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!

Acupuncture and such...

Once again I got carried away with life and forgot to write in this blog. (sorry Mom) My life has been very social these days as well as busy with school. Last week was test week at school which means chaos and craziness. That explains it all.

Lately I've been having horrible back pain so I asked a teacher at school about a chiropractor. She answered by saying that the chiropractors in Korea are very expensive and that I should just get acupuncture done. Conveniently next to my school are two acupuncture places so I checked one out. I lucked out because the guy actually spoke a bit of English. I told him my problem and he said it was caused by my two hour a day commute on the subway as well as crossing my legs when I sit down. Then he prescribed me some herbal medicine and acupuncture. So I've been getting acupuncture done all week and it's great. It only costs $5 a session too!! So far it's helped a little, so we'll see if it will help more as the days pass. I love the whole oriental medicine thing here though.

Apartment life has been good lately and full of social activities. Josephine is always planning things for us and by Sunday night I find that I still haven't relaxed all week or weekend. This has been an ongoing cycle. I am feeling like I want to crawl in a hole and become a hermit for a while. I don't want to do anything social for at least a month. This timing is convenient though because Josephine is leaving Korea in a week. I am very sad that she is leaving, but at the same time happy to have some time to myself. Josephine has been my lifesaver in Korea. She found me all my current friends and pretty much gave me a social life while I've been here. With out Josephine things would have been very different. I will miss her dearly.

With Josephine leaving in a week and Rachel, the other roomate, leaving in January I have decided to move out of the apartment. Actually an open apartment kind of fell into my lap. The apartment is back where I used to live and is directly above Heather's apartment. The apartment is one big room and perfect for one person. Plus it will be closer to my school and right next door to all of my co-workers. I will also be away from the center of the city so I will have more time to myself and I won't be as tempted to be so extremely social. Overall, I am happy to move and think that I will feel better/more energized by this move. Haha, and yes this will by my fourth move in Seoul in eight months. What can I say...I like to change it up every few months. haha!

In other news, two friends Josh and Matt visited on their way to Vietnam and then again on their way back to Chicago. That was fun. It's always nice to have visitors to tour around Seoul as well as see a familiar face again.

Christmas is approaching fast and with it comes Heathers and my trip to Thailand. I am more excited every day. It will be the perfect time to be on a warm beach. I may not want to come back to Korea. :) I have been craving a visit to that third world culture. I am tired of these Koreans and their materialism. I want some strong culture, humble people and peaceful scenery.

News

I know it's been a while since I've written in this blog. I've been really lazy about writing these days unfortunately. I've done lots of stuff since my last blog entry and I have some news as well. The news is that I'm getting married and there's a little one on the way too! Yeah, who'd guess it'd all happen so fast eh?

Haha, just kidding. I just wanted to give everyone who's reading a scare...or a shocker. I am far from getting married and having kids. Right now I am enjoying the beautiful fruit of my youth and independence. :) Tis a wonderful thing!

As for the news, my school is moving! Right now I work at the very far eastern edge of Seoul, in fact it's almost out of Seoul. My commute takes about an hour on the subway each way to work. But where the school is moving to is a bit closer. Not too close, but every little bit helps. They just bought the space for the school in a high rise building in a happening part of Seoul called Jamsil. It's right near an amusement park called Lotte World, a lake, Olympic Park, and lots of shopping and restaurants. So the space is being renovated right now, but come January we should be in the new building. Plus, we are also becoming the Wonderland Headquarters. The hogwan franchise that I'm working for is called Wonderland and I guess our school is currently the most well run and successful that they want our school to be the headquarters, haha wow! The school has been undergoing a lot of changes in the last few months and I guess that is why. Anyway, I am pretty excited for this move and change.

Other news is that Heather and I are now the proud owners of plane tickets to Thailand for Christmas and New Years! YAy!! :) Our co-worker from Belgium's wife is Korean and was able to find us an awesome deal on plane tickets. So we are flying on Christmas day first to Vietnam for a day which should be fun, then to Thailand. So we'll see what kind of adventures we'll get into.

The third piece of news is that I have decided to backpack Africa when my contract is finished here in April. My friend Sheila has been wanting to do that for a while and our contracts finish about the same time so it works out perfectly. We're going to start at South Africa and work our way up the east side and then across the top to finish the trip in Morocco and Spain. It will be an epic adventure I'm sure. It also puts a stop to my high loan payments that I've been able to make since coming here, but I figure I should take these opportunities while I can. I'll just pay the minimum on my loans and come back to Korea for a few more years to pay off the rest of my loans. All the while adventuring where I can. :)

So other than that stuff, I have been keeping busy lately. School is busy and hectic as normal, apartment life is good with my wonderful and sometimes crazy roomates, and weekends have also been quite packed lately. The weekend before last I went to Busan (a city in the south of Korea on the beach) with Heather and Michelle. It was a nice low key weekend. We went to the International Film Festival, visited a temple, hung out on the beach and enjoyed being in a different city from Seoul for a few days. Then last weekend Heather and I went with a tour group called Adventure Korea to do a Buddhist Temple-stay. It was quite the experience. We wore temple clothes, learned a lot about Buddhism and Buddhist monks. We ate the food the way the monks eat, we took part in their services, we did their bows (over 200 full body bows), we woke up at 4am for meditation, we made lotus lanterns and monk beads and overall had a fairly interesting and relaxing weekend. The pictures will soon be on facebook.

Well thats a brief summary of what's been going on with me lately. Soon I'll write another blog based more on my feelings and thoughts that I've been having lately. I think I've done a lot of growing up since coming here, and it's been an interesting process to be a part of, to watch in myself and to experience. ...yeah those are all kind of the same thing... Eh, more to come later.

Cheusak and such

I meant to write this post last weekend since that is when Cheusak was, but I seem to be very behind on my blogs and updates these days...

Last weekend was the Cheusak Holiday and it was somewhat interesting. Here in Korea Cheusak seems to be the largest holiday that they have. Even larger than Christmas. A few weeks before Cheusak all the stores start putting out gift sets. These are gift sets ranging anywhere from toothpaste packages to spam packages. The spam packages were the funniest I thought. It would be a large package with maybe six cans of spam and a bottle of cooking oil, haha! The Koreans love it though! So right before the Cheusak holiday everyone goes crazy with shopping, cooking and preparing. I went into a coffee shop near my school to buy a simple cup of coffee and had to wait 20 minutes because the place was crowded with people putting in orders for Cheusak cakes. It was ridiculous. Then the last day of school before Cheusak I was called into the owner of our school's office. I thought I was in trouble because he never has anything to do with us, but then it turned out that he was giving all the teachers gifts of wine for Cheusak. I was relieved and surprised at the same time. The gift was a set of two bottles of wine and a wine opener. Despite the shadiness of the school, they at least know how to appreciate their teachers on the Cheusak holiday. :) It was nice and I was more than happy to take the wine home. The holiday lasted for three days (I hear it usually lasts for longer, but not this year because it fell on a weekend.) So I spent a wonderful weekend relaxing, drinking my wine, and hanging out with my roomates.

Roomates

Speaking of my roomates, they are awesome. Moving into this 'hole in the ground' apartment with them was the best decision that I have made since coming to Korea. My one roomate Josephine, from England, is miss social butterfly. She seems to know everyone and has been my social connection to all of my latest friends. I was really worried for a while before because I wasn't making many friends. I don't know if it was because I was living on the edge of the city and away from everything, or what, but now I am happy to say that I have more than enough friends. :) I can hardly keep track of them all. It is fun to have things to do every weekend and people to hang out with now. The only downfall is the coming and going of people. It's inevitable here in Korea since most contracts are for a year and a lot of people leave after that, but it's still difficult for me. I hate making friends just to see them leave. It's like a little heart break each time it happens. I think I will only be able to stay here for 1 more year.

Future

I have begun thinking about my future again. I love Korea, but I think that after this year I will only come back for 1 more year. The lifestyle here is just unreal and I think I don't want to make it a habit. It's like being in college again, but having money. The work is fairly easy, yet definitely draining on some days. The money is amazing. The weekends are crazy...as is the night life. It's almost too good to be true. And I meet people here in their 30's who have been doing this for 5+ years. It's a fun thing to do, but I don't think that it is really living life. In fact, I feel like it's avoiding life and the real world. I don't have any responsibilities here other than showing up for work. Besides that, everything is taken care of for me. It's too easy. I almost feel like I'm cheating in a way. I think the longer I stay here, the harder it will be for me to have a life anywhere else. So after another year, I will leave and try to adapt back to the real world of more responsibilities. :) Until then though, I'll enjoy it here to the fullest!

23 going on 30

So really I'm only 23 going on 24, but this year I feel like I should be at least 30... It is the oddest thing I have ever felt. Since coming to Korea I have felt 100% responsible for myself for I think the first time in my life. I'm sure that has something to do with feeling 30, on top of many other things...

A lot of my friends here and the people that I work with are all in their late 20s or early to mid 30s. They are a bit more mature and have a somewhat different mindset than the people I am used to hanging out with back home. I think because I know that they are all in their 30s I feel like I should be too. So when I had my 24th birthday, all I could think was...I'm too young, I should be at least 30 by now. It was a weird birthday...maybe I thought too much than one should when they turn a year older. Contemplating life is interesting. Especially now since coming to Korea. For the first time in my whole life, I don't have a plan. Me, the master planner, now doesn't have a plan. I'm not sure how I feel about that either. I guess it's good because this way I truly live each day for what it is. But it's also bad, because I have no clue of what I want or what I will do with myself... I guess right now I am just floating along the river of life waiting for a current to sweep me this way or that way. While reminding myself that I'm only 24, and even though I feel older I'm not.

So my Birthday was good. My new roomates are amazing, they make my life now!! I came home from work Friday night to Josaphine (the British roomie) telling me that I needed to get ready because we were going out to bring in the first hours of my Birthday. So thats what we did. :) We went to a local bar and at midnight the DJ played a happy birthday song and Josaphine bought me a wonderful fruity, girly, frou-frou drink called 'alice in wonderland'. All night long I met new people, had great conversations, danced and truly enjoyed myself. Finally at about 5am I walked home and stopped on an overpass walk-way. I stood there for about an hour watching the cars whisp by and thinking about life. It was exactly what I needed. :)

The next day I met Heather at a waffle shop in my neighborhood for brunch. I ordered a cinnamon waffle piled high with cinnamon apples, whipped cream, and ice-cream. It was an amazing Birthday breakfast! It was also great to spend some time with Heather since we now life in separate parts of the city. We discussed life, adventures, birthdays, books and families. The conversation was perfect and long overdue. I spent the rest of the day by myself wandering the Itaewon neighborhood that I life near. I window shopped, tried on fun/crazy dresses and outfits, people watched, and just enjoyed the nice day by myself. :)

The night of my birthday I met the wonderful friends that I have made here so far at an Italian restaurant. We ordered dinner and enjoyed the company of each other over pasta and wine. It was fun to eat something other than Korean food for a day. Afterwards we went to a nice bar where I met a few more friends. Then later, the roomates and I headed to a different part of the city for a dj concert by the British group Artful Dodger. Rachel (my Ausie roomate) was able to get free tickets for us from her Korean friend. So we went to the club, inched our way to the front and danced to the Artful Dodger. At one point Rachel grabbed the singer when he walked by us on the stage. She yelled at him that it was my birthday, so he stopped the show and said happy birthday to me, haha it was great! So we danced and danced and finally it was 4am. By that time it was only Josaphine and me because we had lost Rachel and our other friend Charlotte. So Jos and I headed out into the street crowded with the youth of Korea and bought street food. Then we settled into the sidewalk along with all the Koreans enjoying our street food and bringing in the morning of the next day. Finally we got home and crashed. 

It was a grand Birthday!! :)