Cherish every moment.

My students graduated!

"My neurologist last summer told me that I should have an MRI in the spring to see if the clot is gone.  It's March... when should we do this?"  I asked hopefully.

Smiling, my doctor replied, "I think as soon as possible."

It's already the end of March, and things are busy as ever at school.  We have transitioned into our new school year with five new teachers and, as usual, lots of changes.  With these changes, a lot of stress has piled onto the "senior" teachers (with harder schedules and more responsibility), and we are struggling to get all of our work done, to stay healthy, and to maintain sanity.

However, there may be one good change in the works.  Next week, I take what I hope to be my final MRI.  In my last meeting with my neurologist, I told him I felt ready to check the status of the clot in my brain.  If the results come back clear, I will at long last be taken off anticoagulants.  I'm looking forward to returning to "normal".  I understand that I can never go back to the way things were before I got sick.  There are certain things that I will never be able to do anymore since I will always be at some risk for hemorrhage.  Nevertheless, since my recovery has been so swift and so phenomenal, I feel like I will finally be able to put some of last summer to rest when I'm off my medication.

I have learned a lot about myself and about my relationship with Ben since last June.  I'm a lot stronger-- we are a lot stronger-- than I thought.  I am capable of enduring great pain.  I am an optimist.  I know when something is wrong with myself.  I am lucky.  I'm so very lucky, so very blessed.  Ben and I know how close we were to being parted, and we will never forget how easily life can be taken away from you or from those you love.

So the stressors and annoyances at school and everyday nonsense notwithstanding, life is good.

Cherish every moment.

Life

I've been trying to figure out how to write this post ever since I was able to write again about 3 weeks ago.  Most of you know that I was hospitalized in mid-June.  At first, I thought about  sharing the whole story, but I've decided that most of the information about the experience is too overwhelming to make public.  So I'm just going to tell the bare details for those of you who didn't know, and I'll also include some observations about Korean hospitals.

I had a stroke while at school, and the doctors and nurses at the hospital were able to stabilize me.  Though I couldn't speak well, write, read, or remember words or things for about a week, most of these abilities have returned completely over the past month.  One thing that I still struggle with is my eyesight.  Right now, I have double vision, so I have to wear an eye patch on one of my eyes to see clearly.  However, the ophthalmologist was very positive about my prognosis.  My eyes should be fully recovered within 6 months to a year.

Hospitals in Korea are... interesting.  My memories of hospitals in America are very different from my experience here.  For one thing, if you have insurance here, it's pretty cheap to get healthcare even in the hospital (except for some more technical tests).  For example, for a bed in this Korean hospital, one night is less than $20.  However, I always stayed in a room with 5 other patients... and I don't know how expensive single rooms are.  There aren't too many of those.

The food is pretty bad, but isn't it just as bad in America?  Funny, though:  their idea of "Western food" to accommodate me was just... weird.  For example, one night I told the nurse I'd just like toast and fruit for breakfast the next day... and they gave me a tuna salad sandwich with my apple.  Sigh.

My breakfast.

Mom has been here for a month, and she has been a great help.  I know she's ready to get back home, but I hope she had some good experiences here!  I don't think she'll ever really love Korean food, even after a month's stay, but she was a good sport about all the odd things we have to do as foreigners in Korea.

The neurologist and the PT gave me permission to return to work when I feel up to it, and I am SO EXCITED to go back.  Staying at home, mostly bedridden, is not my idea of fun.  I miss my kids, and I miss having things to do.  My official first day back at school is Monday, August 5th (right after vacation).  I plan to go to the July field trip next Friday so I can see the kindergartens before the first day.  I agree with Ben and the Korean teachers that it would be better to see the kids before I return so they can get accustomed to me again.  I'll be looking like a pirate, after all!  It will be a good time, though, and I'm looking forward to it.

Things are looking up, and thanks again to all of you who have been thinking of us and praying for us.  I'm so lucky and grateful to have my life and that I am recovering so quickly.

Have a great weekend!

A case of bad posture. Curse you, slouchiness!

I am a girl with bad posture.  This is due to many factors, not least of which the way my body is built.  Never did I imagine that with that posture, I would also be getting a spinal problem!  While yesterday I thought I wouldn't be able to see a doctor until Friday, my sleepless, painful night last night convinced me to take off from work early to go to the Samsung Pain Clinic in Beomgye before it closed.  And I am sure glad that I did so!

When I got there, by myself, I had a few minutes of awkward translation time.  I don't speak Korean, and the receptionists didn't know any English.  So I used my handy dandy Google Translate app on my iPhone to say, "I need to see a doctor. My shoulder hurts."  They said, "Ahhh," and proceeded to get my necessary paperwork done for me.

A few minutes later, I was ushered into a pleasant office where a young-ish doctor greeted me in Korean and said, "I'm sorry. My English is not very good."  Luckily, I think he was being modest, because he communicated quite well.  After examining me briefly, he said best-case-scenario it was a muscle issue in my left shoulder.  But since I was experiencing neck pain and headaches, he called for some X-rays to be done.

After my X-rays, I returned to his office, and the doctor immediately said, "So... it is not good."  Apparently my cervical spine has lost its c-curve and straightened out almost completely.  WHOA.  When I looked at the X-ray compared to a healthy spine, it made me feel sick.  He told me that my vertebrae were being compressed by all the pressure, and I've got a slight herniated disc.  Also, the muscles in my neck and shoulder are overcompensating for the pain and pressure by contracting, which is causing the stiffness.

Through all this, the doctor was very kind and genial, and he sentenced me to muscle relaxers, pain killers, and three days of physical therapy.  On Friday, if I'm not better, I'll be getting a "shot."  I have no idea what that will entail.

My physical therapy was VERY interesting.  I'd been to chiropractors before, and I've even been hooked up to a sonic-powered machine for a therapy session.  This PT takes the cake on intensity.  They led me to a curtained cubicle and had me lie on a bed face down.  There were tons of people already getting therapy in other cubicles, and you could hear them clearly.  The woman first massaged my neck and shoulder with the sonic machine (not sure if it has a special name), and then she wrapped me up in hot wraps.  HOT wraps.  As in, almost scalding.  That lasted for a while.  Then she put suction cups on my shoulder and neck, and I had an electrotherapy massage.  (It felt like fingers doing an actual massage sometimes, then it seized up my muscles at others.)  After that, they hooked me up to a traction machine.  This meant putting my head in a harness which pulled up my skull at long intervals.  This was to readjust my spine, and I feel like it was the most painful of the procedures, after the fact.  Right now, I'm just aching all over, and I feel pretty pitiful.  Mehhhh.

I hope that assuaged your curiosity about PT in Korea.  Ashley, this one was dedicated to you.

A crick, a threshold, a diy project.

Hola!

Happy June everyone.  June in Korea usually entails humid, warm weather... though for sure not as bad as it is in Arkansas! We average about 80-85 degrees Fahrenheit here.  Luckily, the school turns on the air con (air conditioner) now... at least sometimes.  Other times, both teachers and students are drowning in sweat.  Those are not fun times.

On Sunday, I inexplicably hurt my neck/shoulder area on one side.  It started as a dull ache, and it's grown into a full-blown excruciating stiff-necked problem.  I can't move it without shooting pains up and down my neck.  Even just holding my head up during the day hurts.  We went out and bought an orthopedic pillow yesterday, and that helped me sleep.  Nevertheless, I woke up in as much pain, so I think I'm going to find some help.  Maybe a chiropractor or an acupuncturist.  And that should be a story worth telling, so I'll keep you updated.

Here in Korea, we're facing mandatory limits on power usage in the summer.  Korea has 23 nuclear reactors, but 10 of those are shut down for some reason or another... which means, all homes and businesses have a power threshold they aren't supposed to pass.  If you pass it, then your entire bill DOUBLES.  All of it.  Boom.  It's a pretty big pain, though I understand why.

Which brings me to my next point.  Ben and I don't have an air conditioner at home.  We're supposed to get one, but it might be August before we even see it, for all we know.  And this is not fun, especially when we're at home on our days off.  Again, the heat and humidity aren't as bad as Arkansas, but 90 degrees in your apartment is still pretty bad.  Especially if you intend to do anything other than sit around like a sloth in front of a fan.  We relish the times we go to the convenience store down the road just to experience their air conditioner.

To combat this situation, Ben researched ways to make our own air conditioners.  Sooooo the one we've settled on right now is freezing bottles of salt water and putting them in front of a fan.  While it does little to cool off a whole room, it does feel nice while sitting in front of the fan!

That's all I have time for right now.  I'm going to ice down my neck and try to get motivated to teach kindergartners this morning.  <3

Open classes, Teacher's Day #2, and a Fire

Well, it's halfway through May already, and the past week has been insanely hectic at our school.  We had open classes this week, so everyone has been dealing with high stress.  Open classes are when parents are encouraged to come and sit through a class watching their children and the teacher.  As Ben puts it, it's a big "horse and pony show."  When we were at Welton, our old school, we did the class with little preparation or stress beforehand.  At this school, expectations are much higher, so we had to do the entire lesson last week for a "jury" of our bosses.  Talk about pressure!  So this week we dealt with parents hovering around, sitting in on lessons and watching us like hawks.  I even had a mom videotape my lesson.

The good part about this week was definitely Teacher's Day, though.  Korea really takes honoring teachers seriously, and every May 15th, teachers receive "thanks" from their students.  In particular, Kindergarten teachers get a LOT of thanks.  Cakes, pies, chocolates, gift certificates, vitamins, flowers, and a lot of precious cards.  Here are just a few of them!

Today I'm going on a make-up shopping spree with some of those Teacher's Day gift certificates.  I'm pretty excited.  :)

We also had a fire in the school building this week.  It was during our last "class," study hall (AKA babysitting/free homework help time), when some of my students complained about smelling smoke.  I told them it was probably just outside.  Then we heard sirens going down the street.  Again, I told the students that it wasn't likely to be our building and to keep working.  Finally, just as we were about to take the students down to the buses, a Korean teacher came to the room to tell us the fire alarm was going off and we should evacuate the building.  Oddly, there seems to be only one alarm on each floor, next to one of the stairwells.  We couldn't hear it from our room.  So we took the children downstairs and assembled behind the building.  Apparently, one of the signs on the front of the building for another business had caught fire.  By the time we left the building, firemen had already finished hosing down the flames.

That made for an interesting day.

There's not much else to say now!  We have today (Friday) off for Buddha's birthday, so we plan to spend our 3-day weekend relaxing.  After this week, I feel like we deserve it!

Cheers,
Rebekah

What a week!

This week has been unusually busy and stressful.  Our new school is a lot more hectic than our old one, and this week I found myself overburdened by report cards, test grading, presentations, and general book grading.  I believe I've had over 150 books to grade in the past week, including the things I haven't graded yet.  On top of that, we have an "open class" next month to plan for... (AKA happy fun time for parents, performing for the "Queens" of Korea for us teachers... and any moment they might decide to say, "Off with her head!").

Let's take a deep breath...

This weekend should be fun, though. I plan to hang out with some girlfriends over the course of the weekend. I don't have any photoshoots, and I'm a little happy to finally have an opportunity to sleep in and get some housework done!

Ben and I got invited to go to the Lotus Lantern Festival for Buddha's Birthday in May!  That should be a lot of fun, despite the crowded nature of a festival in Seoul.  I'm excited to go... supposedly it's one of the most beautiful and important events in Korea.

On a darker note, I saw something sobering today on my way to pick up lunch.  In Korea, we often see trucks with scaffolding/cranes lifting people or objects up to the higher floors of buildings.  In all our time here, we haven't seen an accident yet, not even a fallen item from movers.  Today there was an accident on "Hagwon-ga", our school's street.  Evidently a man was in the basket pretty high up (third or fourth floor, I think) when the crane broke.  The basket tipped, and the worker fell.  He wasn't attached to any safety harnesses.  I didn't see it happen, but I had to walk past the scene to get to the bakery, and it was pretty messy.  Paramedics and policemen were everywhere.  The man was unconscious, being placed on a gurney, and there was a lot of blood.  A woman was crying into a phone with blood all over her hands.  I don't know if the man lived or died, but it was a bit scary.  Disasters can happen to anyone at any time.  I doubt I'll think about it too much after this week, but as I said, it is sobering to think about.

Enough of that.  Spring is finally here, and the cherry blossoms have bloomed and fallen.  Only a few stalwart stragglers still hang on.  Ben and I are very happy (if occasionally stressed), but we anxiously look forward to our time off in July.  We aren't going anywhere... just taking the opportunity to relax!

In later posts, I'll try to stick to more of a theme.  Mom has told me some specifics she thought might be interesting, and I will try my best to pick some of them!

Until next time,
Rebekah

안녕, Anyang!

I've been told that I really need to blog, and I agree!  I've been waiting for the right time to do our "We moved!" blog, and it seems like the time is now.

So yeah! We moved! Ben and I moved to Pyeongchon, a neighborhood of Anyang.  We started our contract with the new school two weeks ago, and time has both flown and dragged since.  Let's start this post by talking about our new apartment!  When we first walked into our apartment after a long day of work, we walked in to having no gas (so no heat or hot water), no refrigerator, and no washing machine.  Also, all this junk that we had left at the other apartment, which "belonged" to the previous inhabitants, was moved in along with our own stuff.  Those were the frustrating parts, but we eventually got the gas turned on and got our appliances.

However, we did have to heat up water, mugful by mugful, in the microwave, transfer it to a pot, and take a sponge bath in the morning.  Believe me, washing your hair with only the use of a measuring cup ain't no party.

ANYWAY.  So our apartment is nice.  We have a large kitchen area with plenty of cabinet space, which is also in the living area.  We didn't bring the couch from the old place, so all that's in there at the moment is our enormous ancient TV.  And lots of unpacked boxes.  We also have two bedrooms.  No more hiking up stairs at night to a loft tall enough for only a child to stand in!  We can actually walk upright in these rooms.  There is a "wet" room, which is like a normal bathroom... except the shower and everything else aren't separated.  When you shower, the ENTIRE room gets wet.  Hence the "wet". I'm still getting used to that.  Finally, we have a little alcove/balcony behind the living area which houses the washing machine.  This will be great to put the wet clothes into when it's warmer.

There is a locked gate to our floor in the apartment.  That's strange.  We have to enter a code to "pass to the next level".  Like it's a game or something!  And we do have one issue with the place that we're sneakily trying to figure out.  THE TRASH.  Now I may have mentioned how strange the trash situation is in Korea, but living in an officetel, things weren't too terrible.  You just took your trash down in a special pink bag and separated all of your recycling into different bins.  We got spoiled.  Here at our new place, the Great Trash Mystery reigns.  Where do we put our trash?!!  You may notice in the picture below that there aren't any trash bags present.  At all the other buildings around us, there seems to be a designated spot for the trash outside... not here.  In fact, in the 2 weeks that we have been living here, I have not seen a SINGLE bag of trash outside our apartment.  Not one!!  This is a little annoying since we have a ton of trash from the move, and we don't know where to dispose of it.  Also, we have all that nonsensical junk from the other teachers at Welton that we weren't supposed to inherit, like a fan, a backpack, a coat, etc...  Where do we put it?!  It was getting a little ridiculous.  In the morning we see the trash men come by to pick up the trash in the neighborhood, and never to our place.  Do our neighbors not generate trash?

Seriously.  Today I just took matters into my own hands after getting the new, special "white" trash bags (every neighborhood seems to be different when it comes to color).  I went downstairs with all of our trash and just left it beside the building.  So there.  Someone else's problem now.  I'm a foreigner.  They'll just shake their heads and mutter, "migeuk," contemptuously under their breath.  At this point, I don't care!

This is our new apartment building. No more officetel for us!

Moving on!  Let's talk about the school now.  Ben and I are morning teachers, which means we go in at 9am everyday, and we go home at 7pm.  That's a long shift, to be honest.  We teach anywhere from 8-10 classes a day.  Lunches are shorter-- just 40 minutes.  The classes are bigger.  A lot of mine have 11 students in them, and I teach 7 different classes.  Many students!  I lucked out and got a lot of the higher level classes.  I really like my students and, for the most part, the materials I teach.  I teach students from 7-year-olds to 4th graders.  The schedule and curriculum are similar to our old school in some ways.  The work load is a little heavier, but overall we are happy with the place.  Our coworkers are pretty great!  We've already made friends with several.  It's nice to work in a place with 10+ foreigners on staff.  It's nice to feel secure.

And now it's time for bed.  I hope all of you are having a fantastic St. Patrick's Day.  It's a special day for Ben and me.  This year it marks that we've been together for 4 years.

Cheers!

(Sorry for the rantlike quality of this post.  It's late!)