Monkeys, Lions and Penguins, Oh My!

-- Am still sick. Oh boy, am I still sick. I felt much better on Thursday and was all, "Ha, this is why I don't take unidentified medicine!" and then I woke up hella sick on Friday and got progressively worse throughout the day. Because irony hates me. At lunch, a co-worker bluntly told me, "You look very bad today." By the end of the day, my students were worriedly asking why I was crying (my eyes were bloodshot - bloodshot with disease) and my co-teacher suggested that I not worry about the after school classes and just take a nap in my office. I asked her if I looked that bad. She gave me a long look and said, "Yes Cait, you look that bad." I finally made it home to a mirror and, yeah, I had sick eyes.  No one wants to hear about me complain about how I'm siiiiiiiiick, but suffice to say I went back to the doctor Saturday morning and my cold has morphed into a fever and some quasi-serious lung issues. The good news is I'm on meds, and while I might be all hippie and organic about medicine, I am fully aware that antibiotics are my friend. The bad news is just now I went to make food happen and I got so dizzy, I had to sit down in my kitchen, which does not bode well for when I have to put on pants and teach children tomorrow.

-- Both Korea and the US were eliminated last night. I'm sad the World Cup is over for me, at least in terms of fan participation. I'm sad being sick robbed me of my last chance to wear devil horns and jump up and down a sing patriotic Kpop songs in a crowd of thousands of Koreans. I'm bummed my students will stop showing up to class temporary tattoos on their cheeks, gleeful and excited about the next game. I'm disappointed I never managed to catch a US game. I'm sad for the players, because they looked so damn happy after Thursday's game and now it's over. And I'm a bit annoyed that I'm going to have to pick a team to root for based on something over than pure nationalism.

-- While waiting for the after school class to start on Thursday (the one day this week where I felt like an actual human being instead of some walking plague factory), my third graders and I played a charade-like game. I would say the name of an animal - sometimes in English, sometimes in Korean - and they would pretend to be the animal. After a good ten minutes of playing, I realized that while I might bemoan the state of my Korean, it's not so much that I don't know any and more that everything I know is useless. God forbid I have to give a taxi driver anything beyond the most basic directions, but I can name every animal in the zoo, which is no help, unless I'm having the taxi drive me around a zoo. Turn left at the monkey isn't nearly as useful of a phrase as I live next to the Daiso.



Monkeys, lions and penguins, oh my!