너무 아아아아파*

* = I'm really hurt (nuh-moo ah-pah); from T-Ara's "내가 너무 아파"; funnily enough, the word for "to be sick" in Korean, 아프다, can also mean "to be hurt," although there is a separate verb for that.  See if you can figure out which one I meant after you finish reading.

Admittedly, I had truly not intended to post until I'd set foot on Korean soil once again (I'm not a compulsive blogger, I swear).  But the events of the past 24 hours are just too...um...ridiculous to not document adequately.

So first, let's get some facts straight about the past week:
- I have a sinus infection.  I managed to develop this the night before Class Day, which was awesome.  I had to be dragged to DUH twice by some very patient friends, and was finally given antibiotics as treatment after my visit on the evening of my Commencement.  Yay for graduating in a sinus pressure-induced haze!
- I managed to develop this sinus infection after a month of chronic coughing and blowing my nose.  Was it a cold?  Was it allergies?  Was it belated swine flu (unlikely; if you read my last posts of the summer and take note of the cold I claimed to have in my last week of classes, you will be delighted, I'm sure, to learn that I figured out after the fact that it was 90% swine flu)?  I have no idea, since I never went to the doctor to get it checked out.
- I like sushi and fish and eat it a couple of times a month if my budget allows.  Why, I had Miya's just last week.

Now let's start with last night.
Illin' with this stupid sinus infection, I've had such bad congestion that I haven't been able to taste or smell anything in about 4 days.  But my dad wanted to make me food that I like in my last couple of days home, and so last night he made me shrimp with cous cous.  I couldn't taste a thing, but I ate all of it (I mean, I was hungry).  And about 10 minutes after we finished dinner, I started feeling...itchy.  And hot.  And not...right.  I asked my dad if he'd put anything different or funny in the shrimp, and he looked at me kind of oddly, and then called me an invalid (my family may not have the most patience for sick people).  It was at this point, I think, that my brother noticed that my face was breaking out in hives, and all of a sudden, I started noticing certain parts of my body going numb.  I felt it first in my hands, which were starting to swell and redden; then it began to spread to my face, particularly my mouth.  Realizing that this was very, very wrong, I said I wanted to go to the ER.  My dad threw me into the car and sped towards our local hospital, which is conveniently only five minutes away.  After stumbling around the parking lot like an insane person while trying to find the entrance (my dad unceremoniously dumped me off at the ambulance entrance to go find parking), an ambulance driver took pity on me and ushered me inside, where I was immediately taken in (I must have looked like death warmed over, but I think they also saw right away that I was having a life-threatening reaction; more on that later) and put on a hospital bed.  By this point, my throat had started to close up and I couldn't feel my lips anymore.  Awesome!

I didn't watch any of this because I dislike nothing more than watching needles go into flesh (as a sidenote, I have six ear piercings), but I imagine the nurse had some terrible trouble finding a vein in my arm, because today my left arm is in considerable pain; my dad also told me that they took a lot of blood out of me.  It was my first time in the ER, and it was literally as insane as any television show portrays it - nurses swarming around me, rushing in various IV drips and poking and prodding me in a thousand places.  Anyway, the end result was the I was started on somewhere between 4-6 IV drips - the ones I can remember were some kind of steroid for swelling, epinephrine to treat the allergic reaction, benadryl, some anti-nausea drip, and andrenalin.  Funnily enough, while they were sticking all of this shit in me, I started whining in Korean (I kept saying, "아파, 아파," meaning it hurts, it hurts).  Why?  I have no idea.  I was fairly cognizant throughout the entire ordeal (despite everything that was happening to my body, my blood pressure and heart rate were fairly stable, for which I am grateful).  I think I really wanted to whine and cry, but in front of my dad (who actually was crying), I wanted to show a stronger face.  Nobody understands Korean, so I could whine like a little kid and go undetected.

So what happened to me?  The short is that my body suffered an allergic reaction and went into anaphylactic shock.  Because of all the medication in me at the time of reaction, plus the enduring month-long sickness-turned-sinus infection, it is difficult to point to a culprit with 100% surety, but the fact remains that this all transpired within 10-15 minutes of consuming shrimp.  Which means that I have developed (in less than a week, I'd have to say, since I had crab like, last Wednesday) a potential allergy to shellfish, rendering me unable to consume (at least until I have seen an allergist and figured out for sure if I have this allergy) shrimp, squid, clam, crab, lobster, oyster, octopus, mussels, and a whole other host of things that I have seen listed on websites that I don't feel like looking up now.

I honestly had enough things to worry about in going to Korea for one year (getting an apartment, getting a foreigner's registration card, a bank account, a cell phone contract, getting some tutoring jobs to make some extra change, and OH YEAH going to school full time and LEARNING KOREAN), but now we get to add a new and perpetual challenge to the list: navigating Korean cuisine whilst completely avoiding shellfish!

I started making a list of things that were probably safe to eat (my favorite dinner stew, a beef soup called 뚝배기 불고기, thank God, is still okay), but in the end, I just have to be super, super, super cautious, I think, especially when eating out.  While I can certainly order things that do not contain fish, there is a decent risk of cross contamination in dishes.  Then there's the problem of me staying with Jung Min Unni's family - a certainly did not want to be a burden, and now I come complete with a really annoying dietary restriction that is definitely going to affect how the Han family eats while I'm there (poor Unni's favorite food is octopus fried rice).  Then again, if they are understanding (which I hope they are, and I spoke to both Unni and her mom last night after I got home), it might actually save me a lot of trouble during the initial adjustment - eating at a home means that whoever is cooking, be it me, Unni, or Unni's mom, can absolutely control with certainty what goes into my food, and that's as safe as I could get.

Because the holiday weekend leaves me with only one business day before my departure, seeing an allergist before I leave the country will be all but impossible, so I'm making arrangements to see one ASAP in Korea.  That way, I can determine if shellfish really was to blame for this near-death experience.  Okay, so I would only have died if I had stayed at home for about an hour and done absolutely nothing, but still, it was absolutely terrifying and I would like never to repeat it again.

I now go to Korea armed with two EpiPens, a determination to avoid shellfish at all costs (even if it means I have to eat rice and gim until I have a better understanding of food preparation/what I can and can't eat), and a remarkable depression that comes with the realization that I can no longer have sushi (too high of a risk of cross-contamination on surfaces/knives) or ddeokbokki prepared with fishcake (because fishcake can sometimes be flavored with shellfish stock, and when you don't know for sure, it's best to err on the side of caution).  Sad face.

If anything, perhaps this will actually motivate me to learn to cook?  I know, a shocking admission from the former co-host of YTV's premier cooking show, Someday You'll Have a Kitchen.  I guess I'm a fraud.

post-script: I was in the emergency room for about 4 hours, after which I was discharged by what has got to be the biggest asshole male nurse in all of nursedom, who, every time he came in to check on my response to the IV drips, said in a sing-song voice, "You can't eat no shrimp no more!"  Thanks for the reminder, asshole!  I wanted to stick an IV needle in his eye.

End And...

Before I begin, I would like to say that the title of this post does NOT break with my longstanding tradition of opening my blogs with Korean pop song quotes/titles/tidbits/what have you.  The above is the title to Jewlery's last album, which marked the departure of two of the group's original members, Seo In Young and Park Jung Ah.  A fitting one, if you ask me - since two members are departing, we have an "end"; since two members are staying, we have an "and."  As a recent graduate of Yale College, Class of 2010 (magna cum laude, distinction in the Political Science major, ahem), I find myself in a situation that is simultaneously an end and a beginning, or more precisely, a continuation of a journey that I began in September 2008: the quest for proficiency in the Korean language.

End, and indeed.

This blog has been revived due to the extreme generosity of the Richard U. Light Fellowship, which has afforded me the opportunity to return to South Korea for a full academic year in order to continue my Korean language study and immersion.  As such, I extend to you, dear reader, a hearty welcome to Dana in SoKo 2.0, a new and slightly improved version of Dana in SoKo 1.0.

So what's different?

1) Please take note of the new header, subject to change but unlikely to do so, and if you're a hater, then get out of here right now.  The ladies featured here are none other than SNSD (Girls' Generation, SoNyuhShiDae, etc.), what is arguably Korea's best known, most famous, and most popular girl group.  Singers of such hits as "Gee," "Genie," "Oh!," and "Run Devil Run," SNSD best encapsulates one of the things that I talk the most about (much to the chagrin of like, 90% of my friends): Kpop.  While I posted a whole slew of Kpop links last year, I plan to do much more this year, given that I now am familiar with more than like, 4 groups or singers.  In the past 10 months, my collection has grown to 125+ songs, and I download an average of 3-10 new songs a week.  Expect great things.

2) It came to my attention last year that my blog was read not only by prospective Light Fellows, but prospective Sogang-ers across the globe.  That being said, if I can ever figure out this system of "tagging" posts, I will do my best to make this blog more organized and easily accessible to readers of all backgrounds and needs.

...okay, so basically nothing has changed.  All I did was add a picture.  Sorry for the anticlimax.

Today, as it turns out, is the exact day on which I departed for South Korea last year.  Having maintained my blogular silence since August, my very, very, very few readers might be wondering what I've done with myself since then.  If this were an FAQ section, I imagine it'd look something like this

Q: How was your senior year?
A: If I had to summarize my senior year in 1 word, it would be "Korean."  My life basically revolved around three things: studying Korean language, meeting Korean friends, and plotting ways to get back to Korea ASAP.  Of these three, the last would be the most critical and the first would be the most consistent, but the second was the most affecting.  I was truly blessed and honored to get to know a wonderful, wonderful group of Korean students at Yale (mostly graduates, mostly in the Yale School of Music) who have not only helped me to gain a greater understanding and more solid grasp of conversational Korean, but who have become true and trustworthy friends in the process.

a sampling of the best people I know: Jaewon Unni, Jung Min Unni, me, Shinnee Dongsaeng, JaeIn Unni, and Adam in the background

I have to extend the majority of the credit to Jung Min Unni and JaeIn Unni, both of whom were tutors of mine who became close friends, confidants, and connections to the wider Korean community at Yale.  If not for them, I would almost definitely not have met 95% of the people I am close to today - people who I am SO HAPPY to be spending my summer with, and people whom I will dearly miss come the inevitable departures of August.

Q: Did you write your senior essay about Korea?

A: Yup.  The title is, "A Spoken Commodity: Access, Inequality, and English Language Education in South Korea."  Ask me about it if you're curious, because I don't really feel like elaborating on it here.  A lot of Korean people heavily disagreed with my opinions, so beware potential offense.

Q: Why go back to Korea?

A: Why not?  Because I have long believed that there is little merit to the undertaking of foreign language study unless you can physically and mentally immerse yourself in a culture and people who speaks the target language.  Plus, in case you haven't already figured it out, I <3 Korea.

All in all, I am a bit nervous to be leaving for a full year (it's a long time to be so far away) and heading to Korea during what is perhaps the most precarious and tumultuous period of inter-Korean relations in decades, but I am more or less confident in my level of enthusiasm to carry me through what is sure to be a long and arduous adjustment period...

I touch down in Korea at 5:20pm on June 3 after a direct flight on Korean Air (!), where I will be greeted at the airport by Jung Min Unni, one of my best friends, whose family has graciously offered to let me stay with them in their apartment in Apgujeong until I've got my feet on the ground.  I can't even put into words how touched I am by their generosity.  Former Korea Light Fellow (and current China Fellow) Philip Gant once remarked to me that in Korea, you rack up a debt you can never repay; everyone is so kind and helpful, and I'm already seeing that even though I haven't even arrived yet (in addition to the Han family's overwhelming kindness, I can't even tell you how many people have offered to buy me food or take me around - it's almost embarrassing how helpless it makes me look, but I will not look a gift horse in the mouth).

        

my much loved Jung Min Unni, who stayed at Yale an extra 3 weeks to see me graduate, 사랑하는 정민 언니; she tells me that having a non-graduate wear the graduate's mortarboard is a Korean thing.  Okay.

my best friend & roommate Hayeon, 내 제일 친한 친구 하연이

Less than a week until I begin again.