Its been an interesting day.

After rolling around all night, trying everything I could to alleviate the sharp, stabbing pain in my stomach (I rolled to the left, to the right, stood up, sat down, lied down, ran around, took assorted vitamins and painkillers, drank water, drank vinegar, drank juice, ate honey, and did everything else wikipedia told me to do), around 4:30 AM I decided that I couldn't TAKE IT anymore.

So after a series of dead-end phone calls, Hil came over and we trekked to the nearest hospital.

Now, I've got my game face on here. I'm not one to admit I'm in more pain than I can handle. BUT. This was bad.

So off to Boramae Hospital we went, and found ourselves in the Emergency Room, amongst several other sick-looking people. Hil was a trooper and stayed with me until she had to leave to go to work. It took two of us to figure out what they wanted me to do (remember: I'm in Korea) because most of the staff spoke little or no English. The head doctor (who looked like he was a little kid wearing his dad's scrubs and spoke with the cutest lisp) spoke enough English as to where I could answer his questions and follow his commands.

After a gamut of tests, I was informed that I have what's known as a "gastric ulcer", or a weakness in the lining of the stomach. This can be cause by bacteria or an overuse of anti-inflammatory drugs, and can be aggravated by high-caffeine intake (yep), a high-stress lifestyle (uh huh) and a history of being awesome (you know it).

I may have made that last thing up. But in my case, you can clearly see a correlation.

Some things I noted about Korean hospitals:
- There is apparently no "patient-privacy" law - everybody was into everybody's business
- There are "usher-like" gentlemen wearing suits to follow you around and carry your things
- There is always an ajumma mopping the floors, which on one hand is very sanitary and smart, but on the other hand creates infinite opportunities to cause other emergencies due to unusually wet floors.

I am feeling slightly better now, but I have lost all desire to ever eat anything again.

Gonna get some rest, gotta teach tomorrow...grrrr...