dear swine flu:

You can't just take over my whole weekend like that, and then leave me Sunday afternoon, just in time for me to be well enough to go to work on Monday.

Seriously, I feel like I've been reasonable over the course of our relationship. I didn't complain when it was your fault half of my students went missing a month or so ago, and I didn't even complain when you finally decided to lodge yourself in my throat the morning of the day I had to finish giving speaking tests.

So let's be reasonable. You can have my weekend, but I'm gonna need something in exchange. I was too sick to get anything done Friday, Saturday, and half of Sunday, so it's only fair that I get a couple of weekdays off. So if we could hang out together until Monday or Tuesday, that would be awesome.

Heartz,
Pam

(p.s. dear people-who-are-not-swine-flu: I don't actually know if I had swine flu. I felt like shit this weekend, which included: a high fever, sore throat, headache, sinus pressure, and body aches. All of which, my internet research tells me, are symptoms of swine flu, but also of a lot of other less funny things. I didn't think my condition warranted going to the hospital - though I briefly considered calling Park Mi-Ran because a) it would make a better story later, and b) I kind of wanted the hospital to give me a test to determine whether I actually had swine flu or not. [But what if the test was negative? All my dreams would be crushed!] Anyway, I didn't go to the hospital, so I don't know what I had.

I feel better now. Almost normal, aside from my continued runny nose. Sadly, I'll almost definitely be feeling well enough to go to school tomorrow. WHEN will I get a break. WHEN.)

The end.

I used to say I'd never teach,

and I meant it, too. But here I fucking am.

I've also said (a number of times, and recently too) that I didn't think I'd ever be able to stomach octopus. But I went for seafood ddukbogi with Shin Sung-Min today, and damned if I didn't let my manners (plus a bit of curiosity) get the best of me again. It wasn't as chewy or slimy as imagined; rather, it was a little crunchy - like a slightly steamed carrot. And the flavor was pretty bland. All in all, not as bad as I had thought. But octopus of the fresh variety still makes me want to vomit, so that's off the menu. For now.

Also, ate shellfish and cuttlefish for the first time. How many more "first times" do I have left? (With seafood, I mean.)

Also, drank yuja tea. Yuja is a fruit which looks and tastes quite similar to lemon, except it is sweet, not sour. Koreans love it, it seems, when the weather turns cold. And all the vitamin C can't hurt in warding off the swine flu.

here is an apple. let's share it.

I have no energy lately. Is it the cold weather? Is it stress over teaching? My co-teachers tell me they're always tired these days too; maybe it's a combination of my body fighting against the flu season, and the fact that I'm in the middle of a long stretch of teaching with no breaks (somehow, a weekend never seems like a long enough period of time to refresh myself, to get my energy back). Part of me really wishes the swine flu would get serious enough at my school for it to close. Just so I could have a break. But it's looking like the worst is over; the number of absences dwindles each day.

I want to walk into each class with lots of energy; I know that the class will be more interesting to the students if I am excited about the topic. Sometimes, that excitement comes naturally; other times, I can summon it up. But these days (by which I mean, the past week-and-a-half or so), I can't find it. I wonder if it shows through to the students. I wonder if it means I was silly to ever think I was capable of teaching.

yes, I really ate crab.

It wasn't raw. The flesh was soft and silky, and it was easy to get down (except for when I accidentally ate a bit of guts with the flesh, then it was really hard not to gag).

Also, whole shrimp. The first time I tried to rip off the head (you don't eat that part), a bit of brain-juice (or something) oozed out, and I squealed. After that, my co-teachers ripped off the heads for me.

Also, another fish. Fuck fish, fuck it hard.

I went with the English department (6 people, myself included) to the seafood market and then to a nearby restaurant that cooked the crab for us. Funny thing is, none of us except for Han Jin-An (the older male teacher who reads but doesn't speak English) wanted to go to a seafood restaurant. But age and gender carry a lot of authority here. We went, and then after Han Jin-An left we (me, Yena, Young-Kyung, Shin-Jung, and Park Mi-Ran) got coffee together and bitched.

All of that happened earlier this week. Highlight of today: I had my second graders each come up with a dangerous situation and have one person give warnings to the other person. One student wrote: "Gary, don't talk to girls! You could hurt yourself!" / "Gary, watch out! A girl's coming!" I could hardly contain myself.

Here and here is what a flower crab looks like.
Here is what the belly of a flower crab looks like. But the ones I saw had purplue lines along the creases in their shells. (Luckily, they weren't nearly as beautiful once they were dead/cooked. Maybe the ones in this picture are dead?)
Here is what the white crab flesh looks like.
And here is something like what the piles of crabs at the market looked like. But imagine that the pile is oh so much bigger than this one, that the crabs are squirming and sliding off the pile, and that there are 100 more piles exactly like this one with various types of crabs.

swim --> swam

I taught past tense verbs to my 1st-grade c-level kids (the lowest level I teach) today, and it worked it worked it worked! We played games, we talked about what they did last night. They totally know how to change verbs into past tense now (the most common verbs, at least). I am getting better at this whole teaching thing, I swear it.

Downside: more of my students come down with the swine flu every day. Medical masks abound in school. In one of my Thursday classes, about 1/4-1/3 of the students were out sick. Some the teachers are hoping school will be canceled for an indefinite time period (until the flu calms down).

In other news, Seoul Grand Park, Seoul Zoo:

Taking the lift up to the top of Seoul Grand Park, where the zoo is. I Young-Kyung is afraid of heights, can you tell?

KoHo, I Young-Kyung, me. American brown bears in the background.

I don't know if you can tell from this photo, but these bears have huge round ears that stick straight up, and it reallyreallyreally makes them look like Mickey Mouse.

il-il-il-il

Seoul likes filtered water. Everywhere, there are water coolers with as much near-boiling/near-frigid tasty water as you could possibly want.

Ergo: the water cooler for my apartment building is in the hallway on my floor, about 4 meters from my door. I frequently leave my door ajar as I go to fill up my water jug, and I did so last night at about 1 in the morning. Only, last night was a windy night, and a strong gust through the hallway blew my door shut. It's self-locking.

The last time I felt like I was losing myself here, I stayed up all night skyping and writing postcards. This time, I sat outside my door for upwards of 7 hours in nothing but my bathrobe, intermittently filling my water jug with hot water to keep myself warm (it's cold here now, did I tell you? Last night was a quite the windy thunderstorm, and I would have loved it if I had been under my comforter). I didn't have a cell phone with me, so I couldn't call my co-teachers or my building manager, so the only thing to do was to wait until the building manager arrived at about 8:30 this morning. By the time I got back in my room, I had a slew of missed calls from Park Mi-Ran, wondering where I was. I'd been having a rough night before I got locked out, so I'm sure you can imagine that I was on the verge of tears when I described to her why I hadn't arrived at school that day. She was quite concerned, and convinced the vice-principal to give me the day off so that I could rest and warm myself up. (Maybe they're worried I'll get swine flu?) The day off was really nice. I spent it drinking tea and eating boiled eggs and reading and napping and trying not to think about lesson plans. I may or may not be recovering from my 2-3 day slump.

I've been having a rough weekend of it. I couldn't really tell you why. I feel utterly incapable of preparing for my classes. I feel sick-ish. I am panic-stricken and convinced that I am not doing and will never do anything worthwhile. (Did you know that my greatest fear is stagnation?) Then, last night, I got a confirmation of sorts that a friendship which I knew to have ended has been severed more completely than I thought, and I still don't understand what I did to make this person hate me so much.

I am at my worst when unshakably convinced of my own worthlessness, and I was certainly convinced of it over the weekend.

Don't take this post too hard, though. You should know by now that I have these days sometimes, no matter where I am or what I am doing. At the risk of cheapening my own emotions, I might go so far as to say that, quite simply, the honeymoon period of my stay in Seoul is over, and I am now faced with a more realistic picture of how hard it will be to build myself a life here.

On the up-side, I killed 4 mosquitoes while I sat out in the hallway, which is totally a record for me with Korea's mosquitoes from hell.

Shy-Pam waxes melodramatic,

or, on how exhausting it is for me to constantly hold myself open to people/the world:

Remember the day before
I left? I told you I was nervous but
what I meant was: help,
my sternum's been cracked open. Though,
[they said] this will hurt less than two
holes under your breasts, though [they
[promised] here, can't you breathe better
now?

Later, the clamp got stuck [though, etc.] Self-
locking [they said], stainless steel. Sterilized, no
fever, don't
concern yourself, [they said] though the streets are
dirty here and, I don't know,
the swine flu? No wires sewing me together, chest
spread-eagled - I can't breathe better now, I
can't breathe now, I
can't.

Quarantine!

No freaking out, guys (Mom, that means you).

It looks like all the hype about swine flu and taking our temperatures isn't just for show - they actually follow through for the smallest indication of illness.

Last night (Friday), two of my fellow orientees (a girl who had a fever and sore throat, and her unlucky roommate, who was feeling fine) were placed under quarantine in their room. This morning (Saturday) they were taken to the hospital, where they are apparently under quarantine for 5 days. I'm not sure whether they will be able to complete the orientation/training or not.

Then, about five minutes ago (it's just past lunchtime on Saturday here), another girl departed lunch wearing a breathing mask, and was taken away in an ambulance. We've been assured by the program staff that there's no need to worry, and that all of this is just precautionary procedure. I'm inclined to believe them, since my impression so far has been that they are taking regular cold symptoms (stuffed up nose, slight fever, sore throat) just a little too seriously. After all, all of us are jet-lagged, slightly dehydrated (in the case of most of my classmates), and overall under a lot of bodily stress. It's natural that we might be feeling a bit under the weather for a few days, especially as we adjust to the hot and humid summer climate.

Most of my dorm mates, however, are working themselves into a tizzy over it. I'm glad I have a high stress threshold. One of my fellow teachers-to-be gave me a link to a blog that was written by a group of English teachers in Korea in May 2009, who were apparently exposed to swine flu by one of their fellow orientees and sent to quarantine for an extended period of time: click here if you'd like to read the blog.

Whereas the first few days in the country, I had a fair amount of time to myself, "alone time" has proved nonexistent these past few days. I share a room, have classes with my peers from 8 am til 9 pm every day, and usually have barely enough time to update my internetz in the common area (the only place internetz is available) and maybe do a little street exploring with the other orientees (I'm a little too skittish to venture out on my own yet) before heading to bed to prepare for another early morning. In a way, the rigorous schedule is nice: it has rather quickly regularized my sleeping schedule, and has prevented me from the self-isolation that I otherwise might have tended towards. I'm trying not to get too stressed out by the lack of alone time (which I generally use to process things), and am reminding myself that in about a week, when I get my own apartment, I will have as much time to myself as I want.