Yesterday was kind of busy. I met Dr Jo after my radiation, and it seemed like it went well. He seemed surprised that so far I’m still not having any trouble eating, and he was mostly reassuring with respect to my other symptoms, hypochondriac or otherwise.
After that meeting, I walked home and ended up taking a long nap, and eating a lot. I had grapefruit, among other things, which I’ve been craving. That’s not really anything new – I’ve been craving grapefruit pretty continuously for about 4 decades now – but grapefruit isn’t always easy to run across in Korean supermarkets, so the craving matching up with availability was nice.
Then I went to work, and ended up working the longest of any time since coming out of the hospital, because I spent 3 hours proctoring a pseudo-TOEFL test for some advanced students. Rather than pay big bucks for a “real” (or realish) TOEFL test, Ken and I decided to try to piece together our own mini-TOEFL, including essay writing (by making them type on the computer using the notorious MS notepad – to avoid giving the students access to spellcheck and that type of thing) and speaking (by making them record onto the computer using some mp3-recording freeware). It was the first time we’ve tried this, but I think it went well – well enough that I think we can make it a routine. And as I’ve said elsewhere, I’ve long ago given up battling South Korea’s testing obsession and come to embrace it as a means to quantify outcomes and stepwise progress, not just for students and parents but for us as teachers as well.
And then… after ending work at 10, we did 회식 [hweh-sik = business dinner]. We went to a “help-yourself” style meat-grilling place at La Festa (a local outdoor mall-type-thing). I intended to take some pictures, but I forgot. I ate a lot, though. I hope Andrew and Hollye felt comfortable – they got a chance to observe my workplace culture and dynamics. Curt remarked at one point to Andrew that I was quite changed, in his perception, from before my diagnosis and surgery. He said I had become a more positive person. I resist this stark division of my personality into before and after, as I don’t think my fundamental outlook as been quite so transformed (despite some post-surgery epiphanies). What has changed is I have a much stronger commitment to projecting my positivity and gratitude to those around me.
Anyway, it ended up being a late night, because of that. I went to sleep around 1 AM – almost like my old, regular work schedule.
Except now I have to get up and go to radiation.
