK

We "hid" (or maybe ate some Chocolate Devotion waffle cone) in a Cold Stone Creamery until it was time to call my dad back to check on Mom's surgery. She came out fine. BWB and I watched downloaded TV shows until I finally dragged myself back to the Busan train station (purchasing ANOTHER umbrella in the 7-Eleven) and guilt tripped Min Gi into picking me up from the station in Daegu. I'm home now. Safe. Talked briefly to Mom who is in pain, but awake. I am exhausted beyond physical explanations, and yet unable to sleep. But it's going to be ok. It's going to be ok.