Life Post: Home From Korea

This is going to be an incredibly quick post as it's just turned midnight, and that means it's my bedtime. I did want to update the blog after my last post though. As I mentioned there, I went to Korea over Golden Week, and I had a rough first day because I was tired.

Well, it turned out that I wasn't just tired: I was getting sick. The next few days got steadily worse. It was just a cold, but between the travel and not sleeping well, it turned into a particularly terrible cold. I probably made it worse as I was determined not to miss out on being in Korea and kept going. That means I did the things I meant to do (most of them at least), but I nearly killed myself doing them.

There was one point where I nearly had a break down at the subway station because of how terrible I felt. Then a Korean woman stopped to help me and stayed with me for about fifteen minutes, which only made me want to cry more because of how thankful I was for her. (Honestly, the highlight of the Korea trip was how warm and helpful Korean people were. I wasn't expecting to get so much unsolicited help from people. I'm not sure it would have felt strange to me if I'd come from America, but after living in Japan as long as I have been, I'm very unused to strangers just coming up and talking to you. I forgot that it's a thing that happens.)

In the end, the trip left me feeling quite miserable, and that led to some disappointment over the whole thing, but I can't be upset with myself or anything else. I just got sick; there's nothing to blame for it. Because a lot of people in Japan were sick before I left and because I was already feeling so tired when I got to Korea, I'm also pretty sure I got the cold in Japan, not Korea.

Hopefully I can go back soon and not get sick. I went to Seoul this time, but I'd really like to visit Busan. I met a number of people from there in Seoul actually who stopped to talk and introduce themselves.

So, the biggest takeaway from the trip is that Koreans are great people and very welcoming, but my immune system failed me this time around.

The important thing is that I started feeling better yesterday, and today, on my first day back at work, I could make it through the day without feeling too bad. You can still tell I'm sick from my voice, so I was coughing some, and I can't hear well because of the congestion in my ears. Still, I feel amazing compared to just a few days ago, so here's hoping it's even better tomorrow.