Schools out...Well For a Few Days!

Ryan and I were happy to find out that we got Friday through Tuesday off!  So what to do with our full five days of freedom?  We had many ideas that we worked with all the way from getting a villa in Bali, the rice fields in the Phillipins, elephant rides through Cambodia, to a quick trip to the South Korean island of Jeju. 

Well we started to get very excited as we planned all these different trips looking into prices and seeing that most were really reasonable.  We finally decide to leave Jeju till Luner New Year when we get more time off and were all ready for Bali, until we looked at plane ticket prices.  Oh my getting one of us to Bali was more than it was to rent a private villa on a beach in Bali!  Now it was still an option if we wanted to eat Raman for a few weeks to make up with difference without cutting into savings. Now they have many amazing flavors of Raman here but we decided we had to do the grown up thing and put our amazing beach bum trip off.  Sometimes I hate being a grown up!

So here is how things went instead:

Friday July 30th:

I had been having really bad headaches and had been to the Doctor on Wednesday before work, given some medication told to come back Saturday.  Well Friday morning I woke up to a worse headache and chest pains.  So Ryan was sweet and got breakfast for me and even suggested, well strongly suggested, we go to the Doctor;  after all it was our time off from work and neither one of us wanted to spend it in our apartment and I didn't want to spend it in pain. 

So after breakfast I took my pills and took a nap.  I woke up about lunch time and we decided to head back to our Doctor.  He is in the building right out in front of our apartment, he speaks really good English and we can get in to see him without any advanced notice.  We headed over and the waiting room was packed, kids everywhere! I guess this would be the time to mention that we go to a pediatrician, anyways it was hot, they were screaming and I looked at Ryan, faked a smile and said I was all better.  Well dang if he didn't buy it and made me take a seat. 

We waited about thirty minutes, the longest we have ever had to wait, and once in the room explained that things had not gotten any better.  On Wednesday we explained to him that I have mild asthma and what medication I take, then we also explained to him that I tend to get a lot of sinus headaches and some of the things I have taken over time for them.  Well he seemed to be more worried about the chest pain at the time and gave me some singular, cough syrup, and some other pills along with a patch that you wear for 24 hours on your chest to help with breathing. 

This time we were sure to emphasize that yes my chest still hurt but that my headaches were the main problem.  So this time he gave me a shot of something and then took us into a dark room where he had me put a light bulb thing in my mouth so he could look at my sinus passages in my face. I will admit sometimes we feel their methods here maybe a little back woods but we do live in a very small town.  He said I had some congestion, this I already knew and that he would give me something to help the headaches.  He gave me two large Tylenol to take 3 times a day along with my other medicans.  We also mentioned to him that I had been on a lot of different things in my life and had never been shaky but that something he had given me caused me to jitter quit badly.  Turns out it was the cough medicants and not to worry. 

We thank him, paid our nice little bill of 6,000 Won, without insurance I'll admit it is a little price, but hey that is only a little less than $5 so we cant complain.  Then we went across the hall to the pharmacy where they not only fill your prescription as you stand there, but they also break it down into dosages, so you don't have to count out pills or worry that you should have taken 3 of one and 2 of the other but messed up and got it backwards, in little baggies.  It was about 11,000 Won so about $9 without insurance again.  I always find the doctors and pharmacy's very interesting here. 

Saturday July 31st:

We headed over to Anseong to get our weekend Big Mac.  Followed by some duffel bag shopping and shoe shopping, I have been looking for new shoes however as cute and cheap as they are here I don't think I will have much luck due to size.  Then we did some grocery shopping to pick up a few things we have been needing like oven mitts, pasta sauce, wine, Dimple, and what not.  We ran into a few kids who seemed shocked to see us and asked how our vacation was going. 

When we were out I also wanted to check and make sure the puppy I fell in love with had been bought.  A few weeks ago we went in to the pet store above Lotte Mart and we both fell in love with a miniature dotsin puppy, she was cute, loving and just special.  They even offered us a discount because she had a skin condition but promised it would clear up.  This bothered me because well Koreans really don't seem to want things that are broken or messed up, for instance this big stuffed elephant has been out on the side walk for 2 weeks now, at first we thought they were letting him dry after a bath/cleaning but then we saw the big rip in his leg, yet we didn't want to save him just yet so we watched and waited, well by now he has been rained on and we worry he has bugs, but yes this is why I worried about this puppy because he was not perfect, he was different.  So we don't need a puppy, we work all day and travel on the weekend but she was small and Korea is very dog friendly.  So I gave myself 2 weeks to wait and see if she went to a good home so I was both happy and sad to see that she was gone. 

After playing with some other puppies we headed back down to knock out our shopping, get back on the bus and head home.  Sadly I was ready for bed and it wasn't even 9 yet.  I wont lie our first 2 days of our vacation were not too exciting and hadn't gone like we would of imagined when we first started to plan our time off but it was still great not to be at work!

I have broken up the rest of this blog into a few smaller ones that follow this one due to it being extreamly long.