Kimchi, not for me

And to think, all this time I thought it was a weird Koreanism (my word for Korean myth). They told me that in the spring "yellow dust" from China blows into Korea, and that it's all very unsafe. I was like, "Riiiight." Well, yesterday, I nearly broke my one cardinal Korean rule: I will never buy and/or wear a face mask. I didn't actually break down and buy or wear a face mask, but oh geez, I wish I had. This above picture can be found here, and a news story about the phenomenon can be found in English here.

Well I was outside...enough yesterday, for it to have an impact on me. Not to mention I already needed to refill my asthma medication, but as there are FEW asthma sufferers here, I went to five pharmacies before I found one with it, at the very end of the day. I got more and more grumpy as the day went on, I learned only at the end of the day because my airways were getting worse and worse. I assumed it was just bad lungs and Seoul air. And then...

This morning I woke up feeling rather icky. I was stuffed up, and my eyes in particular were feeling rough. They were all leaky and runny, and yet felt like they were completely full of liquid. I got up, and said something to my roommate who was in the living room about how it looked like her neck hurt. When I walked into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, I genuinely startled myself. I exclaimed something, and said, "What in the world happened to my eyes?!" I walked out to show my roommate, and she exclaimed something as well...and it's never a good sign when someone else freaks out too, you know? My eyelids were swollen to about two times their normal size, and I could barely keep my eyes open. Under my eyes was swollen as well. It was weird, and not anywhere near pleasant. Ends up people with respiratory problems aren't supposed to go out when the dust is so bad. Wish I'd have gotten that memo. So today is not good. But I didn't go out much today (though the dust isn't bad at all today).

The stuff comes from deserts in China, particulary the Gobi desert. It's sand storms and such, going over the disgustingly polluted areas of China before reaching us here in sunny and oh-so already polluted Seoul. Last year there was some dust, but I just assumed it was a kind of heavy pollen. Yesterday...one poster in the Korean forums of Dave's ESL cafe (a website and forum I frequent) called it pea soup, which is a very appropriate comparison. I felt dirty and sick when I finally got home last night. Eww. And that above picture was taken in daytime. That's not dusk, it's dust.