Nose Cam and Wedding...

It was freeeeeeezing in my classroom today. I mentioned this to my head teacher, Mr Shin and he came back a few minutes later, followed by Mr Lee, the janitor, who was lugging a huge, scary looking gas and electric-powered heater.

During one of my classes, they proceeded to fill it with gasoline (!) and try to find a suitable plug for it. I could immediately smell gas, saw drops of gas on the (wood) floor and when I brushed up against it, I got gas on my jeans. Seeing as my kids can barely even sit on their chairs without falling over, I decided that I did not want that heater in my classroom! I even played the "In Canada, that would be considered too dangerous to be around 5-year-old children" card, and looked very scared of it. Fingers are crossed for a less-terrifying heat source.

After an afternoon of sitting in the relative chilliness of my classroom, sneezing and blowing my nose (I have a space heater thing that heats up one side of my body enough to have given me a heat rash, while the other side is cold), I decided to nip this baby in the bud and go see my doctor.

My doctor (who I affectionately call Norman Rockwell because he reminds me of those doctors in Rockwell antiques), as usual, placed a, um, nostril speculum up my nose, then a hose that sprayed stuff, then a sucky thing to, yuck, clean it all out. The hoses are attached to a machine that I may have once seen in a medical museum. Then, he turned on this TV thing and pulled out one of those mini-cameras on a stick that you sometimes see in gross Discovery channel shows (umm, endoscope?). While I tried NOT to think of where else that camera had been, I craned my neck to see what the inside of my nostrils look like. Quite pretty, actually. The best part was that when I went to pay, Dr Norman Rockwell held up his hands and said, "No no!". So, I got to see an endoscopic image of the inside of my nose for FREE (then I got some pretty pills for only $2 - yay Korean medical system!).

From there, I went off to meet Monique, Alex and Nicola for our habitual Tuesday night kimbap supper... and then for our habitual downtown cheap-store shopping.

Monique, who is possibly going to join me in Bali, and I were a bit freaked out by our Bali guidebooks that said, for example, that it's considered to be a sign of major personality defects if you are over thirty and unmarried. We decided to, ahem, shop for wedding rings. It's also taboo to be divorced, so I'm going with the "Merry Widow" look. Our rings (staying true to my Ukrainian roots, I chose a triple-rolling-ring style) cost us about $1.60 each. While at the fun cheap store, I finally decided to buy myself a a fluffy pink blanket to teach in and a Korean-style facemask (it's considered polite to wear one when you are sick, and they come in a variety of styles), which you can admire here:


So, yeah, living in Korea does some strange things to you, I guess.