This is not a new sickness. It started over a week ago, after I came back from Seoul having spent a weekend barbecueing and hanging around smokers. I woke up on Monday and I swear I could feel the cancer sitting on top of my lungs. I couldn't take deep breathes, and whenever I tried a round of spluttering ensued. By Friday, I was feeling like death and had started losing my voice. Friday night I spent the night at a friend's house since we were both heading through to Seoul the next morning in any case, and I gave him a huge fright when I woke up in the middle of the night, tried to get up to go to the bathroom and announced that I was going to faint. Which I did. At least, I think that's what I did. Patrick had never witnessed someone fainting before, so he isn't the greatest source of information, but he did notice that I was shaking a lot, which doesn't sound quite normal to me, and thought that perhaps I was having a seizure. In any case, I somehow managed to get to sleep shortly thereafter and woke up with my voice slightly worse, but nothing else out of the ordinary. I decided to shrug off the faint/seizure in favour of going to see Mika live in Seoul. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity after all. Here are some pictures to prove it!

Unfortunately, it turns out that going to see Mika was the worst thing I could have done for myself. By Sunday, I couldn't manage more than a croak, which I made worse by croaking all day. Monday dawned and I couldn't speak at all. I had warned my co-teacher that this might happen, so it wasn't too much of a shock when I sent her a message on Monday morning saying that my fears had, in fact, been justified and I couldn't go to work. Instead, I spent the day in bed. Monday night came around and by 8pm I had developed an earache. Not just any earache, of course, but the Earache from Hell. I tried to sleep. The pain kept me awake. I tried to watch an episode of Bones. It made the earache worse somehow. Someone suggested a hot shower. It didn't help in the slightest and just made me hotter than I already was. By midnight, I felt like I was dying. So I went out in search of some painkillers. I went to every convenience store around my building (five in total) only to be told that NONE of them stocked painkillers. That, apparently, was a pharmacy thing. Finally one of the cashiers must have noticed how much pain I was in and delved behind the desk to hand me a single pink pill. I didn't know what it was (still don't) and I didn't care. I took it gratefully and about 2 hours later I was pain free and managed to slip into a broken sleep. But this wasn't before deciding that I didn't want to be in Korea anymore. I was tired, I had decided, of not being able to communicate. I was tired of playing charades. I was tired of being in pain and having no one to comfort me. I was tired of teaching. I was tired of being tired. And thus, I made myself a promise. I will stay three more months, until my sixth month is up and I won't have to pay back my airfare. If at the point I am still feeling the way that I am right now, then I will give up, pack it in and go home. If, however, things are better, then I might change my mind and stick around.

I am still sick, three days later. But at least I am at school by now. I was taken to the doctor on Tuesday and was given another day off work, but I had to come in on Wednesday to teach a lesson that was being recorded for a stupid contest that I don't want to take part in in any case. I am at work again today, but it isn't going very well. I am still tired, dizzy and nauseous, still have the earache, and my medication seems to make me worse instead of better. I suppose that we will have to see how everything goes. But for now, I intend to stay home all weekend and do absolutely nothing in the hopes that the sickness will disappear. Here's holding thumbs.