Day 195 -- Still Alive

Sorry for the hiatus. Here is an insultingly brief summary of the past 3 weeks. my bad.





Christmas

Holiday-wise, uneventful. People just don't really celebrate here. Spent the holiday doing dinner-and-a-movie with the boyfriend. Then had a fainting spell and totally freaked out the boyfriend. (I'm okay now, I think.)



New Year's

see above, sans passing out



English Winter Camp

I had to teach for two weeks, which was pretty brutal because usually I teach 2-3 classes a day, the same lesson plan all week. For camp, however, I had 4 classes a day and a new lesson plan every day. Yeah yeah, it's not TERRIBLE, but it's definitely a lot more work than I'm used to. Besides, I don't even know how to teach English, and that makes it harder to figure out what I'm going to teach.



Strep Throat

I've got it. I was supposed to teach an English class in Seoul at the North Korean refugee school that another guy in my program formed a relationship with, but I ended up being so weak from pre existing hormone issues and vasovagal syncope that I was sent away to the hospital. There, I astounded the doctors with how terrible I looked and the severity of strep I had. hurray? I'm on antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, and a harsh dose of traditional Korean herbal drinks and porridge so I'm feeling nauseous but better.



Host Siblings Gone

Sae Yeob and Min Oo, the two oldest, have left for America. I talk to Sae Yeob about twice a week, but he's since started classes so I haven't been able to check up on that. His roommate is a pot-smoker though, so uh, good luck to him and his good-boy-ways with that.



Boyfriend

We are pretty good. We try to spend a lot of time together when we have the chance, because between his job (he does weird night-shifts about once a week--night guard? idk) and my social commitments, our schedules don't mesh very well. DY ended up joining the gym I go to, both as a New Year's "oh crap I have a PT test in a few months" resolution and as a way to make sure the cute gym boys don't talk to me too excessively. In other news, he's been talking big about deploying to Afghanistan for 6 months but it's not official and I disapprove anyway. Here we are in Seoul at Children's Grand Park, which is a zoo + amusement park. Yes, those are the couple scarves he got about a month ago.

UP NEXT

This week marks the start of my brief vacation before going to Daegu University for an intensive Korean language class. This break will probably be filled with a lot of Korean studying, lesson planning for the new semester, and hanging out with DY. Next weekend is his birthday, so he took a long weekend off from work so that we could go on a trip together, but he's probably going to have to stay in Nonsan for Friday or Saturday. He, um, was not kind to his fellow soldier friends on their birthday and apparently made them some pretty foul concoctions to drink, so they have sworn revenge. DY is frightened of what they will do to him, but his friends are hilarious so I kind of want to see what happens.

Oh, and I will, ah, try to update more than once every three weeks. Starting... now?