On Pins and Needles

What better time to get back to blogging than right after my very first acupuncture appointment?

Picture this: Seoul. June 2010. Maebong Station. I was walking up the stairs of exit four, enjoying my Monday morning treat (mocha latte) and thinking about how smokin' hot nearly all the players on the Spanish national team are. I was thinking about how silky David Villa's hair would feel when I tripped up the stairs and nearly landed flat on my face. I had stuck my left hand out in front of me, trying to save my face and my coffee, and landed on it with all my weight.

Ow.

I somehow made it to school and went straight upstairs. I screamed for Charles and he wrapped up the wrist and gave me instructions on care. I followed them, swelling went down, I was able to do my K-pop dance routine with no problem. I thought that was the end of that.

My little finger had other ideas. About two weeks after the incident, I was teaching the youngest class and my wrist began to throb painfully after doing the hand motion for the itsy bitsy spider song. After the pain went away, my pinkie was numb and stayed that way until today. Last night, it started hurting even more so I finally went to the acupuncturist.

Now, as some of you know, I freak the eff out around needles. Last summer when I had to go to the emergency room because of bronchitis, they took out blood and I nearly fainted. I loathe needles so naturally I was apprehensive of this whole "acupuncture" thing but it turns out, I had nothing to be afraid of. The first part was like any other doctor's appointment and then I went into a room full of beds. First, the nurse put this metal massage thingie on my pinkie and got it all relaxed. Then the "oriental doctor," Dr. Yoon, came in and straight away I told her about my needle fear. She was was very sympathetic and told me to lie on my side and face away from her.

I could feel the needles going in but it didn't hurt, at least until she got to the pinkie. That freaking killed. She left me alone for about half an hour and no joke, I was so relaxed that I fell asleep! Dr. Yoon had to wake me up to kick me out. All this for less than 25,000 won. Not bad at all.

The pinkie still feels a bit weird and it started throbbing when I went for my run this evening so I might go back if it doesn't improve.

I've been having one of those springs that's so eventful I don't have time to write about it. Let's have a go...

At the end of April, I ran my first 10K and it was a great experience. I didn't have the best running time in the world but I had a ton of fun and Mary and I took roughly 5 million pictures. We wore sweat bands and knee socks and looked pretty bad ass. The race was just outside of Seoul and we came back into the city and celebrated at a local pub, shoving our medals into everyone's faces. It was fun!

Joely, my insane flatmate, left Korea to join our friends Dan and Steve in Africa. I haven't replaced him yet (huge pain in my ass) and I miss him horribly (I can say that here since I'm fairly confident he'll never read this blog). He occasionally drove me crazy but he was one of my favorite people to live with.

I just got back from a very VERY whirlwind trip to San Francisco for Freesia's wedding. It was a ton of fun and I spent way too much money shopping but it was well worth it. The wedding itself was at the SF Zoo and the dj played all the greatest hits from our high school years. The next day, while enjoying some lovely margaritas, I saw GEORGE LUCAS sitting at a table behind us. OMG!! I completely freaked out.

A day and a half after getting back, I ran another 10k. Bad idea! I was still really dehydrated and I puked along the entire length of the third kilometer but I finished and actually beat my last time by 4 minutes! Insane.

And now it's back to the grind. More updates, I promise.

Runnin' the 10k

In a mere two days, I'll be running in my first race ever, the Adidas Hangang Marathon! I'm not doing the marathon (bitch, please) but the 10K. I'm still super excited, super nervous, and super scared. My training has dropped off a bit because of knee pain but I'll finish.

(My deepest fear is that I'll have to get a ride with the pace car but hopefully it won't come to that!)

I've been thinking about training for a half marathon. There's one every year near the South-North Korea DMZ. That would be pretty damn cool.

Change in summer travel plans. I'm going to wait to go to Norway with my mom in a couple years and instead I'll worth through the summer and just have the one week off when the school goes on holiday. I'll use that time to climb Mt. Fuji (one of my things to do before I die) and visit friends in Osaka. At the end of my contract in February, I'll go to India for a couple months to visit the places I haven't been yet before heading back to Seattle. I like this change a lot and I'm quite excited.

"This Would Make A Great Vagina Monologue"

Last week, I had the oddest experience I've ever had in Korea...possibly ever.

No, wait, that would be the rat temple in India.

Anyhow, my friend Mary had another friend, Pennie, visiting from New Zealand and Mary wanted to show her a good time. She got it into her head that we should take Pennie to the 찜질방 and get our fannies smoked.

Say what!

That's right. We went to get our fannies smoked. And how did it go, you ask? Well...we went and did our normal 찜질방 thing, which in and of itself is a bit weird but you're completely naked and I had just met Pennie two days before. However, one quickly gets over it at 찜질방 and we had a great time steaming and scrubbing. Next, we went upstairs and put on our pajamas and went to the fanny smoking station.

Here's where it got a bit weird. imagine a large rectangular box with one side missing and a crude toilet seat on the top. Inside the box was a hot plate. Once we saw that hot plate, Pennie and I got a bit apprehensive but Mary bullied us inside. The very bored looking woman who ran the place indicated that we had to disrobe so the three of us were naked and crammed in the room with the woman while she prepared the pots of herbs and tea and stuff that would be smoked. When she finished up, she handed us these mauve plastic smock things that looked like a shower curtain. We put them on and then sat on the seats and waited for the magic to happen.

It felt very silly at first because nothing was happening. The three of us could not stop cracking up and we felt kinda bad because we didn't want to be disrespectful but seriously! We were having our fannies smoked! A couple minutes in, Mary said "Oh!! It's getting really hot!" and sure enough the steam was totally burning in...very tender places. We told the woman and she had as raise our feet onto the box so that our knees were up by our ears and we looked completely ridiculous. To add to the comedy, my glasses kept steaming up from the smoke that leaked out the neck hole of my smock. Hilarious.

We sat there for 45 minutes, constantly asking how much time we had left. It got super hot and my legs were cramping and we were sweating EVERYWHERE! Mary swears she was burned down there. Finally, the woman let us go after cackling at us stupid foreigners. We hauled ass back to the showers then headed upstairs to the rooms. We decided we needed a beer (yes, they sell beer in Korean saunas) and sessions in the massage chair in order to recover from our experience. It helped, a lot.

So yes...that was my fanny smoking experience. We cannot stop telling people about it and we never seem to find it less funny. I don't think I'll ever do it again but I don't regret it at all.

Bleh bleh bleh

As some of you know, I've been having a sleep problem for well over a year now. I'll fall asleep only to wake up every two hours or so, never really getting to the REM cycle. The months leading up to my trip were the worst and it had a major (and detrimental) effect on my quality of life.

I love sleep. I need sleep. I am cranky if I do not get sleep. I was wildly miserable for months and was pretty unpleasant to be around at least 40% of the time. Lack of sleep plus stress of putting together the trip plus saving money hard core plus work stress equaled one cracked-out Nicole.

Then...I get into Delhi, check into a non-a/c room in the August Delhi heat with flies buzzing around and noise coming from everywhere and fall fast asleep for 5 hours. With the exception of the night I spent in the desert (where I was too dazzled by the stars to close my eyes) I slept like a baby in India and Nepal. Same with every other country.

I come back here and a month later...blam! Back to the same sleep problems and same crankiness problems (though I am trying to get that in control). Yesterday, I had such a bad headache from the sleepiness that I started throwing up and it turned into a full-blown migraine. I went home and spent the evening sleeping fitfully and praying that my head would stop throbbing. I took today off of work and went to the doctor's finally to get this sorted.

He really wasn't much help. Sleeping pills and something for the headaches. He asked if I was stressed at work. HAHAHAH! Every since person in Korea is stressed at work. Seriously.

Well, that's part of the reason I haven't been blogging much, that and lack of internet. It's been hard getting myself out of bed to go running but that's the only thing keeping me normal and not-so-sluggish. I shall leave you with cute pictures of me and students to end this on a cheery note.

Internet-less...

Blogging opportunities have been thin on the ground due to the lack of internet access at my house. It's a long story that involved my flatmate Harry Potter and me taking a stand. Thank goodness I have my iPod for the necessities, like checking March Madness scores and email, but other stuff, like my gossip blog obsession, has suffered. Luckily, there's a very cute coffee shop up the road and I am making the most of it.

I've been in a major nesting mood and trying to make my home look as lovely as possible without spending too much of the money bookmarked for Europe. I am also beginning to throw out stuff in anticipation of my move in 11 months. I don't want to be stuck cleaning out the entire apartment in the space of a couple weeks so I'm going to start mailing stuff home in November and therefore avoid a lot of stress.

Yes, yes, it's nearly a year until I move (or 344 days to be exact) but I am SO EXCITED to finally move home to Seattle that I am doing stuff for it already.

Then there's the matter of my trip this summer to Europe that I cannot stop thinking about. Paris! London! Norway! Belgium! It's getting hard to keep my mind in the present, which is perhaps why I am devoting so much energy to making the home nice. Keep myself grounded or something.

New Year's Tiger Lanterns

The other week, my students made some awesome tiger lanterns for Seollal, Korean lunar new year. I got the activity from the awesome blog 4 Crazy Kings. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.