Hello friends, 

It’s been quite the crazy two months here at the village. I’ve been silent for a while because of many things: the major one being I ended up in the ER (totally fine now), but also work started back up, we’re contemplating leaving or staying, and we’re involved with a few cyber program projects, new teachers arrived for the first time !!, and I’m also observing the Kindergarten program this week. Which I’m very excited for. 

We started the beginning of February with a week off celebrating the Korean New Year on February 1st. The month was so restful, and quiet. Eric and I realized how quiet it’s been seeing how little photography or documenting we’ve been doing, I’ve barely acquired any photos on my phone or cameras. (I’ve got some now thankfully!)

We did not have students on campus for the month because the Korean school year resets during December-March, it’s their “American summer break.” We have not had students on campus since January since we had the adult program and our high school group here. For that month we focused on bolstering the cyber class content for the upcoming 2022 school year. Eric and I joined a “CE Optimization” team creating PowerPoint Presentations, creating games, and helping produce a workbook to accompany the cyber program. Other teachers who are not on the CE Optimization team were… checking classrooms for upgrades, and other tasks, but some were just watching Netflix while they “desk warm” - I’ve had lots of feelings towards those teachers who are getting paid the same amount as those that are working. And why the management staff allows the disparity… that’s for another day. 

We also have been chipping away at our films with Professor Jay, I’m playing Heidi “the most undisputed beauty in the world” - ya uffda. I have a blog post that is coming after this that goes into detail about that project. But it’s been a lot of fun, which was surprising. Acting is not my forte, but with Collin it has been easy and a pleasure, he is a goofy dude, great for video making. 

Well, that gets us to the end of February, there was lots of PowerPoint making for my own “regular” classes in that month too. As we were ramping up to the return of kids back to campus on March 14th, we had a few Korean holidays off the weeks prior: Independence Movement Day on March 1st and then Election day on March 9th - fantastic to see a country have the whole day off for democracy. Well I ended up in the hospital on March 9th :/

I had been having some indigestion symptoms that I didn’t take note of or take seriously. Specifically bloating and excess burping - gross. The day before Professor Jay took us out for Korean BBQ as a thank you for all our work on his project. Well I was paired with Tina (K-staff) she doesn’t eat meat, and instead of me saying “yea I don’t eat a lot of meat either” I just did the thing wear I tried to carry the burden and eat what I could. Now I think all the pork was the trigger, but obviously, I had been having symptoms at least two weeks prior, so I’ll do some digging into what on a larger scale got me to that point in the first place. 

Regardless, I ended up having very acute, very familiar pain at 5:30am Wednesday morning, Eric had been tossing and turning already and I said - we may have to go to the hospital. He got up straight away and started packing a bag, envisioning that I’m having an obstruction and that I’ll end up staying in the hospital for 3-5 days. I’m trying to play it down, desperately hoping it goes away and is not what I know in my gut is true (badoomboom) the start of an obstruction. Well I vacillated for about a half-hour, I pooped everything out and we decided to call a taxi to get to Fatima Hospital. I ended up throwing up in the taxi cab - told Eric to bring a bag - cuz I knew that’s the second symptom of an obstruction. 

We arrive, the pain is manageable, a big difference, it hasn’t increased. Eric handles all the translating and Papago-ing, we explain ourselves and my condition. We are asked to sit in this long hallway of a waiting room. I throw up in their bathroom two more times. 

First, they come to me with a little wheeled tray in the waiting room and draw blood right then and there, I had an elderly man so close to me and the arm they were working with, it was quite the showcase. 

Shortly after someone came to start an IV in my hand - they gave me nausea meds and plasma to help with my symptoms. All the while my pain is not going up, it actually might be decreasing, my first obstruction I was almost screaming for morphine. Not now. Thank god.  

Third, they take me in to have X-rays. Then we get put on a cot in the middle of the hallway for the ER and wait for the results. 

No obstruction, I felt better, fell asleep waiting. They sent me home with meds. The following two weeks I was nervous, the meds somewhat helped, but not really, I had lots of bloating still and tender pain in my abdomen - no burping. But I was constantly worried especially because we started back up with a full, jam-packed week of teaching. I watched my diet and drank lots of fluids. 

I communicated with my GI doctor but really nothing else was said. (I have an appointment this week to discuss getting a colonoscopy just to get in there and see what has happened.)

Which leads me to… before all of this we were contemplating extending our contract until January 2023, and had decided on that, to work six months extra and then leave. Now we’re kind of in a tailspin of - should we go back at the end of our year contract? Eric has had a wedding in September come up, he has been asked to be a groomsman for, along with a friend reunion on a lake right before that. The timing for those two things has worked out splendidly, for either a vacation back to the states or for us going back permanently. My brother and sister-in-law are pregnant and giving birth within the next few weeks… a lot of home things are calling out to us. 

But it feels, to me, too soon to leave. We’ve just started to make friends, we just now feel confident in our teaching abilities, we haven’t even explored much of Korea. Well the winds are blowing and I’m not sure what answer we’ll land on. 

It’s really just up to me - Eric feels the fates have spoken and leaving at the end of July is the answer. But of course, he says “whatever you want to do…” and I just don’t know. I don’t feel done yet. 

The new teachers are almost all from South Africa, we have one Brit that arrived from Cambodia. We joked that the South Africans are out pacing the American population here at DGEV, which is really a welcome change - love my Americans but it’s great to have such a wide perspective here.It’s been an interesting experience having them mix in - we’ve all realized how tight-knit of a group we’ve been for these past 7 months. Newcomers are a little, well, unwelcome in certain ways, who are these new people? What do we have to do to get them up to speed? How old are you? But it’s been fun, we know this is the drill around here, people come, people leave.  

For our first week back to teaching we had a rough week of middle schoolers, but then some really amazing 5th graders. We really do miss our quiet February, our 2 hour-long lunches, and our lovely desk warming. It makes leaving at the end of July appealing!

Wow, I just went through my photos and boy have I been holding back and slacking off! Won’t be doing that for a while.