Penny, Pals, and Pepperoni Pizza

By 2:00 today, my left foot and ankle had ballooned into a painful and nearly unrecognizable mass. I hadn't realized how bad it had gotten until I noticed that I had been hobbling around my classroom in quite a bit more pain than normal. Finally, as if it were an afterthought, I glanced down at my foot. I think the look on my face must have been somewhat horrified. One glance south-ward and I could feel despair looming large on the horizon. It had been almost a week since my leg became dogfood, yet somehow I felt the past 6 days had really aged me.

I try to take things with an open mind and accepting spirit, but by this afternoon, I was DONE with the dog bite from hell. I was done with the limping and done with the doctor's visits and done with the iodine stains peeking out from underneath my bandages. My leg hadn't been shaved since.... I couldn't even remember when, and I had just plain run out of smile to paint across my face.

I wanted to be free to hike the hilltops and ride my bike to the grocery store and just... be normal again. It was, then, absolute medicine for my soul to meet up with with Penny, Francois, and Chetty tonight after the workday -- and workweek (hooray!!) -- had ended. This was it, one final round of pizza and beer at our favorite Friday night hangout before Penny left Korea for good. I arrived in it-might-kill-me-to-be-happy spirits but not ten minutes passed by, I think, before I had all but forgotten the worst of my troubles. Good friends will do that, and a few bites of thin-crusted, mozzarella-laden pepperoni pizza don't hurt either!

As Penny handed me a sweetly framed photo of the two of us, yet another parting gift from this little lady with a big heart, I felt my own heart sink a bit with sadness at our pending farewell. In literally three weeks time, I have grown quite attached to this sweetheart of a girl from Down Under. It seems like surely we've been friends for months, so easy and enjoyable has our time together been. I've stopped by her and Francois' place often on my evening walks home from work, and have ended up staying for hours, chatting over slices of perfectly chilled melon and nectarines. We roamed the boardwalk and side streets of Daecheon Beach together in our mud-splattered bathing suits, hiccuping all the way, and climbed the hills of Seosan, which was a perfectly beautiful hike right up until Penny's four-legged friend deciding to give me a laceration or two. And she's been my angel these past days as I've begun, as she says, my "week of healing."

The cuddly little blue teddy bear she brought by Thursday night sits on my nightstand now, a sweet reminder that however far I roam, the genuine caring of good friends can make any foreign place feel just like home. A few laughter-filled hours later, my spirits are high, my tummy is full, and my head is ready to hit the pillow. Good night, world!