Burned my hand... and visited a Korean family!

Ouch, ouch, ouch....

As some of you have already seen on facebook, I burned my hands on Wednesday. Sigh... it was so stupid. I had a teaching orientation to go to that morning and woke up early. I decided to fix myself some breakfast, so I put the kettle on, started boiling an egg, and went to wash up. After the water was boiled, I grabbed a glass to pour the hot water in. Yes, a glass. The heat shot right into my hands in a matter of a second and the glass began to expand and crack in my hands. Panicking, I threw the glass of hot water onto the ground (which was followed by a loud crash as the glass came into contact with the tile floors) and rinsed my hand under cold water. As I looked around, thinking of what a mess I've caused, the pain in my hand increased more and more.... until I realized I've burned my three fingers and palm rather badly.... As I continued running water through my hands, I can't help but notice that the pain was just getting worst... Finally, I woke Ansy up, and she put some gel for burns on my hand and we decided to walk over to our workplace to find my boss for help.

To make a long story short, I went to the doctor's and was diagnosed with a second-degree scalding from hot water.... there's a huge blister on my ring finger which gets bigger and bigger everyday... sigh...

After going to the doctors, I was stubborn and decided to go to the orientation anyways.... 20 minutes bike ride.... found out that I could bike with one hand =P
The hand doesn't hurt as much, but I have to keep it clean because it can be infected very easily.... sigh. Stupid me....


Visiting a Korean missionary family

On another note, I visited a Korean missionary family yesterday! I've been acquainted with them through Luke, the Korean-American OMF Partner. That was really cool..... Their eldest daughter, Monica, is my age... so i've been helping her out with English. Monica has two younger brothers, Wesley and Jason. This family is really cool.... the dad got the calling to be a missionary in his 20s, but God didn't call him to go until his children were in their teen years. So it was really hard for the kids.... they went to an all-Chinese Christian boarding school as a result... and it messed up their school system. Although Monica is my age, she's only a freshman in college.

As soon as I arrived at their apartment, the missionary couple saw my hand and wanted me to unwrap the bandages for them to see. They told me that they usually treat burns at home, and decided to pop the blister for me!!! Ahhh... it actually didn't hurt... and their "home remedy" was quite interesting: They took a thorn from a plant to poke the blister with, then wrapped the burned areas with aloe. Then, the mom chopped up a raw potato and wrapped my whole hand in the potato bits and tied the whole package with a handkerchief. The wouldn't let me take it off until 3 hours after!!! Haha... according to them, the aloe and potatoes will cool off my hands... and I believe it did work =)

After going through some English readings with Monica, the family invited me to stay for dinner. It just so happened that another young Korean missionary family was coming over for dinner that day... and it was really neat, because they would be speaking in Korean while I spoke English with the kids. And Chinese was the common language among al of us hahaha.... But yes, bless those Korean missionaries! It's not easy for them to be in another country...

The dinner was awesome.... and Monica took me to the Love River afterward, where we hung out and talked....


Update on Ian Ullstrom
For some of you that don't remember, Ian Ullstrom is David's Ullstrom's son (David's the missionary who runs this OMF Partner Program). Ian was diagnosed with cancer last August and was immediately put into chemo. By December, things looked good, but the cancer came back in January. So the next thing the doctors can do is to do this extra high dose of chemo that would literally kill the patient. To do that, the doctors must harvest stem cells first, so they can put it back into the patient's body and have the patient make their own blood again after the chemo treatment.

From January to now, Ian's body has been really weak, so they still don't have enough stem cells harvested. Things are not looking good... and last week, Ian had a CT scan and found that the cancer came back. After another 5-day chemo treatment, he's back home with his family now.... but pray for Ian, that they can really harvest the needed stem cells. Pray for peace and comfort for him and his family as they go through this tough battle.