cough cough hack hack

blech! i got sick this weekend! it was terrible! friday to tuesday i was laid out hacking and drooling on my (wonderfully, i must say) heated floor. i missed out on about 5 awesome things, including a visit from a friend from montreal's husband!!! aw, hamburgers!! the worst part of all was that by the time i decided i needed medicine, it was sunday and the medical stations were closed. i was in a miserable bind: i couldn't sleep, i couldn't walk, i could hardly move and i had already consumed my entire tylenol stash. so i did what any girl in my situation would have done. i made my own nyquil.

1 part soju + 2 parts ginger tea = erin's emergency elixir
(soju is kind of like vodka)




after that i finally got some sleep! and what a lovely sleep it was!
then on monday i dragged myself to school for a ride to see a doctor . . . who spoke english! yay! now, i've been to see the korean doctor once before for a wee stomach thing, and not because i wanted to. that time was at the insistance of my nervous-mother korean boss-lady. so i went to make her happy and i ended up being asked to get neked in front of my slightly creepy male boss (which i refused) and getting an unidentified shot against my will. then it was off to the pharmacy where i received 15 bags of 7 unidentified/unlabeled pills each, one bagful of which i was to take three times a day. since i hadn't asked to go to the doctor in the first place and no one would explain to me what was going on, those pills took a nice whirly trip down my toilet. i didn't mind, they cost about $1 total.

i was actually sick this weekend and wanting drugs, so i intend to make use of the drugs i got this time around. i asked my boss-lady not to send me to the doctor with my man-boss this time, pleading to please let any of the other female coworkers come with me. but in the end, it was me and mr. man again, and i think that she told him i didn't want to go with him, because he made me go to the pharmacy by myself. thanks buddy, the one place where i really could have used the translation. in the end, the pharmacist and i hand-signaled it out okay. so i get to take one of these bagfuls of pills three times a day, which isn't too bad since i can read that 1.5 of them are tylenol.




and i also got this, which i think is cough syrup. and, as you can see, it comes in this handy dandy little pre-measured bottle, so i just suck out 10cc when i need it. super.




and in a related note, an interesting fact about korean floors. koreans heat their floors. that's how they heat their homes. this is left over from old korean days when they would build fires under their houses to heat them in the winter. don't ask me why the didn't burn down. i don't know. now that they have electric heat, i suppose it just made sense to heat from the floor up. and i guess it does make sense. your feet are always, always warm and that's pretty nice. and guests sleeping on your floor are also warm. yay for ryan and christie coming in 12 days! and old korean ladies say that if you are sick, you should lie down on the hot floor. it worked for me. kind of a neat idea and something i'll be sad to leave behind.