3 Weeks Late/ 2 Rag

Illness, lethargy, and toil are possibilities that the author would possibly proffer for why neither he nor a suitable ghost writer has been able to recount the accounts of late, lately. It has been a long few weeks but the man behind the keys has now finally gotten around to tapping them for you once more and will do his best to tell at least one anecdote of note that he finally got around to and wrote.  So coughing and waiting to go to the doctor at least one more time, this sophisticated, soju drinking Seoulite will get scribbling so that you can be finally up-to-date with his fate.

So about two weeks ago I had acquired bronchitis from some unknown entity which left me coughing and hacking like an 80 year old smoker. The doctor was great apart from having the thickest accent in English imaginable—at least he spoke and understood English. He prescribed some medicine which I picked up at the pharmacy downstairs. The whole process (from the check-in at the doctor to the pharmacy) took 30 minutes and cost $6.50. If that is considered socialized medicine then I want it! They didn’t need to know a extensive history of all the medical problems of my entire family. They just prescribed medicine and it works. I wish I had that in the US. I really do.

In school news I had my open class—which promised to be scarier and more dramatic than a Twilight novel. It wasn’t. Open classes are times for the parents to come see what we are doing in the kinder program to see if they wish to continue to send their children to our school, basically a commercial for the school. My bosses were terrified and very nervous for especially for me since I seemed to not feel the same sense of fear that they did. It went very well however; I made jokes, the kids did good and the parents seemed to enjoy it. I ended up getting high fives from one boss afterwards and all smiles from the other one—so I think it went okay enough. Highlights included playing “red light, green light” and making jokes about how one kid was on his cell phone texting which is why he wasn’t moving during the “green light” portion of the game.

Since then I have gotten sick again and had monthly evaluations due for the majority of my kids. This has also kept me from writing you, my adoring fans who don’t leave enough comments for needy blogger in me. Halloween was fun. I dressed as Zorro, using a du-rag I picked up in Itaewon for the mask and a plastic sword I acquired in Sadang.  I was a really cool Zorro—though I wish I had had a hat or a cape to go with the outfit because as you can see from the photos I could have been the “Dread Pirate Roberts” from “The Princess Bride” just as easily. The kinder kids did a good job dressing up considering there are almost no costume shops in the Republic of Korea. We went trick-or-treating as several of their houses which was fun. I’ve never had fruit and cake while trick-or-treating before…  I was also the host for the costume fashion show which primarily consisted of me talking gibberish while the kids posed for a photo. I earned my pay that day.

Halloween weekend we went out and had a lot of fun which was nice but didn’t exactly improve my health. My friend Colm, who I hear is an avid reader of the blog, was a horse and quite popular with the kids as well as the bar crowd. To paraphrase one of his stories: one fellow bar guest was not surprised to find out that indeed the horse was Irish. I want what he was drinking, seems to have been working.

Since then I have gotten more medicine and felt better but not perfect, contemplating going again. They will only give you three days of medicine. All of which is divided into individual servings in little easy to open plastic baggies making it ludicrously easy to figure out what you need to take. I feel bad for my grandmother and anyone else who has to take quantities of pills and the real trick is dividing them up yourself.

I promise I will write more soon. I will try and not have any more lapses.  For I am but a man.

Anyoung he kay seo.