Yellow dust over Spring

I'm sorry for the lack of posting, dear readers. It's been on heck of a few days since I last had a chance to write.

As some of you know, the new school semester is well underway, here, in Seoul. And with the start of a new school year comes a new schedule and different responsibilities. I happened to fall into both these categories, with a packed schedule, after-school classes and responsibilities that include creating speaking tests for every child at my school. Needless to say, I spend every moment outside of teaching, either nose-high in lesson plans, or banking in sleep hours. Would you believe me if I told you I've been falling asleep no later than 10 p.m. everyday?

Last Saturday was a first for me. Already feeling quite under the weather, I decided to spend the weekend in my neighbourhood, with hopes of getting ahead on some lesson planning. S came over for breakfast and we both agreed that the day, being dull enough with promises of rain, would be better spent indoors. We decided to go across the street from my apartment, to our usual hairstylist, hoping that a cut, wash and color would brighten our moods on yet another bleak weekend.

Later on that afternoon, back in my apartment, we looked outside to see a sky lit up in shades of yellow and pink tones.

"It looks kind of cool, doesn't it?" S said. "It's almost got a pinkish hue to it."

It did. I thought it was pretty as well, because everything seemed brighter. And after having had bad weather for the past few days, this almost seemed refreshing.

Little did we realize that the yellow hue was actually the infamous yellow dust that had blown into Seoul from Northern China.

We'd been warned about this in our earlier months in Korea. We were told that once springtime came about, we'd be hit with bouts of this yellow dust, which was guaranteed to make us ill and catalyze any underlying allergies or colds we were already carrying around.

However, with the weather still feeling like winter that day, we didn't think of this and continued to admire the sky by sticking our heads out the window.

Yellow dust (or sand) over Seoul on Saturday, March 20, 2010

Waking up the next morning with a sore throat, swollen throat glands and a pounding headache was all the reality check we needed of what had happened to us. That, and the link posted on Facebook by J, noting that this was the worst yellow dust storm Seoul had seen in recent years.

Great.

Flash forward to today: Me, lying in bed, trying to cough up a lung, soup, Tiger Balm and Tylenol on hand, with BBC's Pride and Prejudice as entertainment.

My bad.

So, it turns out the weather is playing a bigger role in affecting my moods and health, here, in Korea, than it ever did while I lived in Canada. It can't be helped -- one day we're battling hazardous dust storms from China, and the next we're dealing with hail and ice storms on what promised to be a 'sunny' day.

My only hope now is that Spring rears its head just in time for Easter. I can't imagine battling a snowstorm on Easter!

xo
SC

Image courtesy of Yonhap News Agency (Google Images)