Here in Korea bird flu is called A.I. I learned this because my kids in class one day could not stop talking about A.I. Finally I asked what A.I. was and they all freaked out because they couldn't believe that I didn't know. (of course I knew what it was, just by another name...they didn't understand that though.) Then they proceeded to tell me all about it. This was all told to me in Korean, English and mime though. Let me tell you it was quite funny. They would say something like 'you eat chicken, chicken sick' (then they'd all mutter in Korean to each other) then they'd mime themselves dying. They would grab their throats and start gasping and then fall to the ground. They did a great job of getting the point across. If I didn't already know what A.I. was then I sure did after their interpretation.
In the last few weeks there has been a lot of A.I. talk not just amongst the kids, but the news and everyone else too. Apparently all of the chickens in South Korea were butchered and are now being fed to the army. I don't know if this is true or not, but everyone is talking about it. I do know though, that you can get A.I. from other birds too...so do they plan on killing all the birds in Korea??!?? I just can't take this flu seriously, maybe because I haven't seen it with my own eyes. Speaking of...last week it was on the news that a man in Songpa (my neighborhood) was diagnosed with A.I. Everyone around here was freaking out because that means that if one person in our neighborhood was able to get it, then surely others would be able to get it too. Wrong! It turns out the man just had pneumonia...false alert. These people are paranoid.
All was well with me and the bird flu until the other night. So far I had not eaten any chicken since coming to Korea. This was not because I had chosen to stay away from it, but because they don't serve much chicken around here. It's mainly duck and pork or just rice and vegetables. Until the other night when we went to a restaurant that served only chicken. We figured, ehhh whatever lets just get the chicken, screw A.I., or bird flu, whatever it is. So we got the chicken which was surprisingly very spicy, and ate to our hearts content. A day after eating the chicken I start to feel weird. I've got the runs like no other and my stomach feels like it's being tied in knots. Then I start to get sick. I get flu like symptoms. My fever gets up to 103.2, my head pounds, my throat is swollen, my muscles ache and I can't even get out of bed. Oh no, I thought, I've got A.I.!!!!!! The timing for my flu coming right after I ate the chicken was perfect for it to seem like A.I., especially with all the hype going on about it. I feel much better today though and I am for sure that it was just the plain old flu brought on by my grubby little students putting their dirty hands all over me.
....Thus my close, but not really close encounter with A.I. :)
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