I look uncertainly at him.

My conversations with taxi drivers here have been entertaining, confusing, embarrassing, and (mostly) very trying. The drivers usually fall into one of three categories:

1) Wary of foreigners, refuse to speak at all, even in response to “thank you” or “goodbye”. I used to hate these men on account of the sheer rudeness of not even bothering to acknowledge someone’s existence, but they may now be my favourites – purely because they require a lot less attention and effort than the other two (much friendlier) kinds.

2) Eager to show off English abilities, regardless of skill level. Entire journey will be spent in the role of an English teacher, despite your early morning tiredness / attempts to write an email on your phone / hangover.

3) Very excited to have a real, live foreigner in the car, seizes opportunity for thorough interrogation, entirely in Korean. It doesn’t matter if you attempt to answer as best you can in your clearly terrible, broken Korean, or if you flat out say “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Korean” – this taxi driver will continue to talk rapidly at you, pausing for answers to questions you don’t understand after the standard first 5 (where are you from, is Ireland in England, what do you do in Korea, how old are you, are you married).

So, tonight’s taxi driver falls into category number 2. He apparently speaks no English, nor has he attempted to speak to me in Korean, but he keeps looking back at me and he has that nervous, self-conscious look about him. It’s the look they get when they’re trying to psych themselves up to say something in English but are scared of making a mistake. Finally, he clears his throat several times. Here we go! I think to myself. I prepare my best encouraging smile for the impending “where are you from?” or “do you like Korea?”.

“Eeeeepuh,” he says, somewhat unexpectedly. “Eeeepuh….”

This is a new one. I have no idea what he’s saying, nor do I have much remaining confidence in my belief that he is speaking English. Eeepuh, eeepuh… I search in the dark corners of my brain, but there is no eeepuh there.

“Eeepuh?” I ask gently, trying to sound encouraging.

“Eeeepuh,” he agrees. “Eeeepuh, eeeepuh!”

This is not going very well. He sees my blank expression and looks flustered. “Uhhh…. i… ehpuh… eeepuh!” he adds for clarification.

Oddly enough, this helps, and I suddenly understand. “Ahh – i… f…. if!” I say with some relief. “Got it. OK. If….”

“If!” he repeats with satisfaction. There is a pause, and he clears his throat again.

“If you do not think about the future… then you cannot have one.”

I am too confused and taken aback to come up with an appropriate response to this, so I end up saying a polite “thank you”.

He smiles shyly at me, clearly relieved to have said his piece. We do not speak again for the remainder of the journey. I am fairly certain that that is the only thing he knows how to say in English. Forget “hello, how are you”, forget “what’s your name?”. No, his one English sentence is: If you do not think about the future… then you cannot have one.

I am going to miss this place.

Not only did it give me the chance to do the thing that I love, but it opened up a whole new world for me. Through Coffee Helps, I began to meet people who were to change the direction of my life. Some were readers whose encouraging comments gave me confidence in my writing. Some were fellow bloggers who became useful contacts, friends, and employers. Some connections developed into cherished friendships – a couple even blossomed into love and romance.

This little online catalogue of my embarrassing moments, strange encounters, and rambling thoughts gave me something I’d been searching for throughout most of my life: an identity. I used to be painfully shy, and there was no comfort or encouragement to be had from my awkward attempts at talking to new people. If I managed to pluck up the courage to introduce myself to a new person, the conversation would simply die.

“Hi, I’m Hayley.”

“Hello, I’m X.”

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

***silence***

***face reddening***

***awkward exit***

I didn’t believe I had anything to offer, and it showed. I saw myself as boring, uninteresting, awkward, and generally unwelcome – and so, perhaps, it was one of those self-fulfilling prophecies that was true only because I believed it to be true.

6 years later, I am a different person. Sure, I will always be a bit on the quiet, shy side in big groups of people, and I’ll probably never be the social butterfly who flits around the room making easy conversation with one person after the next… but I know who I am now. I’m Hails, I write, I travel, and I have stories to tell. I know this because the past 6 years of my life would not have been what they were without being able to write about them, and share my tales with an audience, however small. Turns out I’m not boring after all! You might have to work a little harder with me than with others to get the conversation flowing naturally, and maybe I do tend to babble when I’m excited about the topic, but I’m no longer scared to be myself.

This blog, and the people it’s brought into my life, has made me who I am today. The girl who realised she was not made for small town life, and packed it in to take off around Europe, writing about her experiences. The girl who learned that heartbreak and pain is all part of life, and makes for a better writer. The girl who crashed on the couches of complete strangers and made genuine, lasting friends through it. The girl who found herself housesitting in luxurious locations, sipping champagne by the pool as she wrote about her surroundings… and the girl who found herself homeless in an underground bus station in Estonia, with her clothes in a couple of tied bin liners at her feet. The girl who got travel articles published in a few different European countries… and the girl who stayed up all night writing 50 articles about dog food or green tea, and leeched off the free wifi outside fancy hotels so she could submit them and earn enough money for her next train ticket and a decent meal. The girl who went to Korea on a whim and became an English teacher there for nearly 4 years. The girl who took part in vodka ceremonies with nomads in the Mongolian wilderness, walked on the Great Wall of China in the freezing snow and ice, rang the Peace Bell in Hiroshima. That girl. That’s me!

Sometimes I can’t quite believe it – but then I can go back and read all the stories I’ve written here, and it gives me a feeling I never used to have. Confidence mixed with happiness mixed with the assurance that however bad things seem, there’s a whole world of options and opportunities out there. However much pain you’re in, time really does heal. However financially dire things seem, there’s a way to get back on your feet again. However badly your plans go wrong, you can find a way around it. However spectacularly you fall flat on your face, people will always help you to get back up again. I have 6 years’ worth of blog posts to prove it!

Life is a Choose Your Own Adventure story, and you don’t know what will happen until you make your next choice. This is my 1000th blog post, and I would never, ever have imagined where I’d be writing it, back when I was writing post number 1 – or indeed, the story that the next 999 posts would eventually tell. One page at a time. Post by post.

I might not be getting paid for it, and I might never be a published author or a known travel writer, but I am doing what I love. That’s all I need – and it’s because of this blog, and all the people, adventures, relationships, experiences, and opportunities it’s brought into my life. To someone who doesn’t write, my attachment to this jumbled collection of words and stories probably seems weird, and it’s not something I can easily explain. It’s my baby, you see. I created it, I nurtured it, I watched it grow, I’m protective of it, I’m proud of it. It has brought so much into my life. I love it. It’s mine.

Thank you, my humble little blog. I can’t wait to see what the next 1000 posts will bring us!

Sometimes – well, a lot of the time – I feel sort of guilty that you got me as a daughter. I hardly ever call, I’m not someone who often sends cards and presents, I’m not very thoughtful. I’m scatterbrained and forgetful. I never remember to ask about the little details in others’ lives. I don’t like “visiting”, and hate talking on the phone. I travel around and live on the other side of the planet instead of settling down like a normal person and being a good daughter.

I’m sorry!

But I never want you to think that me being the way I am means I don’t care. I think about you every day, even if you haven’t heard from me in weeks. I have a picture of you on my wall, and I often see or hear something that makes me think immediately of you.

And more than all that, I love you! I might be terrible at showing it, but I am really, truly thankful to have a mother like you.

Thank you for staying home and devoting all your time to raising us when we were small. I don’t think I ever realised how uncommon that was becoming, or how fortunate we were to have a mum who was always there to look after us.

Thank you for cooking good food that was varied, healthy, and tasty. I find it hard to make the time to plan meals for myself for the week, never mind a family of 4 for all those years!

Thank you for writing me a note from Santa getting Santa to write me a note on the typewriter “he” brought me for Christmas one year. I was so excited – I told everyone about it! It still makes me smile now when I remember how I felt when I saw it.

Thank you for never pushing me to get high grades, yet always being proud of me if I did. I never felt under pressure from you. I always felt trusted to do my best.

Thank you for always knowing what I wanted for my birthday.

Thank you for never fighting with Dad – or at least, for never fighting with him in front of us. It never dawned on me, as a child, what a wonderful thing it was to grow up in a peaceful, loving household. I just took it for granted.

Thank you for giving me such a wide taste in music!

Thank you for being a mother who planned fun activities to do with her children, instead of just sitting us in front of the TV all day every day.

Thank you for encouraging me to go where I want and to follow my dreams, even when they probably seem a bit crazy.

Thank you for being my friend.

Thank you for teaching me by example: respect, kindness, politeness, truthfulness, love, and humour – lessons that can be learned from a good mother much more effectively than from a textbook.

Thank you for being the sort of mother that I could never, ever be, and for giving me a true, proper role model to try and live up to.

Thank you, Mum, for being my mother. I am grateful for you every day of my life.

Yet again, I am not there with you to celebrate your birthday. I can’t take you out for dinner, or clink glasses with you in a birthday toast. I’ll be there in a couple of weeks to personally deliver belated birthday hugs… and until then, I hope these words from the heart will make up for my not being with you.

I love you, Mum. Happy birthday!

Love,

Hayley

xoxo

Mum and me, 1982

Mum and me – more recently!

Having said goodbye to my friends after brunch at a nice little cafe in town, I decided to walk home – the sun was shining, the flowers were pretty, I needed the exercise. And anyway, the brunch place is only about a 15 minute walk from my apartment – getting a taxi would be a tad on the lazy side when the weather is neither cripplingly cold nor meltingly humid.

Sadly, I had only been walking for a few minutes when I felt the ominous volcanic rumbling in my stomach. Obviously, getting home was no longer my primary objective. From that moment, my entire goal in life was simply to find a bathroom.

One of the handy things about Korea is that there are public toilets just about everywhere. Any building containing shops, bars, or other businesses generally has a toilet on every floor – you can just walk right in and find one. So I paused and looked around frantically, but my poor heart sank when I realised that the stretch of road towards my home was completely devoid of any such buildings. This never happens, so obviously it would happen to me at this precise moment of emergency.

There was no way I could make it home. In sheer desperate panic, I veered off the main road and headed down a side street, where I could see shops and buildings that could plausibly contain public toilets. The first one I went into turned out to be an apartment building, which was of no use to me. I tried the next door, and found myself in an English hagwon being stared at by a confused receptionist and a bunch of screaming children – I was much too mortified to ask if I could use the bathroom, so I quickly backed out and continued down the street.

Nothing.

I hurriedly chose another winding street and went into the first building there. Result! Oh sweet manna from heaven, there was a toilet at the top of the first staircase! I ran up the stairs, grabbed the door handle… and discovered that it was well and truly locked. As were the toilets in the next two buildings I tried. Why? WHY?!!!!

Cursing the universe and its continued hatred of me, I stood in the street turning in frantic circles before taking off at a run down another street. Finally I found a building containing some kind of fancy photography studio, and (in total despair at this point) poked my head around the door. There was the restroom! Clearly marked “private”, but it was a restroom and the chances were high that it wouldn’t be locked, if it was for the use of customers. I didn’t care about the things I wold normally care about, such as the “private” sign and the swankiness of the building and the security camera in the corridor watching my every move. I made a run for the bathroom, barely able to refrain from letting out a whoop of joy when the door opened and I saw the blissful sight of two toilet cubicles.

Of course they had to be squat toilets.

I will just say this: no matter how many times I encounter these crimes against humanity, I am firm in my belief that there is no dignified way to use them. Particularly in the throes of predicament I was experiencing. I didn’t have much time for contemplation, however, so I made the perhaps slightly bizarre decision to hurriedly remove my jeans and underwear altogether before I attempted it.

You would think, really, that that is as embarrassing and undignified as this tale could get. Hello, have you met me?! There I was, semi-naked in a grotty squat toilet cubicle, jeans and underwear draped around my shoulders due to the impossibility of setting them down on the extremely unsanitary floor, when I heard the restroom door open and a man’s voice call out in Korean. “Who are you? This bathroom is for customers only!” (or something to that effect), he was telling me. Oh, for the love of all that is holy. Deciding to play dumb and hope that he was one of those people who freak out and run away when someone tries to speak to them in English, I called back “Ummmm, I don’t understand! I’m sorry!”.

He hesitated briefly, and then yelled something I didn’t understand. Then he actually rattled the door of my stall. I repeated my babbling in English, suddenly stricken with the fear that he would climb up and look over the partition at me. Being seen in that particular position, naked from the waist down and with my jeans and underwear around my neck would surely be the most mortifying thing that has ever happened to anyone in the history of all time. With renewed panic, I struggled to my feet.

Well. If there is no dignified way to use a squat toilet, then there is absolutely, positively no dignified way of getting up from one. In my haste, I fell back against the wall and dropped my underwear on the floor next to the door, making it now clearly visible to Angry Dude on the other side. Oh, the humiliation. He fell suddenly and understandably silent as I clattered around trying to stand up and get dressed at the same time, in a very limited space with a water-filled hole in the middle of the floor.

When I finally opened the door and slunk out, my face burning with shame, he could do nothing more than simply gape at me in astonishment and confusion while I hastily washed my hands.

“Ummm…. sorry. Thank you.” I mumbled as I pushed past him and took to my heels, leaving him rooted to the spot and staring after me in amazement.

And the icing on the cake? When I paused to catch my breath on the street outside, I realised that I had absolutely no idea where I was. I couldn’t even find myself using the GPS on my phone, but as I knew I couldn’t possibly be far from home, I couldn’t hail a taxi for fear that I was about 30 seconds away and the driver would yell at me for wasting his time. All I could do was wander cluelessly for an hour around the area I’ve lived in for nearly 4 years, until, finally, by some happy accident, I recognised a building and sheepishly realised that I was right across the road from my apartment.

All in a day’s work for me, kids.

So, I go into a shop for a bottle of water. I have been walking briskly around for over an hour (having gotten completely, hopelessly lost in my own neighbourhood, which is a very embarrassing tale for a separate post) in the warmth of this pleasant afternoon in springtime.

The sun is shining brightly. My face is bright red; I may even have a touch of sunburn. I’m carrying my light jacket, having taken it off a long time ago. I’m fanning myself. I literally have beads of sweat running down my forehead. Now, this is important. I am clearly, visibly, obviously overheated. I swear to you, if you saw me, you’d remark to your companions, “Goodness! That girl looks awfully warm, doesn’t she?!”. If I were a laptop, I’d be making that whirring noise that happens when it’s been on too long and is trying to cool down.

The two women behind the counter look stricken, and say a lot of shocked-sounding things to each other before one of them can’t contain herself any longer and asks me in a genuinely disbelieving and horrified tone…

(wait for it)

(seriously, this actually happened)

(are you ready?)

… “Aren’t you cold?!”

With the exception of someone actually sitting in a sauna, sweating from every pore in their body, nobody could possibly look less cold than I do at this moment.

I am beyond trying to hide my utter stupefaction in this country any more. I just look at her in total disbelief and give the only response I know how to in Korean. “I’m hot!” I tell her in the way that one might speak to a particularly slow learner in the classroom, wiping some perspiration from my forehead for added emphasis.

Korea, you have been wonderful to me in so many ways, but I will never, ever understand you. The majority of the time, I feel like I’m living in some weird Douglas Adams style alternative version of reality, where absolutely nothing makes any sense whatsoever.

In one of my first Korea blog posts, I wrote in frustration: “I don’t get it. I. Do. Not. Get. It.”. A fellow expat in Asia commented: “Welcome to Asia. “I do not get it” will become your catch-phrase.”

How right she was!

*For further commentary on this inexplicable “aren’t you cold?!” phenomenon, please refer to this post from last year.

It was only the lack of food and water in my apartment that finally forced me out of bed to go to the shop, but the thought of showering, dressing, drying my hair, and generally making myself look presentable enough to be acceptable in the outside world just seemed like a huge, impossible amount of effort. Sod it, I thought to myself, I’ve lived in this area for years, and it’s not like I ever run into anyone I know on these quiet little back streets. I’m leaving in a few weeks – I can cope with the judgmental looks of the ajummas in the corner shop.

And so I pulled on a pair of sweatpants I normally use as pajama bottoms, and scavenged a worn Beatles t-shirt from the top of the overflowing laundry basket. It had a stain on it, but sure you could hardly see it amongst all the wrinkles and creases anyway. I scraped back my tangled hair into a ponytail and threw on a baseball cap to complete the full-blown Waynetta Slob look. Adding to the overall effect was the fact that I hadn’t even taken off last night’s make-up, but I decided to ignore the smudgy mascara around my eyes and the inevitable zit on my chin. One quick excursion, just 2 minutes down the street, and I would have supplies to sustain me to the end of my day of Utter Sloth.

I pulled on a pair of flip-flops and scurried downstairs, where I ran smack into my landlord. He looked mildly concerned, but I think he is of the “foreigners are weird creatures whose ways we shall never understand” persuasion, so after a few curious glances he decided to let me pass without comment.

I jogged to the shop and was beyond horrified to hear someone calling my name. Horror turned to complete mortification when I identified the caller as the guy I had a bit of a crush on when I first got here. Haven’t seen him since 2009, but there he was now, of course, larger than life and looking like the sort of ruggedly beautiful creature they use in commercials for Gillette razors and Lynx body spray for men. I didn’t even have my phone with me so that I could hurriedly pretend to be receiving a Very Important Call and thus avoid speaking to him. With a forced smile, I responded to his greeting, did the awkward small talk, and cringed at the thinly-disguised pity in the gaze he gave me. You could almost hear the “Wow, you really let yourself go, huh?”.

A few minutes-that-felt-like-hours later, I was in the safety of the shop. Filled my basket full of veggies for my soup, picked up some bottled water, and then, on impulse, grabbed a bag of very unhealthy potato snack things. Obviously that was the moment that three – count ‘em – THREE of my former students came in with one of their mothers, and promptly started shrieking my name, running to me for hugs, and bringing the entire shop to a standstill as everyone turned to see what all the commotion was about. The mother tried some polite chit-chat with me in Korean after I’d made a fuss over the kids (while quietly dying inside), and finished with a hesitant question in English. Are you OK? Oh, dear lord.

Finally, finally, my groceries were in bags and I was leaving the shop, hanging my head in shame by this stage and swearing never again to leave the house unless wearing a sparkly evening gown, and that’s when I met one of my ex-colleagues. For Pete’s sake. She had just finished a full day’s work and looked all sensible and healthy and grown-up and productive, and meanwhile my biggest achievement of the day was squinting at daylight with my bleary eyes framed by streaks of yesterday’s make-up. Had another awkward conversation while wishing the earth would open up and not just swallow me but preferably give me an instant makeover and spit me back out to do the last 20 minutes differently.

I was just saying goodbye to her when a car honked its horn behind me. I jumped and spun around to see my old director rolling down the window to reveal an entire carload of my former colleagues, looking as dainty and pretty and Koreanly perfect as ever. They were smiling and waving and saying hello, but I swear I saw them exchange Looks. Um, yeah, I’ll come over and see you next week, OK? I said desperately to the director, practically backing away towards my house at this point. When she drove off, I sprinted for my building and did not stop running until I was in my safe little kitchen, slamming the door shut behind me.

I have decided that the Universe hates me, and I am going back to bed.

It has been a strange afternoon, to be honest.

As my battered ankle and foot were failing to get any better, I reluctantly decided to go to the hospital for x-rays. I had been putting this off because of the following reasons:

(a) I hate hospitals. I know, I know, doesn’t everyone, but I really, really, REALLY hate hospitals. They freak me out. The weird clinic-y smell, the spaced-out people shuffling around in robes and dragging their IV bags along for the ride, the weird noises and occasionally moans of pain or cries of children, the echo-filled corridors, the general stench of sickness and fear… I hate them. HATE them.

(b) I have grown to detest and avoid pretty much everything in Korea that involves me having to communicate and explain what I need. Going to the hairdresser, buying movie tickets, visiting the dentist or doctor, buying anything at the market. Please understand that as a traveller, I once thrived upon having these sorts of experiences in new and foreign lands, and would write about them with great enjoyment and enthusiasm. Korea, however, is no longer a new and foreign land. It is a very familiar place, but one where I still cannot speak the language, and am still incapable of getting the most trivial of tasks done without a whole ridiculous pantomime, or help from a Korean friend. The total clash of cultural norms and impossibility of real communication is no longer funny or fascinating; it makes me want to tear my hair out and force feed it to the next person who asks me “Aren’t you cold?” or answers “Yes!” to questions like “Where is the bathroom?”. (In short, Hails needs to get the hell out of Dodge.)

(c) I was convinced that it was just a sprain, and I have never been one to go running to the doctor for something that will heal by itself eventually. Particularly when it’s a sprained ankle and I can barely walk, never mind go running to the doctor.

But people started to scare me with their horror at my purple foot and their urging to go to the hospital lest it fall off, so off I went, having been assured by several friends that there was most definitely an English translator person there whose entire purpose in life was to assist clueless foreigners at the hospital. Look, I swear to you, she is RIGHT THERE when you go in the door, they promised. Look to the left, and she’ll be sitting at a desk with a sign that says “foreigner”. You cannot miss her. She will even stay by your side throughout your entire visit, and go wherever you need to go, and translate for you with all the doctors and nurses. 

Thusly reassured, I limped timidly through the ER doors. I looked left and saw a wall. I looked right – just in case I had misremembered the direction – and saw another wall. I was, in fact, in more of a corridor than a big hospital reception area with desks and assistants and the like. In retrospect, I suppose it is possible that the taxi driver did not drop me off at the correct entrance, having been a little bit disgruntled since the moment I got into his cab and insisted that he take me to the capital of North Korea (Pyongyang) as opposed to the hospital (pyeongwon). These things happen. In any case, there was no friendly translator person to be seen, nor indeed any desk of any description where I might realistically ask for help. And so I limped nervously along a hospitally-smelling corridor (oh how I hate that smell!!!) until I found myself – to my great alarm – actually inside an ER ward, hobbling past beds containing horrors that I had only seen on medical TV dramas until that moment.

Finally, I saw some desks, and approached them. A surly admin man took my details, and then I was passed on to a group of giggling male med students and the Korean version of Miranda Bailey, who wanted to know everything from the details of my menstrual cycle, diet, and sex life, to the specific time (to the nearest minute) of my “accident” – all in Korean, with some mime and English words thrown in. The med students, who appeared to have an average age of about 19, asked perfunctory questions about my ankle and made me wiggle my toes. One of them experimentally poked the swollen area where the ankle bone would normally be seen. Ouchee? he asked. YeeeeeAAAAAAAAessssss! I hissed in reply, resisting the urge to kick him in the head with my good foot. All of this was while I was still sitting at a reception desk, with an old man howling “aaaaaaa eeeeeee aaaaaa eeeeeeee aaaaaaaa!” wandering around like a crazy hospital ghost and being completely ignored by all the staff.

So then they sent me to the X-ray department.

At no point did a single member of staff even pause to consider the nature of my injury in relation to my limited ability to cover great distances in short periods of time. I wanted to scream “HELLO?! Suspected broken ankle, anyone?!!!” so many times as I was led around from one department to the next by nurses who were practically running. They would pause to look back at me impatiently as I desperately hobbled along in a vain attempt to not lose sight of them. I mean, I didn’t expect to be stretchered off, but they could either have walked slowly and understandingly by my side given that I was actually there to see whether or not my fecking foot was broken, or just turfed me into a wheelchair if it was that important to go fast. The man doing the X-rays was even worse. I understand that he had to move my foot into different positions because I couldn’t understand everything he was telling me to do, but he, too, appeared completely unaware of the fact that an ankle and foot injured enough to require X-rays might actually be rather excruciatingly painful. He grabbed it on the bruises, twisted it from one side to the other, appeared not to hear the whimpers I couldn’t help emitting as he held it tightly in a position that made me think I was going to pass out, and then stood impatiently at the door as I struggled to put my shoe back on over the foot that was now infinitely more painful than it had been when I arrived.

I was taken to a ward full of patients that looked like a scene from Breaking Bad of meth addicts in a squat house. An old woman was staring blankly at the ceiling and murmuring a word over and over again under her breath. A middle-aged businessman in a suit was laughing hysterically as whatever pain medication he was on kicked in. As I was shown to my bed, a team of paramedics ran through wheeling a screaming man with (the remains of) his leg covered in huge swathes of blood-soaked material. Traumatised by this point, I meekly lay down on a bed as instructed, and the nurse pulled the curtain around me and held up a large needle. Two large needles, in fact. I just looked at her in confusion, with no idea of why she would want to stick needles into me for an injured ankle, but what can you do when you can’t speak the same language as the uniformed professional holding needles and indicating that you should pull down your pants and lay on your side? I obeyed – with some difficulty due to the fact that my ankle was now practically screaming with pain every time it touched anything – and she pulled down my underwear and cheerfully injected me with unknown drugs. Then she indicated that I was to hold the alcohol-soaked gauze on the needle puncture, and she promptly disappeared.

I lay there, on my side, feeling extremely vulnerable with my bare backside exposed to whosoever would next appear around the curtain on this delightful mystery medical conveyor belt, listening to all the groaning patients around me who now sounded more like zombies now that I couldn’t actually see them. No one told me to stop holding the gauze, so I kept holding it, even though it eventually became very uncomfortable reaching around at that angle, and then my leg went dead. Dead. It seriously occurred to me at one point that perhaps they were drugging in order to kidnap me for medical experiments, and I would never be seen again.

And that brings us to the point where I started this story, with the sexiest doctor in the history of all time (unless we count fake doctors, in which case he was the third sexiest, behind George Clooney and Patrick Dempsey) coming in to find himself face-to-arse with a confused, drugged, somewhat frightened foreign girl who was regretting the whole thing and just wanted to go home.

Ma’am, he said sweetly, your ankle is not broken bone. 

Ma’am?!!! I thought in a sort of drug-hazy horror.

There is a very bad sprain, and ligaments damaged. Possibly there is a very small fracture, too small for X-ray. But I will give you pain medication and muscle relaxants, and I advise just to rest and - he paused, looking sympathetically at me as I tried to appear even vaguely dignified in my current position.

Ma’am, he said gently, please to pull up the pants.

Never again.

And this is what it looks like a week later.

I expect it will fall off any day now.

Of course, once again I made the mistake of numbing the agony with a lot of vodka, which works wonders at the time but also leads you to think that the injury isn’t all that bad and therefore you can walk on it as normal. Cue an awful lot of pain the next morning when you wake up and realise that there is absolutely no way you should have been standing on it, let alone dancing around the bar at 3am.

Yes, it’s great being a sensible grown-up!

As I lay bedridden and helpless, unable to walk, and occasionally crawling (literally crawling) to the freezer for more ice to put on my multicolored skin, I was reminded of the first time I sprained my ankle. It was about 10 years ago, and yet the circumstances are so similar that you’d be forgiven for thinking my life hasn’t changed at all since then. Both incidents involved a bar, vodka, and me merrily trying to do something that was obviously rather stupid.

When I was at uni in Glasgow, I frequented a Student Union pub called The Barony Bar. On Fridays, immediately after lectures, we would all head there for TFI Friday – an event that can only be described as organised chaos fueled by cheap booze. The shenanigans were hosted by one DJ Phil, a stocky, cocky English guy who kept the crowd entertained with a pub quiz, cheesy music, and games. It was a very popular event, not least because of the infamous “Happy Half Hours”. For 30 minutes each Friday, pints of beer were 50p each. (Americans, I think that’s about 80 cents.) Yep. Then, for the next 30 minutes, vodka-mix drinks were 50p each. Yep.

It didn’t matter which one of these was your beverage of choice; when the first announcement was made, every single person went to the bar for their 4-beers-per-person allowance. Half an hour later, every table was groaning under the weight of hundreds of 50p beers, at which point the second announcement was made and everyone went back to the bar for their 4-vodkas-per-person allowance. I really wish I’d had a phone with a camera back in those days, because I sound like I’m exaggerating when I say that every available surface, including the floor, was covered in plastic cups of vodka and beer. It was quite a sight.

By the time all the beer and vodka had been imbibed, DJ Phil’s antics had generally reached utterly ludicrous levels of stupidity which obviously seemed completely hilarious to the crowd of drunk 20-year-olds drinking 50p alcohol. He would issue impossible, embarrassing, and/or mildly dangerous challenges with the promise of – oh, yes! – free booze for anyone who was successful. One particularly stupid day, the challenge seemed to involve (from what I could hear over the roar of the crowd) DJ Phil placing one end of a long piece of toilet paper between an unfortunate volunteer’s buttocks, giving him a pint of beer, lighting the other end of the toilet paper on fire, and shouting “DRINK!”. The idea was that if he could finish the beer before the flames reached his bare backside, DJ Phil would put out the fire and the guy would win, oh, I dunno, more beer. If not… maybe they let him burn to death, who knows?

My parents thought I was off at university, like, learning and stuff.

So the crowd was going insane, there was cheering and shouting and clapping, DJ Phil was narrating the whole ridiculous experience into the microphone, and my friends and I were stuck at the back of the bar, unable to see over the hundreds of excited, jumping, drunk people. It was at this point that I decided, in my infinite wisdom, to climb up on to a rickety wooden bar stool in order to try to catch a glimpse of whatever the hell was going on on the stage. Alas! I still couldn’t get a clear view, and I turned sadly to report this to my waiting friends. My memory of exactly what happened as I stepped off the stool is somewhat muddled, but I most certainly did not land on my feet as intended.

I picked myself up in the way that one does after an embarrassing public fall, laughing it off and insisting that I was fine, totally fine, perfectly fine, hahaha. It was only after about 15 minutes of excruciating pain, when someone pointed out that my face had turned ghostly white, that I confessed in a whimpering voice that perhaps I wasn’t really all that fine after all, and promptly burst into tears. I ended up sitting outside on the stairs, having my swollen ankle bound and strapped by a member of the student volunteer medical team, before limping back into the bar to find that my concerned friends had helpfully clubbed together to purchase a line of shots and vodka for medicinal purposes. By the end of the night I was dancing without a care in the world to the music of a really bad Elvis impersonator.

I couldn’t walk for a week after that.

I used to tell that story in a nostalgic “when I was young and foolish” kind of way, but given the current condition of my foot, I think it’s probably time to accept that this is just the way I am…

To my fright, my alarm woke me up as usual on Friday when it was barely daylight. I lay there with my standard morning hatred of the world before remembering that Thursday had been my last day at work. I switched off the alarm.

Oh, the joy!

No longer am I a slave to a 9-6 routine! After 3 and a half years of staggering around in the semi-darkness looking for a clean coffee cup and a matching pair of socks, I am able to lie in bed until I wake up naturally and then get up and do things at a leisurely pace! I think we can safely agree that morning starts are just not for me.

Mind you, nor is unemployment. I spent yesterday, in its entirety, asleep. Then I met a friend for dinner and drinks, and was back in bed by 11. I have no doubt that I could continue in this fashion until I simply run out of money or am being treated for bedsores, which is why I had the good sense and self preservation skills to get myself a part time job for my last couple of months in Korea.

Honestly, this job makes me question what on earth I have been doing for the past few years. I now work 5 hours, twice a week, from 2-7pm. Just to be clear: I am free as a bird 5 days a week, and on the 2 days I work, I start 5 hours later than I used to, yet finish only an hour later than before. Granted, the classes are back to back with none of the breaks I’ve been used to, but it’s so busy and fast-paced that my first day today just flew past. There’s no preparation – I just teach straight from the books. No cleaning. No homework or tests to mark. No stress. No paperwork. Nothing. Nothing!!!!! Go in at 2pm, teach for 5 hours, go home! Honestly, I am in teacher heaven after the exhaustion and overwork of the past few years.

My first day also reminded me how much I have changed, as a person, since I first came to Korea. I was once a very nervous, panicky, shy girl with no self-confidence and a tendency to worry myself sick about absolutely everything. I mean, literally sick, as anyone who ever saw me on driving test day(s), flight days, or job interview days could confirm.

I arrived at the hagwon today with genuinely no idea what I was meant to be doing. Hi, hi! said the principal, a non English speaker and apparently the only member of staff currently in the building. Where do I go? What do I do? I asked her in Korean, which was absolutely pointless as she then answered me in Korean and, well, I don’t  really understand Korean. We looked at each other for a moment and she gestured at me to sit. I sat. She then wandered around, going about her business as if I hadn’t appeared, except for a brief exchange when I paused from having Kakao chats on my phone just to check that she still remembered I was there. At this point – rather bizarrely – she greeted me all over again.

There was a time in my life when this would have thrown me into a confused spin, but instead I simply continued to Kakao-chat to my friends about the matter, in a sort of live-blogging manner, while I waited for something sensible to happen.

Nothing sensible happened.

I sat there for a while longer, now with children coming up to me and asking if I was their teacher, and all I could do was smile dopily and say “Uhhhhhhh, I dunno! Want some gum?”. Was I meant to be teaching them? Was I meant to be preparing a lesson? Was I meant to be there at all? Who knew? So I just sat and waited for something sensible to happen.

Nothing sensible happened

Instead, an English-speaker arrived in a whirlwind of chaos, threw a book at me, and shoved me into a classroom full of children.

No, seriously.

That is actually what happened.

Hello, Hayley? Hi! Here is book! This room. 30 minutes. Now start, please! :::door slams shut:::

Old Hayley would have freaked the hell out at this point. Today’s Hayley has seen it all and only gets flustered at really big problems (like the bar running out of vodka, or finding a cockroach in the bathroom). A dozen pairs of eyes stared up at me; a dozen voices whispered and giggled and speculated. You just have to remember that the worst thing that can happen is you abandon the lesson to play a game of hangman. That is as far wrong as it can go, seriously. Why worry? Why be scared? Why was I always so nervous and panicky before? What was I actually afraid would happen? I’d be mobbed and have my flesh torn off my bones by a gang of bloodthirsty 11-year-old Korean kids?

I made a big game of introducing ourselves while I surreptitiously inspected one of their books to ascertain where the last teacher had stopped, repeated all their names in a jovial voice as I skim-read a couple of pages to see the topic and get the general gist of the lesson, and then just started teaching. If they looked bored, I told a joke or did a silly dance or turned the book exercise into a game. 30 minutes (just 30!) flew past, and everyone survived. Easy! A 10-year-old could do this job, I swear.

Out of nothing more than mild curiosity, I moseyed back into the office to find out what I was meant to do next, and was this time given a slightly overwhelming stack of books and a list of confusing and garbled instructions about exactly which parts of each books I was to teach, and to which classes, and by when. After all this time of dealing with hagwon colleagues, I know exactly how to cope. Ask very specific questions, preferably paraphrased at least twice for clarity. Point and mime a lot. Write everything down and ask for confirmation. When time is limited, focus only on the most important details and wing it on the rest until a later date. And most importantly, if you remember only one thing from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Teaching in Korea (or something): DON’T PANIC.

Yes, my time in Korea has done something amazing for me. It has turned me from the world’s biggest worrier into someone who is not only laid-back, but perhaps even actually goes with the flow and is (finally!) able to calmly assess the situation and deal with it the best that I can. Without tears. With a smile. Usually trying not to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.

Thanks, Korea! This can only serve me well in my future endeavours.

After nearly 4 years, this is still the extent of my understanding when she speaks. Fail.

It was lunch time, and for the third day this week we were eating one of my favourite meals. This is partly because kindergarten is finished and there are no children, and we’re always treated to lunches of near banquet proportions when there are only a handful of teachers and not a hundred kids to feed. However, it is also partly because this is my final week, and the cooking lady is either trying to tell me she loves me through food, or ensure that I eat enough to keep me going for weeks after I leave the school.

So, for three days in a row we had a sort of countdown of Hayley’s Favourite Korean Foods, and yesterday’s was the best meal we’ve ever had at school. Dakdoritang/Dakbokkeumtang, the spicy chicken stew I raved about in a previous post and even took back ingredients to cook it for my family during a visit home.

Everyone was very happy. We gathered around the table and ate until we could eat no more and then we ate some more.

Aw, I will miss that kiddy-sized table with the far-too-small chairs and all the teachers crowded around slurping their soup and smacking their lips in that disturbing Korean way. I will miss the gorgeous soups and stews and the freshly made kimchi and the delicious meats and sauces and noodles.

But more than all that, I will miss the cooking lady, known to me only as Ajumma.

Hayley Teacher blahblahblahblah-yeyo, she said, as I mentioned earlier. She was watching me with an odd expression on her face – her usual delight at watching me enjoy one of the meals she knows I love, but also sadness, presumably about the fact that no other teacher will ever eat as much as I do, and with such evident pleasure.

I looked at my director for translation, as usual. She says she is very sad that you are leaving, and she wants you to remember her food. I grinned happily at them as I scooped more stew on to my spoon. I will always remember her food! I assured them, mumbling through a mouthful of chicken.

Something else was said, and my director looked sort of emotional. She says that tomorrow is a very sad day because it is her last time to cook for you. She wants you to tell her what you want for your last lunch, and she will make it. 

I looked at the kind, motherly face with the gentle smile that I have grown so fond of over the years, and had another pang of “I can’t do this!”. Yukgaejang, I choked out, trying to pretend the tears in my eyes were a result of the spiciness of the stew. There was some discussion; people looked dissatisfied. Are you sure? they asked me. You can have anything, anything! Yukgaejang is not very special. It is very simple. 

This is true. I have yukgaejang all the time in diners and train station restaurants. It’s my favourite soup. It’s cheap and basic. But no one, no one, not even the fanciest restaurant I’ve eaten it in, makes it half as well as the cooking lady. She has magical yukgaejang powers. Her yukgaejang is my absolute, top, number one, favourite food from my Korean experience. It is a drug to me. If you read this old post, you will perhaps begin to understand the extent of my feelings for the cooking lady’s yukgaejang.

I explained this to the disappointed colleagues who were clearly hoping for a feast of barbecued meats and the like. I want yukgaejang, I said obstinately.

I came downstairs today to find the table laden with steaming bowls of heaven, and the cooking lady looking anxiously at me to see if I noticed.

She got the biggest hug any school cook has ever received from a teacher.

I, in return, ate yukgaejang until it physically hurt me to eat any more, and I had to turn away the latest in the steady stream of newly filled bowls that kept appearing in front of me. It’s all over, I declared sadly, looking around the lunch table for the last time.

Goodbye, sweet cooking lady. Thank you for being my Mum Away From Home.  Sarangheyo - very, very much. So long, and thanks for all the soup.

We can’t even have a conversation in the same language… but we love each other, all the same!