Mon., Jan 8

Look how harmless and friendly she looks….

I have a vague memory of leaving y’all with some sort of cliffhanger last week…oh…yeah…”Sun., Jan 7: My body was saying PLEASE PLEASE JUST STAY HOME but I had to run an errand and then a friend asked if we could do a little shopping, and then we got lunch…and my poor body was just POOPED. I always try to plan ONE DAY A WEEK of no (significant) walking. I really feel it on Monday when I head back to school if I haven’t given my legs, feet, hips a chance to really rest. And my body REALLY rebelled this time…but you’re going to have to wait til next week to hear about that! Ha ha STAY TUNED FOR NEXT WEEK’S EPISODE.”

WELL. So, a couple of weeks back someone from my old job in the US asked if I would send them a short video clip wishing one of my bosses happy 50th birthday to include in a birthday video they were making for her. Of course I would be happy to, and of course I will make it far more complex than it needs to be. So the day before the video was due I went to a local Paris Baguette which is a bakery chain here and got a cute little like personal sized cake and birthday candles, brought it home, held it up to video me singing Happy Birthday in Korean. It was darling if i do say so myself.

And now I had this adorable cake. And what does one do with an adorable cake? One tastes it. It was so delicious. PI’d put it in like the top three cakes I’ve had in my entire life. So I had the first small slice. Amazing. Later I had another small slice. Amazing. Then I just never put the cake away…it just sat here on the desktop next to me while I studied and I kept straightening out the edges of the cake with the fork to make it neat because cake/pie edges must be neat at all times.
Remember this is a very small cake. You could probably cut four healthy sliced pieces out of it. At some point in the evening I stopped and had dinner which was my favorite extremely spicy ramen. Enjoyed it immensely as I always do, then went back to work or whatever I was doing and continued evening out the edges of the cake. Around 10:00 PM I guess the cake was done. I felt slightly ill but I had, you know, eaten an entire cake and spicy ramen over the past few hours. It was a lot.
Went to sleep around 11 and around 2:00am I woke up going ooh ooh I don’t feel so good, what is that about? Usually I immediately think kidney stone but this was more global whereas kidney stone pain usually starts in more of a specific spot. By 2:30 I was in the bathroom throwing up. And for the next 8 hours we ran this play on repeat of I don’t feel good, throwing up in the bathroom, getting back in bed, just barely dozing off before waking up again and saying I don’t feel good, lather rinse repeat. And it was from every direction not just throwing up if you get my drift. Sorry, but you have to know the whole story.
The next morning I texted my tutor to say I could not make our session and I texted my teacher to say I could not get to class that day even though we had a speaking test ,could I video myself doing the reading, could I meet her on zoom at her convenience to do the reading and she said no, the only thing I could do was to go to the hospital and get a doctor’s certificate. But I could barely move . There was no way I was going to attempt going outside the room let alone outside the building under my own steam.
So that whole day I really just dozed on and off.  My stomach was still not right. I couldn’t eat anything. Jacqueline the Angel girl who lives in my building did go to the convenience store for me and got me Sprite and an apple which I was able to cut in very thin slices and ate a little bit of that over the course of the day just to get something back in me. I was afraid to put anything in because I knew it was just gonna come right back out.
Other than kidney stones I don’t think I have been this sick since I was in my 20s, and even then I can only think of two incidences: 1) A sausage hero at a carnival; (combined with a lot of beer. In August);  and 2) Some Kentucky Fried Chicken in Virginia, that one involved an emergency room and staying two extra days in a hotel room. I couldn’t eat Kentucky Fried Chicken for years and that was a real loss to my life.
So that was my Monday.
I apologize if that sounds like AI wrote it, but somehow even now, just typing feels ridiculously strenuous and I discovered my laptop has talk to text so I used that, then just tweaked a bit. But I speak in run-on sentences and when I write I use a lot more punctuations…spacing, italics, bold, all caps, etc., so when I just read it back I feel like it doesn’t really SOUND like me. But it is. Not a monster.

Tue., Jan 9

Today was the written part of the midterm exam- I HAD to get myself there. Technically I was no longer “sick,” but in other circumstances I would not have left the house today. And by house I mean bed. I took an Uber to class, which felt incredibly indulgent for a half mile trip but the thought of getting myself up the %*$$#@! hill just was…nope. Not gonna happen.

And it was lovely. I think I might treat myself with that once a week. It’s under $3, I’d say it’s like a coffee swap but the coffee is less than that.

Anyway. I don’t get it. I’m doing well in class. I do well on the homework. I do well on the weekly practice exams. But the midterm is like a completely different animal. The homework and practice tests are like checking to see if we understand/know the material. The midterm is OUT TO GET US. The questions are tricky and unclear. Oh, she might know the material, but let’s see if she’s also SMART! Cuz yeah no, I’m not. I’m not taking Smart Class, I’m taking KOREAN Class. Please don’t intermingle the two.

So…we’ll see how I did. I KNOW I failed the listening part – understanding spoken Korean continues to be the hardest part for me.

Wed., Jan 10

My messy view since I’ve been sick. Really have to get this neater looking.

Today was Midterm Part 2: The One-on-One Dialogue with a teacher (not OUR teacher). Five minutes of prompts and answers. I was really prepared for this, thanks to my tutor (I mentally bow to him daily).

And yet…ha ha. I struggled to understand some things she asked me, plus she was wearing a mask, which makes it even more diffcuclt to discern different sounds. OH WELL.

Thur., Jan 11

In Seoul, there are always stairs between you and what you want.

I went back and forth all week whether I should keep our standing Thursday night “go out” appointment because of how poorly I’d been feeling (I was still not really eating normally). But when he texted “can we meet tomorrow,” I was…YES. YES WE CAN MEET TOMORROW. So we made a simple plan to just meet at a pajeon (vegetable pancake) place near me. But over the course of my 4-hour class I became RAVENOUS and decided I wanted MEAT BEEF STEAK 고기 – and after some texts during class break we decided on a Japanese place also close to me, but where I have had very good “steak bites” before AND a delicious sweet pumpkin soup. 

“Small and precious things will make you happy. I hope you like it.” ~ Pink Robin

In the end somehow the steak was not nearly as good as it was the first time I was there…and I spilled my pumpkin soup all over myself (ha ha can’t take me anywhere). But I gobbled it all up and felt good…so then we went to a little whiskey bar that had such a nice vibe. Small, dark, a gazillion bottles, good playlist, quiet.

뽕이요 bongio

We had two short glasses of whiskey each, and it was bring your own snack, so we’d stopped at the 편의점 (pyeon-eh-jeom) – convenience store – on our way there and he got a bag of his favorite traditional Korean snacks which I ended up liking as well…so will have to look for them in the future to bring home. Anyway, as usual, we just had nice conversation and laughed a lot until we realized it was almost time for his train to stop running and off we went. 

Studying while waiting to meet.

Then I walked home Really Slowly cuz I was exhausted.

He has a plan already for next week but said it’s a secret. Eee.

Fri., Jan 12

School. Got our midterm grades back. Well…I didn’t quite pass. My overall grade (there are four sections graded separately) was a 60. 70 is passing. BUT. LAST term I think my overall grade was like a 42. So that’s a lot better. And I DID have a passing grade in one section (reading). So, I actually feel pretty good about it – now that I know that there’s no limit (well, there might be a limit, but…it’s not less than 5) on how many times you can repeat a class til you pass it, I don’t feel all the anxiety I did last time about failing. Which helps me IMMENSELY in the learning process. My anxious brain lets NOTHING in.

Grocery store with a friend then to the Mexican restaurant for dinner. I wasn’t feeling it so just had tortilla chips with salsa but…they tasted really weird, like chemically…or like they’d been fried in bad oil. It might just be me and my “all food is suspect” mindset right now.

Sat., Jan 13

Am I getting on the right train?? I dunno.

Today was an adventure but I’m exhausted. Let’s just say first subway trip on my own, some challenges, almost changed my mind several times and went back home, but I saw it through.

stairstairsstairsstairsstairs

Went to a different kind of Korean class, I’m looking for more opportunities (and by opportunities I mean I’m looking for someone to FORCE me to speak Korean) to speak, but this didn’t exactly turn out that way…but I can see how it might in the future…plus it’s pretty far away…we’ll see. I may or may not go back.

Can you spot your girl being sociable??

I walked home from the train Really Slowly cuz I was exhausted (theme of the week).

Sun., Jan 14

Lay in bed. Napped. Stared at the ceiling.

It was glorious.

Hoping for a healthier week ahead. It’s got more social events, so…I need more energy 🙂