I woke up twice this morning. The first time I woke up was around 5:30 AM. I was restless, as I'd been having a difficult dream.
Someone from the US Army had come to my apartment and told me I had two hours to get packed up and moved – everyone had to move out of the country. Some kind of war scenario – many of the Koreans were going around doing crazy things, too. But it was all very vague.
Two hours is not a lot of time to pack up my apartment. Especially given the fact that I kept finding new rooms full of stuff. I would get stuff thrown into boxes only to discover a new room. Piles of knickknacks on shelves, bookshelves creaking under the weight of too many books like in a used bookstore, plastic containers of who-knows-what piled on the floor, like in my storage unit in Minnestoa.
Some Army guy came around and said I couldn't bring it all. "Take what's important," he said.
I found many things that I didn't even recognize as mine, yet it all seemed important and precious. I found bins of ceramic figurines, mountains of paper with drawings on each page, collections of coins and stamps and price tags. It was a hoarder's fantasy world, and I was being perfectly hoarderish within it.
But time was running out. People would come through and offer to help, but I kept rejecting it. Then Karen came by – Karen is my (ex-) mother-in-law (Michelle's mom). She said, with a sigh, "This was all Michelle's." I sat back in shock – that explained both why I didn't recognize the stuff and why I still felt compelled to save it all.
It was too late, though. The Army guy came by and said to stop packing, we were moving out. Karen was crying, as we left the unpacked stuff behind.
I held only a few boxes in my arms. I didn't even want them. I threw them aside, as we marched, a group of random Ilsan foreigners, toward some waiting buses.
Then I woke up.
I couldn't get back to sleep, so I read my history book for about an hour.
Then I finally fell asleep. This time I dreamed that I was trying to explain to my EHS students that they were very smart and had great potential, but they were complaining they were stupid and lazy. I was trying to motivate them. It makes sense – that's the class I did a substitute gig in last night.
Somehow, the four EHS students and I were in a supermarket. I was trying to cheer them up by clowning around, but, like the incipient adolescent 6th graders that they are, they seemed to mostly find this embarrassing. I said I would stop embarrassing them if they would cheer up. So they tried their best, and we sat down on some benches in a park to try to have class.
It was too hot to study, though. We sat around swatting flies and mosquitoes, as the sky grew dark. "Teacher, my book will get wet," one of them said, as raindrops started to fall.
I woke up again. 9:30 AM. That is the latest I've woken up since coming home from the hospital, I think. I have a sore throat – that is worrying – the last thing I need is to get some kind of cold or flu, leading into the radiation next week.
I ate some vitamin C with my breakfast. Maybe I should take it easy today, and stop having so many adventures.