What a great day.

Today started off as any other day for the last four weeks. Get up, glare at the bathroom (because it is the source of the shower), hobble, cover up, soap up, rinse off, sigh, get up, hobble and drip dry until I'm just about to be late for Troy picking me up, throw on clothes that were once clean but really, I don't care how I look/smell anymore, find my one shoe and turn the lock in my door just in time to hear the *THUDTHUDTHUD* of his bass arriving down those five delightful stairs.

The trip nor the arrival were eventful; I breezed through the morning classes and half-dozed through lunch, returning for an afternoon of, well, bullshitting because I worked through the materials too quickly on accident. Oops.

I get downstairs around 2 o'clock and Troy's already there to wheel me to ECC. But it's so unlike him. On Monday, I didn't actually leave kindergarten until 2:47 (ironically, the time I broke my leg 4 weeks ago) because they were concerned the building was too cold for me. (Okay, maybe I have things a little easier than I've been telling myself.) He gestures off in the direction of Haiti and says, "Hospitur," which is of course Konglish for "hospital." Well, by my watch we still had another 48 hours, but okay, let's go to the hospitur.

There's a new X-ray guy, and he's handsome, but not handsome enough to break something.

Waiting waiting waiting... They gesture for me to go into the back room. At this my already elevated heartbeat speeds as I realize I'm getting a new cast! Woo hoo! I hobble on back, a small part of me hoping no cast at all, but as they pour the steaming bowl of hot water to wet the plaster, I see that dream is a bit far out. The ambulance driver pulls out the saw, and judging by their reactions, my face went white and my eyes got huge. As he started to drill holes into the cast, the doctor actually touched the moving saw with his bare hand. Dr. Stoic is a much cooler guy in my book, now. Once there was a cut up each side of everyone's careful artwork (there was much smirking/gasping/disbelief at Ashley's Korean proclamation of loving me), they pulled it off.

What I saw was the most disgusting thing in the entire world.

My leg wasn't pleasantly pale like I was expecting, much like skin is after leaving a band aid on for too long. No, it was the gray of something sitting... in the morgue too long. Well, gray except for the bruises. Apparently a cast doesn't mean your leg is impervious to all beatings, and I really do need to be careful. :) I was completely shocked by how I was unable to hold my leg up for the new cast to be applied. First, I couldn't hold it up even if I had wanted to, and second, it could not stop shaking. I willed it to stop, but it actually kind of looked like it was shaking its head, "I don't wanna!" The new cast went on well, and they repositioned my foot so it's more in a "Kate's standing" position as opposed to "Kate should try to do ballet on tip toes" position.

The doctor was very pleased with the progress. He was so distracted by new bone growth that I had to remind him that I shouldn't be standing on that leg. :) Two weeks from today, the cast comes off all together, and I get to learn how to walk all over again. Because my knee has been immobilized for a month, I start physical therapy tomorrow. It was supposed to be today, but... I am sleepy.

Two notes I want to make, more for my future self since this is my blog about my life in Korea. First, while mom and I were talking last night, I realized that this woe-is-me, why-can't-things-be-perfect, I-need-to-control-and-fix-and-do-everything-myself attitude comes from Gertrude, and that Gertrude's negative points are a lot of what makes Sheldon Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory. After seeing that, I'm definitely ready to bring Debbie back out.

Second, I tried really hard to keep perspective on my kids' positions in life today. On the one hand, it's really easy to say, "I'm in Asia and all teachers are hard on the kids." On the other hand, are they really learning from me by me screaming and wearing myself out and not having fun and just getting frustrated and writing bad sentences? First, in each class, I reminded myself of how old they are. Not how old they say they are, but how old they are by Western calendars. Most of the kids I teach after kinder are 9 or 10 years old. Then I considered where I was, what I was learning, and what I did to goof off when the teacher was talking when I was their age. That actually helped quite a bit, so while we didn't necessarily play games (okay, in one class they played Duck, Duck, Goose after a test), we talked, we spoke English, there was even some laughing. They're not little adults. They haven't even hit puberty yet. Why make life hard before it actually is?