Okay, a) this is the way my weeks have been shaking out these days, so…I’m just going to go with it; and b) if whining annoys you, maybe skip this post.

Days I Had Kidney Stone Pain

No one wants to keep hearing about that, so we’ll just move on to…

All The Other Days

It got brutally cold here again this week…and between the single digit temps + wind, and my foot, and the incessant kidney stone awareness, I took an uber to class 3 days this week. It’s a 3-minute ride. And every time the driver is like, “is this right?” Or some variation thereof, cuz who takes an Uber for a 3 minute ride??

AMERICANS.

Guh.

Most days I was so exhausted after class I just barely got my homework/vocabulary/studying done before managing to watch one episode of my current drama before falling asleep.

Thursday, 1.25.24

The one shining evening was, of course, Thursday. We went to Gwangjan Market, one of the oldest traditional markets in Seoul, with rows and rows of traditional Korean food vendors.

We had kalguksu, which is Korean Knife Cut Noodle Soup. When you sit down, the ahjumma rolls out fresh dough and cuts it into noodles in front of you, then they go straight into the broth and it’s in a bowl in front of you in less than five minutes. It was So Good. It’s a clear broth, but not bland, I’m not sure what was flavoring it, but the fresh noodles had a pepperish (like black pepper) flavor that was very nice. It’s a giant bowl for 8,000won ($6) and it was delicious.

Then we shared a mung bean pancake, which is essentially like a potato pancake, but with mung bean instead of potato. We were both kinda like, yeah, okay…don’t ever need to have THAT again, ha ha. It wasn’t BAD, it was just…MUNG BEAN. Ha ha. And to their credit, mung beans are very high in protein. So, silver lining.

And just as we were leaving (it’s like an indoor/outdoor market, so unheated, and we were FREEZING), we passed a hotteok stand and hotteok is one of my favorite things here. There are so few desserty things here – like if you want something sweet/desserty, you need to go to a bakery or a coffee shop with baked goods…the traditional Korean restaurants never have desserts on a menu. So when I can get a little something sweet after a meal, I’m very happy. PLUS, it was freshly fried so it was Very Hot and felt so nice on my hands 🙂 Two birds.

After that, since it was SO COLD, we headed back to Kondae, near me, to go to a bar that was showing the Korea vs Malaysia pre-lim game of the Asian Cup – YES, your girl is now a fledgling sports fan. Well, soccer. Well, KOREAN soccer (shocker). It took us going into three bars to find one with some available seats…as this was a pretty important game for South Korea. We had some drinks and appetizers and sort of watched the game. The tvs were in the other room, so when we’d hear Big Cheers or Sad Groans, we’d crane our necks to see what was going on, but…other than that we just talked.

Afterwards, he got on the train, to go home and I walked the nine miles (gross exaggeration) back home, where I fell asleep immediately…only to be woken up at 7am by 8/10 pain, which is not only Not Good, it is Very Very Bad. Like to the point I was actually contemplating calling an uber to take me to the emergency room (which is an even shorter ride than to class, but…) but then mercifully the pain killers kicked in and put me to sleep…and when I woke up later I felt reasonably human. I did my tutoring session on Zoom but did not go to class. I napped and walked to the convenience store next door for apple juice and milk and bananas.

Saturday., 1.27.24

I woke up in the morning feeling no pain, no discomfort, no awareness, no NOTHING so I took advantage and left the house for a nice solo brunch one town over.

Can I just tell you about this french toast?? So, they frenched it, but THEN, they sprinkled it with granulated sugar and BRULEED it, so it had the delicate, sweet, crispy coating of a creme brulee! Where has THIS been all my life?!? Served with butter, blueberry jam, and vanilla ice cream, it was lovely.

Morning, 10/10.

Afternoon, not so much. I was feeling a little tired when I got home, which is not unusual these days (the fatigue is real), but I felt a little “pre-fevery.” Do other people get that? Like, there’s no other particular symptom, I don’t HAVE a fever, I’m not warm, I don’t have a sore or scratchy throat, but there’s just something that alerts me to the fact that I’m GOING to have a fever.

And in two hours I did. 101.4. Chills shakes trembling, had on multiple layers of clothing, including hooded wool coat, laying under both the blankets and the other wool coat. Could. Not. Get. Warm. For hours. Was trying to text friend back in NY to say if I disappear, call…call…and then I got all upset cuz I didn’t even know who here he should reach out to to check on me. I was IN IT.

This lasted about 6 hours…finally around 10pm the chills subsided and I was able to doze a bit…but then was hungry and got all upset cuz I can’t order food delivery WOW I AM A MESS.

That’s how I feel here. Just like a complete mess. I like to think I was a pretty strong, independent person…but I left that in the US. Now I feel like I can’t do ANYTHING. I have to ask for help with EVERYTHING…or I just have to not do it. Oh well, can’t get there/order from there, guess I just won’t eat today. That’s a common one. I’ve lost 35lbs now, unintentionally, and while you could say, well, that’s good, it doesn’t FEEL good. I feel like I never have enough gas in the car to go as far as I need to go. Hence the fatigue.

Ugh.

Thats’ enough whining for THAT day.

The next day the fever was gone but I was exhausted and just rested all day.

Mon., 1.29.24

Apparently the fever was related to a virus because I was now sporting the fever blister that took over South Korea. Sigh. It just gets better and better.

Tue, 1.30.24

School.

Studying and memorizing a presentation for Wednesday that if they’d just given it to us one day earlier we would have the whole weekend to memorize it instead of two days (when we were also preparing for a test).

Wed., 1.31.24

It finally happened…and without placing too much blame on another person, SHE MADE ME CRY AND I HAD TO LEAVE THE CLASS ugh ugh UGH. Really, the crying is like 95% on me. I’m so on edge these days, the last few weeks of class just get away from me (just like the first time) and every day I’m an anxious mess. So when I got paired up with a girl that I already KNOW has an impatient, belittling tone, I was like ohhhhhhhh….and sure enough, she did not have the patience to give me 30 seconds to figure out what the exercise was about and spoke in THAT TONE and I was just like NOPE NOT TODAY, and said “excuse me, I have to go right now,” and left the room as unobtrusively as I could to stand five minutes in the bathroom to try and get my sh*t together before going back.

Fortunately when I went back she had moved back to her seat and another student was in her place (I don’t know how that happened), and we calmly and patiently figured the exercise out together, no problem. After class the teacher tried to ask me if I was okay and I was like thank you, but really, let’s not bring it up again…

Thur., 2.1.24

I almost cancelled Hyungun Thursday cuz I was just feeling so overwhelmed, plus, my face was one big fever blister…but I can never resist his “can we meet this week??” It’s probably just something about the Korean phrasing, but it always sounds so positive and I just can’t refuse. So we stayed localish and went to a Chinese restaurant where I had lamb for the first time in my life. And I believe I have now come as far from being a vegan as I possibly can. Lamb.

I had been chastised by the tutor for not “language exchanging” enough with Hyungun, but…sigh. I know I’ve said this before, but it’s the one time I have each week to just be with a lovely person and NOT feel anxious about speaking or understanding or doing or saying the wrong thing and I NEED that. So I told him we needed to speak a LITTLE Korean, so he asked me 소주 더 필료해요?? (do you need more soju?) to which I replied 네! (YES!) and we were good, ha ha.

He said I didn’t really have to take Jun (the tutor) so seriously, ha ha.

Jun has said a couple times recently that he has other friends who would be interested in language exchange, and paranoid me thinks he’s just trying to get me away from Hyungun, ha ha, but I’m not having it. He’ll be gone soon enough when he leaves to study abroad 🙁 I’m not willingly giving up any time before that.

Maybe when I’m taking this class for the THIRD time (sigh), I’ll have time for another Language Exchange meetup with a new person (who will be kept strictly business!), but not right now.

Oh PS, I got my visa extension approval so am here for at least another 6 months.

Fri., 2.2.24

Groundhog’s Day. I tried explaining GD to Hyungun Thursday night and…yeah. It doesn’t really make any sense to me either.

Because I had an errand to do in the morning in the neighboring town, my building friend went with me and we made a breakfast morning out of it. I was telling her about the day before in class and she made the executive decision that I should not go to class that day and I should just relax. Who am I to ignore an executive order?? Immediately my anxiety dropped, and I napped in the afternoon and then went down to the river thinking there might be a sunset but instead it was foggy and cold. Still, it was nice to just be OUT. And I figured out how to take the subway back without spending hours on the computer beforehand, mapping out all the route options.

Sat., 2.3.24

Just a quiet day inside, spent a lot of time studying and writing sentences using new grammar rules.

Sun., 2.4.24

Went with building friend to a far-away market. It was a nice day, and I planned to get outside again later but instead I fell asleep…and then it was cloudy and didn’t look all that inviting.

A girl from my first class just moved into my building, so she came to see me – we can’t talk that easily. She’s Chinese and knows very little English…and she speaks better Korean than I do. So it’s a lot of typing into translator apps. But we had a little visit, which was nice. I showed her where some things in the building are, and she brought me some ramen. And she’s cute when she calls me 언니 (un-nie), “big sister.”

Now that I have my renewed student visa, I am looking a bit for a new apartment. A kitchen would really help me eat better. But there are trade-offs. In this building I have my one friend who is so supportive when I’m not feeling well and goes to the convenience store for me if I need anything. That’s not a small thing. A lot of things we do together now so neither of us has to do them alone…would now be done alone. So I’m LOOKING, but not really hard…and something would have to REALLY be an improvement for me to make the change.

Tomorrow morning I have an appointment back at the hospital because I’m almost out of the painkillers and need to see the doctor to get a refill. I’m hoping I don’t have to go through the whole double-scan process all over again, ugh.

Sorry, this was SO LONG. I just couldn’t get last week’s post together in time, and now here we are with a double-post.

You can breathe now 🙂