Hives update

Well I'm still sitting at home sick in bed. I have so much work to be doing and preparing at school, but here I am just laying in bed. This is so frustrating for me.

Today I woke up and discovered that my hives had gotten worse. I had them all over my face, the fronts and backs of my arms, my back, stomach, legs and feet. In fact, my hands had swollen up so big that my rings were cutting off the circulation so I had to force them off. (Not and easy task) My feet were also so swollen than I had trouble walking on them. How weird and frustrating! My fever was also up, so I decided I should go to another doctor.

I called my boss at school and he arranged for someone to take me to another doctor very close to my school. The doctor spoke surprisingly good English. He checked out my hives, asked me a bunch of questions and told me the hives weren't caused by a food allergy. Instead he said maybe I was allergic to something in my new apartment, or some other place I had been recently. Then he prescribed shots in the butt for the next three days, a bunch of pills and some cream to put on my hives. I am getting quite used to this whole butt shot thing now. haha!

So since my trip to the doctor this morning I have been feeling better. My fever is going down and my hives are looking a bit better. The swelling is going down in my hands which is making them tingle and it's a very odd sensation. I just hope that everything is gone and I am well again by Monday so that I can finish everything I need to do before Heather's and my trip to Thailand. The last thing I want is to be sick and swollen during travel.

I must say, it's pretty amazing to be living in a foreign country with your best friend. I can't express how much of a help and support it's been to have Heather here with me. She has been there for everything and for that I am forever grateful to her. I feel bad that I keep getting sick, but Heather always has a good attitude and takes care of me. I'm lucky to have such a good friend. :)

Other Things

So since I'm at home sick in bed I figured I would write another post. Writing is actually making me feel better. :)

Since my last post in November a few things have happened. My British roomate, Josephine, left Korea and moved back home. Right at that time my job found an open apartment right above Heather's apartment so I decided to move....again. This time though I was able to get two of my Korean guy friends (one has a car) to help me out. They were amazing and pretty much moved all of my stuff for me. It was my easiest move yet.

The apartment is amazing! It's one big room with a kitchen at one end, my bed at the other, a bathroom, and a closet for doing laundry. It is the perfect sized place for a single person. So I have been enjoying having my own time and space to do whatever I want. I wake up in the morning, drink my green tea and do some yoga. Then when I come home from work in the evening I blast my music and do art, or clean, or watch movies, or cook. It's wonderful! I may never live with a roomate again! I also now live within walking distance from school so it's nice to not have the hour commute on the subway.

My school is moving in January to Jamsil, a nice more busy and populated area of Seoul than where the school is located now. It will only be a short bus ride away from my apartment so that isn't too bad. I just received my new work schedule yesterday though. It changed drastically!! I came here on a contract saying I would work 2pm-8 or 9pm. I now currently work about 1pm-8pm. My new schedule though, now includes kindergarden so I will work 11am-6 or 7pm. It's not too bad of a schedule because I have lots of breaks, but it will take some getting used to. I will also have my own kindergarden class now called 'Kangaroo' class. That will be interesting because they will only be 5-6 years old and I'll have to have a lot more energy with them. I will also have them everyday. My classes now, are elementary to middle school students and I only have them once to three times a week. I am very curious to see how I will like teaching kindergarden everyday. I love the little kids, but sometimes they are just too wild for me.

This next week at school is a short week. We work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (Christmas Eve) and then we have about 10 days off for Winter vacation. yay! Heather and I will be flying out of Seoul of Christmas morning first to Vietnam for a day and then to Thailand for the rest of our time. We have a few different things planed out for Thailand so it should be an amazing time. I just can't believe that it's almost Christmas! This year has flown by faster than any other year that I can remember. Now it's Christmas time and it doesn't even feel like it. I guess it won't feel like Christmas at all this year because I won't be with family and Heather and I will be traveling. Heather is my family here though and we have a little Christmas Eve planned together, so that should be nice. :) Then we'll be off on our adventure!

Well Happy Holidays to all the friends and family who are reading this. I miss you guys and all the fun festivities that go on during this season. Drink some eggnog for me, open your presents, sing your carols, enjoy your Christmas dinner and know that I am thinking of you all. :)

Hives...eek!

I am currently sitting at home in my bed sick as a dog. I have never been so sick in my life as I have been in Korea. It's beginning to bother me, because I am a healthy person. I even got a flu shot this year to try to prevent getting sick any more, but here I am, sick again!

Last night I was out eating dinner with a few friends when my right thumb started to swell up. It was strange but I ignored it so I could enjoy a good dinner and conversation. Later when I got home my whole hand was swollen and I had hives all over my back, up my neck and even on my head. I also started having horrible chills so I figured I would just go straight to bed in the hopes that it would be gone in the morning. All night long I itched from the hives and shook terribly from the chills. I drifted off and awoke in a pool of sweat. I shed all my layers and got up to go to the bathroom. When I looked in the mirror I was frightened to see that my lips had swollen up twice the size and my neck was covered in red hives. I took my temperature and it was 102.5 so I decided maybe it was time that I got this figured out.

I woke up Heather, who conveniently lives downstairs from me, showed her my problems and we headed out in the freezing morning air to the hospital. Lucky for us there is a hospital only about three blocks away. I felt extremily weak though so we hopped a taxi. I think the taxi driver realized we weren't in a good condition so he searched the front of his cab and produced a tangerine for us. HAha, it was some nice comic relief. People here in Korea are big on giving tangerines and hard boiled eggs to strangers. I have not gotten used to that yet.

So we arrived at the hospital. Heather got out her phrase book and figured out where the emergency room was. Once there, they sat me on a hospital bed and just looked at me. I think I had probably 6 Koreans just staring at me like they'd never seen a foreigner before. I was already sweating from the high fever, but having all of them stare at me like that just made me sweat more. I'm sure they thought I was crazy with all my sweat, wild hair, huge lips, and hives all over. Finally after relaying to them what the problem was, I was given two shots in the butt and a few cold compresses to put on my body. After a while of laying there I was able to leave. They gave me some pills to take which I have no idea what they are, and then Heather and I headed back home.

So that was my first visit to the ER in Korea. Since then I have been in bed feeling as though I'm dying. My fever has gone down and some of the hives have gone away, but my lips are bigger than ever. I look like I've had a lip job gone wrong! My joints are all swollen and sore though and my whole body is achey. I have no idea why all of this happened. It can't be the flu, because I had the flu shot. It could maybe be a food allergy, but I didn't eat anything different from what I normally eat. So who knows what it is and when it will go away.

Oh Korea and the experiences that I've had here!