April Fools

I've had three colds in three weeks and nothing to show for it except a red nose to rival Rudolph's, a sick day from work, and an empty jar of Tylenol Cold and Flu. There's a doctors office in the building next to my school so I decided to drop by today to see if I could get prescribed something to kill this bug for good.

When I got there the room was full of ajummas so I had to wait quite a while to get in, which was fine because I brought my Nintendo DS with me and the chairs were much more comfortable than the midgets' seats I'd just eaten lunch on in the cafeteria. I began embarrassing myself almost immediately. I blew my nose and threw the kleenex in a garbage can by the front door and sat back down, but the nurses all started laughing and making a fuss. One of the nurses walked over to the garbage can, pulled out the moist kleenex with her bare hands and put it into another trash can instead. I wasn't sure how I'd managed to use the garbage incorrectly but I threw out a few "sorry"s to her anyway and she meekly replied "I'm OK". A few minutes later I saw a patient come in and she put her wet umbrella into the garabge can. It was an umbrella can! Duh.

I knew it was my turn to see the doctor because the fuss started up again. There was pushing and whining and I could hear one of the nurses say (in Korean) "rock scissors paper" as in "let's all play rock scissors paper and if you lose you're his nurse". Well, the loser called me over and in I went to see the doctor.

Doctor Kang preferred to write rather than speak. In fact, everything he said to me he also wrote down on an ever-growing stack of post-its that sat in front of me. From one look at my tongue he could tell quite a bit: first of all, I had "shrink tongue" which is causing me to have chronic fatigue (really?), I need to stay away from cold water, and my kidneys need some kind of pill for 5 days. Also, eat lots of egg. He drew an egg and a line showing me where the "white" part is and where the "yellow" part is. I walked out with a big bag of pills, including a antibiotic- which was all I wanted- so I'll be taking that. And back to school I went.

At this same Melodie was wiring money home. She just got her first paycheck and so this was her first time using our new bank (KB) to transfer money. We were told by a KB telephone representative that you can send money home using the ATM, you just need the branch to set it up for you first. When Mel got to the bank they said this was impossible and she'd have to wire money home the old fashioned way. Except the old fashioned way was a little different this time. The banker wired the bank's money to Canada. THE BANK'S MONEY. And then when he was done he took Mel to the ATM to withdraw her cash so she could pay the bank back. He hadn't even checked her balance or asked for her account information before this, so he couldn't have even known that she'd have enough in her account to the bank pay back. We shall keep this in mind for the next visit.

So, in my afterschool class one of my students told me that it's "Lie Day" today which reminded me that it is, in fact, April Fools Day. If I had known that then maybe I wouldn't have taken all the days' strange events quite so seriously.

Now if you'll excuse me, we've just gotten back from Itaewon with a pile of good books and all the ingredients to make smores... except the campfire. We're going to use the gas range and hope the marshmallows don't taste too gassy. Nom nom nom.