From sprints to limps

Two weeks ago we took one of the classes out to play. There is a nice park close to the school, which is right beside a cemetery dedicated to bygone missionaries to Korea. Also, there is a big church, but that's more information than any of you want to know.

I was sprinting after the other teacher to get him out of our flag territory and, upon decelerating, felt my left thigh burn. Ugh. I'm not sure if it swelled much at the time, but I could limp alright and made it back to the school, and eventually home. You know how some things hurt worse the day after, or even the second day after? I was nervous that this would be the case with my leg. Next morning, it seemed pretty sound! Phew!

A couple days later I taught my first after-school "friends club." Of course I was nervous, but even that can't really account for the negligence involved in slicing between my upper lip and my nose while shaving. Not just one cut but two, since the razor has multiple blades. Sigh. They were very obvious cuts but the students were polite enough to not mention it. I brought it up anyway, since I knew it'd make me feel less self-conscious. It healed quickly and by the weekend it was already gone. (c:

The weekend was the trip to Busan and visiting Erik down there. Everything was great, no problems. It was fantastic catching up with an old roommate and friend, and seeing what his life there is like. There are photos here.

Tuesday (last week) we went out to play again with the kids and though my leg hurt a bit when I took long strides or slipped down some stairs, it still felt.. good enough. I did a bit of running during the game and soon could not even walk. Sigh. My leg felt worse than the week before, much worse, and it swelled up almost immediately. I massaged it a lot, but eventually the pain was enough that I stepped out of observing a class and put some ice packs on it.

Since then my thigh has gotten some amazing bruises and my knee has felt very weak. Hobbling to and from school has been something of a pain, and going up and down the stairs hasn't been a speedy process either. My sleep at night hasn't been very good since the leg hurts. Saturday it felt quite a bit better and I went out to an Art Mingle to see some friends.. but all the walking ended up being bad for it, and the walking to and from church on Sunday slowed down the healing as well.

New friend, artist and old friend. Lendy and Eunice.

Caricature artist and some friends. Soyon and John.

This has been my first week as the teacher and so far (the past two days) it has been pretty good. There is a lot of organizing to do so I can keep track of who gave what, what is coming up, etc, etc... To add to my humility, on Monday, at the last class I discovered my zipper to be down. Aaaand I can forsee the future being a brighter tomorrow. (c:

My thigh right now seems to have gotten over the "being damaged and internally bleeding" stage and may be well on its way to healing. I've pretty much come home straight from school last week and this week to rest the leg up (except for the walksome weekend). I think the holiday today has been great for it's healing process.