Continuing my trend of slack recent blog postings I have been intending to put this message on here for about a week now but for whatever reason it has taken me until Thursday to finally get round to doing it!
I can only appologise for my tardyness so many times of course but one more wouldn't hurt! I'm sorry! Blame the injured foot! It's slowing down my walking ability and also my brain processing time to do stuff!
I'm still working on replying to all the lovely emails that I have recieved too so if you read this message before I reply to your mail, don't worry, I will be sending you a response soon! I'm doing my best!
Regarding the foot, I'm back to the hospital tomorrow to get it checked out after almost two weeks of resting, elevating and icing. I'm not totally convinced that I will be off the crutches as although I haven't been putting any weight on my foot, it's pretty obvious that the swelling on my ankle and my foot hasn't really gone down all that much. My foot is continuing the slow progress of getting it's defenition back but there's still a huge lump on the top of there where the original damage was. I'm sure if I tried to walk on my foot it would be with a gangster style limp either that or it will collapse underneath my weight. Something I'm not very willing to risk.
We'll see anyway. You'll be the first to discover if I am able to if you check back at some point in the next few days because I will be ecstatic if I am able to get back on my feet. Quite literally! As the title suggests the pain of my foot isn't the only trouble I am having with the injury at the moment as almost three weeks of crutch use has taken it's toll on my hands. The first week and a bit I was having trouble with painful armpits but this time round I have been able to get rid of that problem, the only trouble with that was that another part of my body has had to take one for the team, those parts being my hands!
I kinda need them quite alot as you can imagine but it's not easy to be able to pick up stuff, play computer games or do anything when there are the beginnings of a blister forming on the palms of my hand. There really isn't much give in the plastic handles of the crutches and having to get up and down stairs three times a day plus scaling the hill at least four times a day has taken it's toll on my palms!
Up and till this point I didn't even think it was possible to get blisters there but I can add that to my list of painful experiences while I have been in Korea.
Anyway. The socialising and schmoozing that I was doing in the first few weeks has continued to be limited to dinner and the occasional game of Playstation with Charlie and Kevin as I have been doing my best to keep the foot elevated and ice so I can attempt to return to the early days of contentment from when I arrived in Asia.
The weekend though was too much, I definately felt like I couldn't take another one of doing nothing and as I had been advised to stay off my feet, that kinda limited my options in terms of things to do! I spent most of Saturday morning watching game seven of the Stanley Cup Final but at about lunchtime seeing the sun shining in through my window, I began to get the itch to go outside and do something!
Luckily Charlie was in and said he fancied doing something so we hopped on the no. 3 bus and headed to Namul which is a small fashion and shopping district about ten minutes from Talkster. If you remember right back in my first week of blogging, Namul was the place where Anna took the three of us to go see martial arts, and although we'd been to part of the fortress there we'd never really been anywhere to walk around. Although walking wasn't on he adgenda for me, we had an enjoyable time looking in several of the local shops and also climbed up on part of the fortress wall between Namul and where we live.
Considering it was pretty much perfect weatherwise before we knew it we found ourselves making our way back home on foot (me quite literally and I guess the 45 minute hobble has something to do with the blisters!)
In the afternoon we decided to go round and meet with Alex to play some video games, Kevin joined up with us for a few hours and on the way back home we decided to sample some more 'cheesy donkas' from one of the restaurants near the bottom of the street where we live.
Unfortunately by this point, whether it was the heyfever or just some bug that I had picked up from one of my kids during the week I was feeling pretty ill and for the first time in Korea inable to eat all my dinner. You know I am ill when that starts to happen! It was time for a good night's sleep and waking up the next morning I had prepared myself for a day of bordam.
Luckily some of the guys were fearing that they were also in for the same circumstances so we decided to head to a place which is about twenty minutes from us called Songtan. Songtan is the location of an American military Air Force base, and because of the presense of so many western people, the small location has become a home to all kind of 'foreigner' shops and restaurants. Most of the shops there were selling clothes as Charlie put it 'in regular sizes' and also shoes for 'people who aren't midgets'!
We had a russle through some of the shops which was pretty fun and took up a couple of hours. Charlie and Alex both came away with a PS3 game each and Charlie also brought a T-shirt and some cd's. I kept my wallet closed but mainly due to the fact that I decided it wasn't worth the hassle to become like a carthorse and be carrying bags whilst not being able to work properley!
Songtan was cool anyway, it was good to be in the majority for a change and it was kinda like being in Korea, but not being a bit closer to home, if you understand what I mean. I'm sure I will be heading back there at some point and I will remind myself to take some pictures so you can see what I mean. Before returning home we sank another delicious meal of Popeye's chicken as they have one in Songtan as well, and that made the journey well worth it!
This week has been the same as usual real, just work, sleep and messing around on the computer. Today was Anna's birthday so we went out for a meal to the usual galbi place down the road a couple of days early. I met a couple of other teachers who used to work at Talkster and it was good to get their experiences and find out what they are doing with themselves nowadays. It has given me some good ideas about potential future travelling plans which I am still working on!
Anyways, as it's getting further and further past my bedtime as I continue typing I will leave it here for the time being. Hope you like the picture which is included at the top of the screen. It's of me, Kevin, Charlie, Josh and Haji, the five foreigners who work at the school, I thought it'd finally be good to put a face to the names I mention so often. I have a couple of some kids from my class to but I will have to add them at another time!
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