In the hospital

So, I ended up spending a total of four days and three nights in a hospital, in order to have my leg operated on. I had a titanium plate installed onto my broken fibula bone, on my left leg; just above the ankle.

My friend Bill picked me up and drove me to the hospital at around 11am on Monday morning (the 16th). Upon arriving, I told him that I'd be fine and that he could probably leave. So, he left. I went to the reception desk, and the guy there gave me a form to fill out (in Korean of course), and told me that I needed a friend to act as a beneficiary, in case I left without paying. Naturally, I had no idea why I needed someone until later. The reception guy didn't know any English, so I had to rely on my pitiful Korean skills to figure things out. I ended up using the guy's cell phone to call Bill and get him to bring his Korean wife in to help me out.

It took about half an hour for them to arrive. When they got there, the form was filled out, and I was led into a room for x-rays and blood testing. I was also to supply a urine test, but, as I had already done my business earlier, I couldn't fill the ol' cup.

Following that ordeal, I was laid down on a bed and had an I.V. jabbed into my right arm. I can't say that I enjoy those things very much. Bill's two boys were there as well, and were pretty interested in what I was going through. Maybe they'll learn to be careful, after watching me!

Next, I was led away into the pre-operating area. It was a large room with a bunch of other beds with people on them; some of them groaning. It was a very strange scene indeed. It was not comforting at all. All it needed was some blood on the wall and a few body parts thrown about, and it would've been a true horror scene.

After maybe 15 minutes or so, my doctor came in (who can speak English), and rolled me into the operating room. One of the nurses that was around said "fighting!" to me, in a sweet voice. I guess she didn't want me to die. That was sure nice of her.

The operating room was your standard operating room I guess. It was filled with doctors wearing doctor suits and surgical masks. There were tools around, a large light above me, sinks, etc. Before long, the doctor, surrounded by surgeons, nurses, etc., told me "chogum apaiyo", which means "this will hurt a bit". At that point, I had to sit up while I was injected via three spinal taps. It took about 15 minutes for my legs (about the belly button down) to become completely paralysed. In other words, the most beautiful woman could've walked into the room and started caressing me, and I'd wouldn't have done a thing for me. Next, I was given a mask to breath into. That's the last thing I remember.

I woke up a few hours later in this hospital room:
















There were five beds. One guy, Seong-youn, was about 20 years old and knew some English, so I was able to talk to him some. Here's Seong-youn:

















Two of the other guys were middle-aged. One of them knew some English, but wasn't too interested in conversation. The other didn't know a word. The last guy was a grumpy old guy. That's him sleeping in the picture. They all seemed to have leg injuries. Seong-youn wrecked his knee playing soccer, and got to spend a month in the hospital as a result. The middle-aged guy who didn't know any English had some heavy planks or something like that fall on him at an industrial job. He broke a leg, some ribs, his left hand, and some other things. He was in the hospital for a while too. The other guy who knew some English had a broken leg. The old guy in the corner had something wrong with his leg as well, although I'm not sure what.

Anyway, when I woke up, Bill and his family were hanging around. Here's Bill:

















Bill was such a great guy to me. Everyday, well on Monday though Wednesday, he was keeping me company. He brought be McDonald's, juice, soup, etc. He brought me a book to read too. He really took care of me. His wife even got the cooks to bring me western food. They did alright with it. Eggs, sandwiches, bacon, rice and Coca-cola(???) for breakfast. Rice, seaweed strips, pork cuts, veggies, soup, Coca-cola for lunch and dinner. Apparently they've got the impression that we like Coca-cola in the west. I wonder where they got that from???

One of the evenings, I forget which one, Dennis, Mr. Lee (my boss), and four of my wonderful students came to visit me. That made me pretty happy. Mr. Lee gave me a sympathy 50,000 won, and one of my student's fathers works at the hospital, so I got an additional 50% off my bill.

















Here's Soul, Olivia, Rachel and Catherine.

















They're so sweet! They're seniors in high school this year. They're a pleasure to teach. They're all funny and speak good English, so we have a lot of fun in class.
















Here's Dennis. He's been absolutely great to me as well. He's been helping me go grocery shopping, helps me with my laundry, splits cabs with me, keeps me company when everyone else is out partying, etc. I really owe this guy a few beers. Well, I lend him my Bible and took him to church at least.

On Wednesday night, the nurse came and took out my I.V. Koreans do not have arm here. Blake goes hve arm hair. Having the tape holding the I.V. on your arm ripped off HURTS! I now have a one inch square bold spot on my right arm. I finally got to leave on Thursday morning. My friend Mary, who's also been very kind to me, gave me a ride home.

I've since had the stitches removed, but I'll still be on crutches until at least the end of Feb.

Hoppin' around

I just dug up a few pictures that I haven't posted up, from the past few weeks. Enjoy.
















A restaurant that I went to with a bunch of my friends a couple of Saturdays ago.
















It was a really nice place. Better than most that I've seen in Korea.
















Inside, we ate beef stew. Good stuff.
















Here's a small izakiya (Japanese bar) near my place. Dennis and I went there for some food and drinks.
















I ate bugs (bondaegi/Silk worm larvae)! Also kabobs with fish, meat and veggies, along with udon noodle soup. We didn't forget the beer either!

Catching Up #4: How to break a leg ringing in the new year

In my forth "catch up" post I talk about New Years, and why my life will be more difficult for the next couple of months.
















To start off New Year's Eve, a bunch of the people that I worked decided to go out to TGIFriday's for a New Year's dinner. I had fajitas. Two of our teachers, Crystal and Karly, were leaving, and this was their last night in Korea. Crystal's on the left, and that's Rainbow Brite (Kat) on the left. I had a hard time talking over her, because she was so loud (in both her scary attire and her voice).

There is a point where too much make-up is just not good, even if it's meant for fun. This is an example of going way beyond the point of funny. :D
















Clockwise from the top-right is Candace, Crystal, Rainbow Brite, Nathan, Helen, Karly and Jax.
















Here's Matt, and... I forget her name. Maybe someone can remind me (Dave...?).
















Champane!
















Party Hats!
















Champane and beer!
















More party hats!
















Sparklers!
















Both Matt and I took our New Year's kisses out on her.
















I look awesome here! Multiple party hats kick ass! I'm so happy! (not for long!)
















I will never go dancing on New Years again. Never. I will probably eat those words next year. For now though, I'm saying that I'm never going to dance on New Year's again. This is why:

Actually, I will re-phrase that. I have no problem with dancing on New Year's.

I will never attempt a back-flip on New Years again. Not even if I get a boost from an Irish guy named Pater. Never.

It was probably about an hour and a half into 2006, and I was feeling great. Well, as great as one can after starting out with Jack and Cokes for supper, progressing to beer, and then going at the champane for an hour and a half. I was doing so great, that I though I was a ninja. I real, honest-to-goodness ninja. To prove this, I told Pater, the local drunken Irish guy, to give me a boost, so that I could do a real, honest-to-goodness ninja backflip.

I finished the backflip by landing on my left leg, feeling a craaaack, then falling to the floor in pain. Of course, I tried to get right back up and keep on doing whatever I though I should be doing. I fell right back down. Apparently, falling down again was my left leg's way of telling me "you asshole, don't even think of trying to walk with me!".

So, I figured that I should sit down and rest for five minutes or so. When I stood back up, I had the same problem. My left leg just didn't want to do anything useful! So, I hobbled around on my right leg, and said goodbye to everyone that I felt like saying goodbye too. I took the elevator downstairs and dragged myself into the convenience store across the street. I decided that I should buy some ice to wrap around my, now throbbing in pain, left leg. I then "walked" for a couple of blocks until I found a taxi. Home I went, and off to bed.

When I woke up, I found myself experiencing an extreme amount of pain. I decided to call Richard, one of the managers at the school, and tell him to take me to the hospital, or there would be no way that I'd be working on Monday (I ended up not working on Monday anyway).

So, Richard drove over and took me to a hospital. After an x-ray, I found out that the reason that my leg hurt so bad was because I broke it. My fibula was nicely broken in half.

To make a long story short, I spent Monday and Tuesday lying around with a tensor bandage in bed, then spend January 16th to 19th in the hospital. My leg was operated on, on Monday the 16th. I had a titanium plate screwed into the bone to hold it together. I don't have a cast, it's just all bandaged up splinted up. I'm on crutches right now. I should be able to walk, lightly, in 3-4 weeks (as of one week ago).

Shark Fin Soup

The Chinese restaurant that I've been eating at lately offers shark fin soup, for only 10,000 won. I figured I'd try some. My friend John got some too.

It was a fairly small bowl, but it was okay. It had shark fin and crab meat. The shark meat was white and flakey. It tasted like fish soup (which is was).

It wasn't worth the 10,000 won, other than I can now claim that I've eaten shark fin soup.

Kimchi

This is kimchi. I cut it up, put it in a container, and store it in the fridge. I mixes well with many dishes.

A nice, short post.

Catching up #3: Merry Christmas!

Let's celebrate Yeshu's birthday! Yeshu is what Jesus is called here. Kind of like Hebrew for Yeshua.

















So, I started out Christmas by going to church on Christmas Eve. This is in the basement, where we ate Christmas dinner. There was roast chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, veggies, and even kimbap. I ate with chopsticks.
















Here's where we ate. There's no food in front of me, because I was sitting further down. I just sat there to get in the picture better.
















After I got home, I talked to my family via a webcam. There's my mom and grandfather.
















On Christmas Day, Dave threw a party. These are the pictures from that. There was quite a bit of drinking and dancing.
















Matt always looks happy to be dancing with a couple of girls.
















Here, Matt is demonstrating the Korean technique for "ddong-chim". In this excercise, you usually put your hands together and point out your index fingers; as though you're making a gun with your hand. Then, you ram your fingers up the nearest person's ass! In this case, Matt is preparing to use his whole hands, AND a cig. OUCH! That fag burns!
















Lots of goodies were made for Christmas Day.
















Leah was trying to make a ginger bread house, but she made a mess. I guess she is supposed to be sexy here.
















At any rate, I decided to make sure that the icing was the right flavour.
















I decided to get silly, and dance like a queen. Then, I pointed at the camera. Take that, camera!
















Yeah, well... that's enough of that.





















Turkey!

















The gift exchange...

Catching up #2: My new computer

This will be a boring post for most.


I have a bit of money now, so I decided that I've had enough of computer rooms and bought my own computer. Within a couple days, I had the internet all hooked up as well.

Here's what I bought:

3.0 GHz Pentium 4
1024 MB RAM
200 GB Hard Drive
NVidia GeForce 6600 Graphics Card; 128 MB
DVD-Recordable drive

This all came to about 700,000 won. It came with a nice black keyboard and black optical mouse as well. I bought some Creative 5.1 surround sound speakers and subwoofer for an additional 70,000 won, and I got a used 17" moniter for 20,000. I also got a good webcam, which I've been making good use of, for about 60,000 won. I have my older one here, but the picture was going on it.

The look my mother gave me when I first talked to her on it made the entire cost worth it.

Yes, I know. That was a candidate for the sappiest line ever.

Catching up #1: It snowed in Ulsan (Dec. 14/05)

Time for a bit of catch up. A lot has happened in the past few weeks, including some snow, a new computer, Christmas, New Years and a broken leg.

First of all, most of Korea had a lot of snow a few weeks ago. Ulsan and Busan were sparred, for the most part. We only saw snow on a couple of days. Currently (Jan. 3/06), there is no snow and the temperature is a few degrees above freezing. It really hasn't been too cold here, and I've been riding my motorbike up until a few days ago.

The pictures in this post are a collection of pictures ranging from my school, to the night lights of Ulsan, to the snowy night, and a couple of pictures from one of Dave's parties.

















Nathan and Helan, hanging out in the staff computer room.
















Here's a lesson I did on positional words. Most of the students had it down in a couple of weeks.
















I really do love all of the bright light at night in Asia.
















More pretty lights.
















Same, same.
















Who needs Christmas lights when you have this? Actually, I miss Christmas lights. There's not many of them here.
















Lights, lights, lights.
















A blurry John is amazed at the snow.





















I think I'm in gumdo. Really, I'm just pretending that I look cool.
















Matt, myself and I can't remember her name.
















John and I.
















The good 'ol snowball fight.
















A snow covered entryway to someone's townhouse.
















Leah and Ok-Young.
















I think her name is Steph. I can't really remember.



Bonus pic:
















Here's a picture that Kevin took of Phil and myself at his (Kevin's) birthday from a while back.