Friday, September 15, 2006

And so it begins!

Yes, I am officially sick. You can call this an unofficial blog entry because its not about me going anywhere and seeing anything even remotely interesting! It's just me bitching about getting sick! Fun!

This morning I woke up at 4am to some very severe stomach cramps. So there I sat on the floor of the bathroom, ready to puke (or do something else (is this story already too gross?). I was freezing and shivering and yet the sweat was just dripping off of me, so I decided to take a shower, but I could only get cold water at that time of night (my shower only gets hot water after 7pm and in the morning). So I kind of just stuck my head under the cold water for a while.

It didn't take me long to rmember that the rice I had eaten for dinner had been boiled in the dreaded tap water. At the time I didn't think about it much; after I'd gotten the water I thought "Hmmmm... maybe I should use bottled water" then cleverly decided "nah, it'll be fine! I'm tough!". Ha!! (Interesting sidenote: my co-teacher informed me that the mayor has told the people of Naju that the drinking water is perfectly safe, but the residents choose not to believe. It is also interesting to note that the Mayor of Naju, and many other town officials don't even live in Naju!! They all commute from the nearby Gwang-ju!! Bunch of jerks).

On the upside, when I'm sick I have really weird dreams! I'm not sure how I got there, but I was with this group of tourists on safari somewhere in Africa (or some such country I've never seen), but there were all these horrific, ugly but very cool monsters that were pursuing us, along with the natives of the land who consisted of gangs of homeless, zombie-like creatures (who also wanted us dead). So myself and the safari goers ran around in fear for most of the dream as we were chased by these creatures. It was actually kind of gory! The beasts were eating other beasts; it was kind of like those cartoons you see where a small fish gets eaten by a bigger fish and that fish is eaten by an even bigger one and so on. Eventually we found escape by climbing over the roof of a ridiculously big church??? I'm really not sure why we couldn't just go around. Then we were all saved by a bunch of cabbies that ended up being bad guys as well that liked to scare us by driving really badly. This was directly preceeded by my alarm clock going of, so it's hard to say where it could have gone from there.

I think I can interpret this dream pretty well. I've just moved to a new place by myself which can be scary, much like going on a zombie-filled safari! And the church is a reference to the churches here, which are really creepy! At night, the crosses which look pretty ordinary and western during the day are lit with bright red neon at night. There's one right beside my building and at night when I look outside I feel like I'm in a vampire movie!! As for the taxi drivers, that one is obvious! Taxi drivers are COMPLETELY INSANE here. I can't even describe to you how bad the driving is! The constant honking is the least of my problems as the taxi driver chats on his cell phone and careens through narrow streets, passing and speeding. All the cab drivers I've met here are very nice though! Cabs are really cheap and the drivers always want to try out their english, which usually consists of "Hello!" and "Okay, bye!!". I was sharing a cab with Alex when I went to Mokpo and Alex sat up front. First the driver touched his head, making fun of his hair. Then rubbed his arm, looking at his arm hair. Westerners are too hairy apparently!!!

So yeah, sorry about the randomness of this entry! Anyone reading can feel free to leave comments! What do YOU think this dream meant??

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