Head Case

Date: 11/1/2010

On Friday I noticed that I had started to develop a case of the sniffles.  So I immediately started popping some pills that I had brought with me from America.  I was determined not to let a little head cold get in the way of me having a good weekend. 

On Saturday, I went shopping to make my home more "homey" and just figure out where the heck I was.  I discovered that school is only a mile away!  Which is the perfect walking distance--which is good because right now I'm not totally sure I got the whole bus thing figured out.  I mean, one day I'll just have to get on the bus and do it, but right now, when the weather is cooperating, walking feels great.  Sunday I picked up some things at Lotte Mart that I realized I had forgotten the night before (you can't make fish and veggies if you don't have any salt, pepper, or olive oil!)  But instead of walking to Eunpa Park like I had planned, I decided to stay in because my cold wasn't getting any better.  Eunpa Park is maybe an hour away but I knew that walking around in the wind and probably 60 degree weather would not help my case. 

I wake up this morning and I physically feel fine, just my head is a giant, stuffed-up mess!  I literally cannot breathe through my nose, which has chapped my lips out and messed up my hearing.  Some people say that your sound sexy when your voice is lower. but I just sound like a man.

And I had a really strange night!  I woke up at like 2 in the morning with an idea on how to teach a class.  I was just going to point to things in the book and have kids describe the differences between the two pictures (which is really just a boring excuse of a lesson plan), but something over the night fit itself together and I suddenly had a way to make the   lesson a game/competition. 

Which will really help because I have 5 classes today (three in the morning and two in the afternoon).  The new lesson is in the afternoon classes while the morning I'm still just doing the Maggie Bingo game. By the third class this morning, my voice was gone--and I've started to hack up some gunk in my throat--which makes me cough--which makes me unable to speak.  There was a good five minutes in class when I just couldn't speak (luckily it was during "Fill in the bingo spaces" time so I could duck outside and cough up a lunch--but still, it sucked). 

Anyway, my voice is shot today.  So hopefully. having the students get in teams, think of all the differences, and then present them will reduce the amount of speaking yours truly has to do.  Cross your fingers, anyway. 

I knew that when I packed my backpack for school this morning, and included the box of tissues, that it might be a rough day.  Guess what, this time I was actually right!

Ms Kim is going to show me where a pharmacy is after school today.  Every teacher I met and speak to tells me that I should go to a pharmacy, get some medicine and get better.  A couple of the other foreign teachers in the area have told me that Korean medicine really works and if I had my health card (not yet...grrr) I could go to the hospital and get a "bum shot"--which could kick the cold within a day.  That would be nice. Maybe soon...

Right now I really just want to go home, curl up in bed, take a little bit too much NiteQuil and zonk out.  But, alas, it's only lunch time and I have two more periods.  But at least its not 5!