Hello, readers.
It's nice to see you again.
Funny how being somewhere else you forget who you are and then remember and also you're toe is slightly maybe broken.
Let me explain.
On Thursday night, during Taekwando, amidst some very unexciting running, I landed on my foot wrong. I felt a warm sort of pain in my left pinky toe, but, being me, I presumed it was just a sprain and so continued on with the hopping and jumping and kicking. Afterwards, in some mildly horrible pain, I asked Master Jin if he had some spray or goop to rub on it.
He opted for goop.
While rubbing it in, he said, "Can you walk?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Can you run?" I said, "If I was being chased by something large and hairy."
"You should go to acupuncture," he said.
"Is it broken," I said.
"I don't think so," he said. "I don't know, though."
The next day at school the teachers were all much worried about me. When they asked me what happened, I would say Taekwando, and they would get this look like, "Oh, how exciting," and then I would tell them, "No, not during the exciting parts," and they would say, "Are you okay?"
(Sidenote from the future: That's actually what most people here, teachers and students, have asked, "Are you okay?"--which as far as questions go, is fine, but sometimes I want to say, "Well, no, not entirely. My toe's kind of maybe broken. But thanks for asking.")
One of my co-teachers, we'll call him Fesbl--because he's a Fluent English Speaking Baseball Lover, took me to the acunpuncturist after school. It was just five minutes from our school. The office was brown and polished like a lot of doctor's offices are. I was taken into a room and told to lean back. A heat lamp was pointed at my feet. The doctor attached some electrodes to my leg which proceeded to electrocute me ever so slightly.
It didn't hurt, but it felt odd.
Five minutes or so passed. I chatted with Fesbl about whether being electrocuted was normal. He said it was. He had had it done for various sprains and muscle pulls from playing baseball.
The doctor came back and stabbed me then, with tiny needles. He did this by placing a small blow-dart looking tube against my skin, pressing the end (which presses the needle in), and then reloading the device and going again.
This part hurt. Not the needles themselves, but the squeezing part. You don't want to know about that.
I asked my co-teacher to ask him if he thought it was broken. He said something. My co-teacher translated. "He doesn't think so. But, he doesn't know."
It was at this point we decided maybe I should go to the hospital, which, in Korea, is pretty much where you go for everything. Hospital here means doctor's office/orthopaedics/surgery/emergencies.
The hospital we went to was surprisingly unbusy. The waiting room had one or two people. My co-teacher filled out the forms. We sat. After a couple minutes, we saw the orthopaedic fellow.
He looked at my toe. I asked if he thought it was broken. You know what he said. And then he sent me to get x-rays.
At some hospitals in the U.S., this means walking across the street. Here, it meant walking a few doors down the hall.
Shortly after this, we were all back in the doctor's office. He had the x-rays up on the x-ray viewy thing. He sighed. He turned on a bright lamp beside the x-ray viewy thing and held up the x-rays. He sighed again. He waved Fesbl to come, and he said things. He then drew pictures which I looked at with some interest.
"What's he saying," I said.
"He says your toe might be broken," Fesbl said. "But he's not sure. He doesn' t know."
I very nearly laughed at this, readers. In fact, I probably did.
"He says," said Fesbl, "that it may be a kind of line fracture."
"You mean a hairline fracture," I said.
"A line fracture," Fesbl said.
"Okay," I said, not seeing the point in arguing the point.
Fesbl then took me to get some pain pills and drove me back home.
He's actually much cooler than his name would suggest. Someone should have named him better. Ah, well.
In other news, here are some pictures of the Kimchibilly concert from a bit ago.
And one from one of the more amazing rooftops I've ever had the pleasure of drinking on.
I won't lie readers, the toe thing is annoying. Of all the things I like, being slowed from my usual spectacular amount of running around is not one of them.
As the subject suggests though, readers, the best thing you can do is fall in love.
So that's what I'll continue to do.
Moments like the one below help.
ttfn, readers.p.s. NPR's All Songs Considered always has full albums streaming. But, at the moment, they have a plethora of goodies, including Go by Jonsi (the lead singer of Sigur Ross), Volume Two by She and Him (Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward), and the collaboration of David Byrne, Fatboy Slim, and many, many others, called, Here Lies Love.
p.p.s. These also help.
p.p.p.s As does the fact that, in one of my classes, a girl asked for help spelling the name, "Zooey Deschanel." It's her favorite actress. She asked me to call her, "Summer."
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