Stuck in the middle outside

Wow. A lot can change in a week. I finally have time and energy to sit down and write (well, not as much as I'd like, but enough that I can respond to the outcry at over a week between posts). Reading last week's post makes me feel as though I'm on a different planet now, but I suppose that's how adjustment goes. I feel like I've been here loads longer, and really I have. I've gotten through homesickness and real sickness. I got strep last week, and now have developed some sort of cold. Here's hoping it's not going to continue getting worse, as I have to wake up at 5 AM tomorrow to get on a plane for Japan. If it's not better when I get back on Thursday, we're going to go to the doctor.
Tomorrow should prove an interesting day, as it will involve first getting a taxi at 5 AM, second getting to a bus station I've never been to, third getting a ticket from a guy on the street for the bus to the airport (this is one of the less certain parts of the trip), and then picking up the ticket at the airport (not sure how that's going to work either).
I'm sure all of this sounds incredibly rudimentary to all of you, but it's the idea of a timetable that frightens me. Throughout all of my adventures in Korea, the only thing I've had to do "on time" is get to work. These next few days are going to be pretty intense, because it's coping with a foreign culture on my own and on a timetable.
After all of the above is accomplished, the real fun starts. At that point, I'm actually going to a new country where they speak even less English to find the consulate for a country that is not my own. It will be the first time that I'm almost acting as a Korean, mostly because I will not be interacting with the US at any point on the trip. I'll drop my passport off at the korean consulate fairly early and then have to find a hotel, dinner, and whatever else I need to survive for the 24 hours that I'm there. We'll see how it goes. I'm sure it won't be too terrible.
Ok... now that we've covered the future... on with the past. This past week I've met a ton of new people, and had a lot of fun. I took my first ride on a motorcycle, which is kinda scary here because anything paved is pretty much a road. I explored even more neighborhoods. Saturday, I met a really cool guy named Jakub from Poland, and he was moving to London on Sunday, so he left me his cell phone. I tried to get it activated yesterday, but Sunday is a "day off" here, so I won't be able to get it done until after I get back from Fukuoka on Wednesday afternoon. Otherwise, I'll have to find a place around school to get it taken care of. Meeting more and more people, the cell phone is getting more necessary, and since rates are so cheap here, it's pretty great. I think it's $20 to set up and I have to put on at least $10 a month to keep the number active.
Last week I fell into a bit of a funk for some reason. It might've been fighting off strep and it might've been anything. I was wondering whether I'd taken the right job and wondering whether I should skip out on my contract and try to find something a little more satisfying before I went out of town to get my visa.
I think the worst part of my funks here has been that I haven't had the words to describe any of it. Everything is both between and outside of everything I've ever known as emotion. It's delicate to describe, but my loneliness is somehow a combination of wanting people near and wanting no one around at all. My excitement is both empty and chock full of meaning. I love the kids here, but at times feel as though I'm beating my head against a brick wall. Really it's probably that I haven't processed much of this so far, and it's finally coming through the filters.
The nice thing is that I'm reading Camus' The Plague, which describes a lot of my sentiments quite accurately. As the town deals with the plague outbreak, there are distinct phases. I'm currently getting through that first phase where I still believe that this is all temporary. Whether I mentally know I'm looking at a year here, my body still hasn't internalized it. It's still going through the first stages, seeing life as merely surviving until tomorrow and survival rather than planting roots and settling in.
I'm hoping some of what I've just written actually translates across the ocean, and should cap all of this off by saying that if I weren't sick right now, this would all be loads peppier. Really, I want my cold to go away. I also wouldn't mind getting to sleep at about 8 tonight. We'll see how it goes.