Mon., 1.15.24

 

One of my classmates has spearheaded a weekly dinner where we go each week to a different nationality’s cuisine, based on the nationalities of the students in class. We have Vietnamese, Mongolian, Nepalese, French, Malaysian, Belarus(ian?), Korean, and the boring American (me). So this week eight of us went to a Vietnamese restaurant for Vietnamese hot-pot, spicy mango, and fried squid. I’m still being a little careful with my stomach (I feel okay, but my stomach is not 100% yet), so I mostly ate the shinoki mushrooms in the broth, mango (yum) and the squid (yum). I did have one piece of whatevermeatthatis but decided to stick with safe.

Tue., 1.16.24

Oh MAN what is going on?!? This morning I was fine, getting ready for class, showered, good hair day, dressed, had a good breakfast…was just going over some stuff in the textbook and…what’s that niggly feeling? 

What ALWAYS is “that niggly feeling”? A KIDNEY STONE. No, please, no. But yes. Ramping up in pain Very Quickly. I had about a moment’s thought of…if I can MAKE it to class at this level, at least I can do the spelling test and stay for as much of the test review as I can…but within five minutes I was like no, that is not a good plan AT ALL, I need to get undressed and take a pain killer and lay my good hair on the pillow and try and get comfortable.

Looking at my pain killer supply…there are 4 from the US, that I know work if I take 2 at a time (they’re from 2019 and their efficacy diminishes over time + Bettye: Highly Pain Killer Resistant)…but then I only have 2 left and THAT’S scary. There are more of the Korean ones I got back in October, but they have not been very effective the couple times I’ve used them. Still, I started with 2 KPK (Korean Pain Killers) and set the timer for an hour. Dr. Bettye says BETTYE (I’m not recommending this to ANYONE, this is just what *I* do) can take a second dose if there has been no improvement in an hour). An hour later, pain was worse, so I took one USPK (you do), knowing it would probably not get rid of the pain altogether, but if it could halt the progression and give me fuzzy head maybe I could doze through the rest of it. Set the timer for an hour.

The one pill did just what I expected, it knocked the pain back a BIT and allowed me to doze on an off for the next few hours…but after 4 hours TO THE MINUTE (pain killers are extremely precise that way), the pain started blazing ahead again….so I took 2 more KPK. And for the next four hours I rolled around on the bed in the dark and moaned and groaned and felt OH so sorry for myself. There is no comfortable position with a kidney stone, though Innate Human Optimism keeps making you try for it…I literally just was counting the minutes til I could take the USPK in four hours.

It was NOT a fun four hours. I will say, this was not The Worst the Pain Has Ever Been. Let’s say…normal kidney stone pain without pain killers ramps up to about a 95/100. This is was in the 80/100 range. Still NOT FUN, but not what I would call an ambulance for. But, what I often experience with many hours of kidney stone pain, is that your body starts trying to reject the pain or reject the stones or who knows what, but…you start vomiting. As if I hadn’t done enough of that LAST week. So that’s a nice little bonus.

Finally made it 9pm (this had been going on since noon) and took two PRECIOUS USPK. I was like ENOUGH. I’m taking the two, even though it leaves me with only ONE. Set the timer for an hour. And when the timer went off in an hour I had turned the corner and the pain was more of a Very Unpleasant Discomfort, around the…40/100 range, and I was dozing on and off…finally human enough to be texting a friend through it.

Them: Go to the hospital!

Me: YOU go to the hospital!

Them: I don’t have kidney stones!

Me: You’re also not in Korea!

I am extremely rational when I’m in pain.

Eventually I fell asleep and woke up on….

Wed., 1.17.24

…feeling like a reasonably human human. STARVING. Had a lovely steak and cauliflower breakfast.

Here’s a story about my sweet, sweet tutor, who I always feel must be Just So Fed Up With Me…because I learn SO slowly, and have to go over things again and again. I told him how I did on the midterm (failed, but did much better than last term, and didn’t fail by a LOT) and how now we’re entering the phase of class where I really start falling behind because so far we’ve been learning the building blocks…and now we have to putmultiplebuildingblockstogethertoformsentencesanddialogues and it’s just too much too fast for me. Anyway, to help me pass the final (and maybe even the class), he’s going to give me extra tutoring at no extra charge. I’m like DUDE, no, you should spending time with students who can make you money…but he was like no, I really enjoy working with you and I want to help you….so now I’m going from 3 morning sessions a week (when we go over the class material for that afternoon so I can keep up in class), to five morning sessions a week, PLUS two evening sessions, both for class review and listening/speaking practice.

He said he and Hyungun (my Thursday friend) got together last weekend and were talking about me (oh nooooo) (I was afraid he was about to say “YOU TWO CAN’T HAVE FUN ANYMORE, YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE PRACTICING YOUR KOREAN” and I was going to have to boohoo because Hyungun Thursdays are like the One Fun Thing I Can Count On Every Week. I don’t have to figure out where to go or how to get there or how to order or what to say or how to pay etc…cuz he takes care of all of that, and it’s just such a nice time for me. DON’T TAKE MY HYUNGUN AWAY, ha ha). I LOVE being here, but it is EXHAUSTING having to figure things out constantly.

Anyway, that is NOT where he went…he said they both were concerned that I’m so stressed out by school that I’m not enjoying being here at all…and they both really want me to enjoy my time here (don’t you want to give them both big hugs?? I do!). So in that vein, he’s going to help me more so I can be more relaxed about my classwork and have fun while in Korea.

And I’m crying again. I have been So Fortunate in meeting Really Good People. All my life, really…but it seems more significant here, I think because I have nothing/no one else here.

So, who has The Sweetest Korean Tutor?? THIS GIRL!

Segue from Wonderful People to One of the Things That Scares Me The Most. Ye who know me in real life, what is one of my Real Life Fears? Driving in Slippery Conditions. I thought I was done with all that, seeing as how I no longer have a car.

But nooooooo…I have traded DRIVING in slippery conditions for WALKING in them. Last week I slipped and fell TWICE coming down the hill on my way home from class. Today it snowed most of the day, then turned to icy rain, and temps were dropping when I got out of class at 5:30 so everything was freezing up. I walked home SO SLOWLY, not wanting a repeat of last week. But it is so stressful to me and I’m tense the entire time.

Korea might be safe crime wise, but walking could kill you. Uneven, broken sidewalks, holes in streets, constant grade/surface changes. When they just hear the POSSIBILITY of snow in NY, it’s All Sand Trucks and Snow Plows at the ready. They start sanding roads even before it starts snowing, sidewalks get salted, etc. They are ON IT. I have to say…Seoul…not really on it. Snow and slush just stay on the streets/sidewalks and freeze up in the night…and walking in those conditions just make me very nervous.

Thur., 1.18.24

Yay. I was concerned all week that I wouldn’t feel well enough on Thursday to meet up with my friend Hyungun, but…Thank You, Universe. However, in hindsight I had the pre-kidney stone Extreme Fatigue that I’m not always aware of at the time…so this night that had so much walking and I just had to keep stopping to rest, way more thann usual…I didn’t put two-and-two together and realize Pain Was on the Way…but still, I made it through the night.

It was finally the night of The Secret View, so there was no way I was missing that! I had no idea what to expect, but knowing the area we were headed to, I sort of expected a high-up bar or restaurant with good city or Namsan Tower views.

First we went to do dinner at another “alley restaurant,” whose specialty was cod. He always asks me beforehand if I like/don’t like something…I suppose if I said no he’d adjust the plan accordingly, but I always say yes because I want to try everything. This was the usual small, crowded, steamy, casual restaurant…the ahjummas come and put a gas (? there’s a flame, so I’m assuming gas) burner on the table, along with the usual side dishes of kimchi and other assorted pickled vegetables, then they bring the big main dish pot with a big slab’o’fish and vegetables in a spicy red broth. I always love the spicy red broth.

Everything burbled away for a while we picked at some of the vegetables. He was explaining the greens in the soup to me, asking if I’d seen the 2020 movie “Minari,” a few years ago (that year Minari  earned six nominations at the Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Score, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor (Yeun), and Best Supporting Actress (Youn), with Youn winning for her performance, making her the first Korean to win an Academy Award for acting. It also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, plus was nominated for a bunch of other things at some other international film award shows). Yes, I had seen it.

Anyway, if you saw it, “minari” is the name of the grass the family was growing for sale. I had never had it, I just knew it from the movie. A little backstory: when I was little and played horse with friends, we would “graze” around my yard on all fours, looking specifically for the tall stalks of what I always called “onion grass” (essentially like wild scallions), and those I (horse me) would actually eat, snuffling my muzzle through the grass in search of the tastiest stalks. That was like 58 years ago. This night, I picked out a couple strands of the boiled minari from the soup pot with my chopsticks and took a tentative bite. Instantly I was back on all fours in my yard, chewing on wild onion grass – it was that! The taste was exactly the same! Ha. I shared tthis story with Hyungun and I think we has a little puzzled, ha ha. But yeah. Minari. ha ha.

I’ll have to say the cod was not my favorite of all the things I’ve tried here…it wasn’t bad, but I’m a spoiled fish-eater and guess some person in the kitchen has always picked out all the bones for me before serving…but this was full of bones and it was a little unsettling to me. I didn’t want to die by fish bone lodged in throat in Yongsan, South Korea. So I picked around them as best I could and mostly just ate the spicy broth over rice with the horse grass.

After dinner the walking started. And when we meet on Thursdays, I still have my 50lb book bag with me cuz we meet right after I get out of class. So I’m lugging this bag around, it’s weighing me down as though I gained 20lbs overnight. We walked. And walked and walked and walked. I had to keep stopping. I was just like DUDE. I can’t anymore. We sat in chairs outside bars, we sat on bus-stop benches, I almost lay down on the cold sidewalk at one point because vertical just seemed beyond me. Finally we’re in this sort of desolate “by the train tracks” sort of area and I stopped walking and said, “are we almost there?” He said he thought so…and I said, “cuz this are reminds me of the scenes in My Mister along the train tracks,” and he goes THAT’S IT! THIS IS THE SECRET VIEW!

My Mister is one of my favorite k-dramas and the main lead killed himself about a month ago due to extreme harrassment and questioning over alleged drug use and other things. We both really liked the show and were shocked by the news of the actor, Lee Sun Kyun…and he had searched out the location of some significant scenes in the drama, and brought me there 🙂

From the show…

And while my body may fight me on this, my head (and by head I mean heart) says all the walking was worth it.

We took some pictures then ended up at a nearby bar with a good music vibe and a nice selection of appetizers. And I made the executive decision to take a taxi home at the end of the evening because my body wasn’t having any more of that walking nonsense.

Fri., 1.19.24

And guess what I woke up with the next morning?? Sigh. Not pain exactly, but kidney stone *awareness.* which is how it starts. I got through my tutoring session a little uncomfortably…and if it had been a normal class day I would have gone (after taking a handful of acetominophen), knowing if things went south I could be home in 15 minutes. But this was a “special activity” day, where we were taking the train for about a 30-minute ride to a theater for some like k-pop dancing singing painting thing…and I was concerned about going that far from home…so I messaged the teacher that I would just have to take the absence.

I lay down at 3pm and woke up at 11pm feeling fine, but then was awake for hours. Ugh.

Sat., 1.20.24

KS was nowhere to be seen, so I went out to breakfast with my building friend in a nearby town I like thats’s easy to get to. That’s all I felt up for and I intentionally had nothing else planned for the weekend. I wanted to rest, study, watch tv, read, and nap.

Sun., 1.21.24

And that’s exactly what I did. Now it’s late Sunday afternoon. I’m going to go over my vocabulary for tomorrow one more time, then make some ramen for dinner and watch a documentary about two families that escaped from North Korea, then go to sleep early. I wish I had one more day of nothingness ahead of me…but I always wish that. Four more weeks of class til the final and then a 2.5/week break.