weeble-wobble

The difference between me and a weeble-wobble?

Weebol-wobbles don't fall down.

I went out for a run today to explore an area of sidewalk with the rubberized running surface I found last weekend, and about 10 yards from the beginning of the good path, I tripped over the end of a pipe that was sticking out of the road, as if it had been a support of some sort embedded in the in the asphalt. I totally wiped out, skinning my knee, taking a layer of skin off the palms of my hands, and getting a couple little scrapes on my elbow. Basically, I look like a 7 year-old who fell off her bike.

Jeju

Me looking so dork-tastically happy that I finished my first 10k in Jeju.


Tomorrow I leave for Jeju for what I think is the last group race for our little running club. Monique leaves in a few weeks to go back to Canada, Carol has already gone home, and my contract is over in less than three months. Sloane and I may try to find a race before it gets too hot to be dealt with or the rains set in solidly, but it isn't looking all that great. So I'm looking at this as our last race together.

Presents!!

My new co-teacher is going to be such an awesome teacher, and is really really nice.

There are some miscommunications given her grasp of the content area she has been assigned to teach. But she is super-helpful as far as she can be, and just bought me the greatest little present ever!

I have been meaning to get one of the name-stamps that are sometimes considered more official than a signature here (you have to use red ink for it to be valid). I hadn't mentioned it to her, but she saw one on-line for a very good price and thought I would appreciate it and got one for me! Also, totally by coincidence (she told me later), the wood carving on the out side is of a crane. My school this year is 삼학, which translates to "three cranes" elementary school. I liked the symbolism. I know this probably cost a LOT less than the donuts she brings in for the other 6th grade teachers, and it means so much more!!

Ultimate

This weekend, a friend organized an ultimate frisbee hat tournament in Mokpo.

Let me back up a second - in Ultimate Frisbee, there are all kinds of games, from pick-up (what we play - a group of folks gather, divide up into equally matched teams, and play for a few hours fairly casually) leagues (what it sounds like - set teams that play for a given length of time) tournaments (like the one I went to in Jeju a few weeks ago) and Hat tournaments, where people register, state their ability level, and then teams are drawn up that are hopefully pretty equally matched. Sort of like drawing names out of a hat (hence the name), but the goal is to make sure that there is a balanced number of experienced players, new-ish players, and beginners.

For this tournament, there were a bunch of us from Mokpo, a fairly big group of people from Seoul, some folks from Busan, and then a handful of others from all around. About 45-50 players made it out on Saturday (a handful less were able to make both days - a few people fell victim to the Saturday night party), and it was a great time, both in terms of learning a lot in a short amount of time, and in getting to hang out with some neat people.

I also feel lucky that there are so many really cool, mellow folks in Mokpo. This weekend introduced me to some folks who approach games a little more... intensely, for lack of a better word... than I'm comfortable with, and I appreciate the vibe of the people who play here have even more. One of the things I've learned from this new-found interest in athleticism is that it is great to be competitive, awesome to see improvement, and fun to win, but at the end of the day, you are really good at throwing a frisbee. Or climbing a rock. Or running for a long time. Or lifting heavy things and putting them back down again. All of these things are great, but in terms of degree of importance? Maybe notsomuch. If you aren't having a good time, aren't making friends, aren't having fun, what's the freaking point? Granted, I'm the girl who was picked last in gym class, so my humble opinion should probably be taken with a very large grain of salt.

The abandoned school and maping programs

(this is mostly for the Mokpo folks)

Most Sundays a group of folks gets together around 2 to play Ultimate Frisbee. Lot's of fun, but it can be a little hard to find the abandoned school where we play.
here is a link to a Google maps-like map of the area.

For taxis, you can say "Yudal Oo-che-gook" (that's a phonetic, not transliteration spelling), which is the closest landmark, then tell the driver to go up the hill, turn right, then turn left. Or you can be daring and say "Gu Mokpo Jeil Yoja Godung Hakyo" - old Mokpo Girls High School. I usually mention "yudal oochegook" just to make sure that I don't end up in Hadang at the current girls high school, and still the drivers often try to take me to the middle school down the road. If you don't go up a hill into a small neighborhood and end up at an obviously abandoned school, you are at the wrong place. Emphasize the "Gu" part of the location.

Once there, walk around the building to the right, go up a set of steps, and you are at the field. If you are on a bike (motor or pedal), you can go to the left and go up the ramp to the field.

Also, the link above is to a mapping site where you can plot courses for walking, running, or giving directions. One that I like even more (and which JUST upgraded so I can see Korea - use hybrid view) is Map My Run. The main benefit to the Map My Run program is that it has an out/back feature for plotting routes, and you can click and drag the map around more easily.

Boseong

Last weekend was a 10k race (for me and Sloane) and a 5k for Carol, Vanessa and HangBin (and Vanessa's first 5k race!) in Boseong, a small town on the east side of Jeollanamdo. Boseong produces about 40% of the green tea consumed in Korea, which is a heck of a lot of green tea. The small town's other claims to fame are its proximity to Jirisan (the Jiri Mountains), Daewonsa (Daewon temple), that it is Hangbin's hometown, and that it is where Vanessa spent her first two years in Korea.

Sloane and I left Mokpo on Saturday afternoon to make it to town, grab a hotel room, and then to go see the tea fields.


We then ate green tea ice cream and went to meet Vanessa for dinner in town. Carol was coming down with an evil cold, so didn't come over until the morning of the race. But how rock-star of her is it that she still ran!?

The next day, we did the race. It wasn't my best run and I felt tired through the whole thing - not sure what was going on. The race DID have more hills than I'm used to running, but I don't think they were as bad as I thought they were. It felt like most of the first half was downhill and I kept dreading the second half of the race. At the end of the day, it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be and while I was faster than my training times, I'm pretty sure it will be my slowest 10k to date.
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After the race, we went to the Green Tea Spa just outside Boseong, where I had my first scrub. Basically I paid a burley Korean woman to scrub about five layers of my skin off, and it was kind of awesome.

That night, we stayed at a cottage owned by Hangbin's family near Daewonsa.
HangBin picking lettuce from the garden for samgyupsal: . The air was clean, there were almost no people around, and it was great to be able to hang out with good friends.

Monday was Buddha's Birthday and we went to Daewonsa for the celebrations. Daewonsa is one of the temples I like the most here, so it was really nice to be able to go there for the celebration.

It got a little crazy at one point with some photographs turning all paparazzi on us. Imagine this, but aimed at us instead of the performers, and (I think) more photographers:


Yes, we stand out. I get it. But instead of taking a snapshot and moving on, there were many people pointing these high-powered cameras at us. We tried to ignore them, but every time we looked back there were more! Finally, HangBin told them to leave us alone (in Korean), and they at least moved back.

The only downer about this weekend is that it was Carol's last race with us. Monday she heads back to Canada for a few months before starting as a teacher in Kuwait! Without putting too fine a point on it, these races have been a really important part of my time in Korea, and it has been so exciting and inspirational to run with this awesome group of people. Carol, you will be missed.

The next race is June 1st, in Jeju. It will be the anniversary of my first 10k race! I can't believe that it was almost a year ago!! Yikes.

Ultimate Frisbee

About a month ago, a group of about 15 of us went to Jeju for the 4th International Jeju Ultimate Frisbee tournament. We formed two teams - 18 Puppies (my team), which is a play on the translation of some pretty foul Korean words, and Snatch, which refers to grabbing a frisbee intended for someone else. And, er, I'm TOTALLY sure that is what they meant with the name, and there weren't any alternative meanings of the word implied, and there were no jokes made AT ALL. Just like there were no alternative meanings to the team named Rooster Candy. If you need that spelled out, send me an email.

We didn't have enough people for two full teams from Mokpo, but we had too many people for one big team, so we divided and pulled in some players who registered as individuals (instead of as a team) and we TOTALLY lucked out with the quality of the people we picked up for our team. Basically, while the people on our team were reasonably athletic (and, as an aside, I'm still sort of shocked that I get to count myself in the "reasonably athletic" category, albeit the slightly-slow-and-lacking-in-hand-eye-coordination part of that category) our frisbee-handling skills, well... Let's say there was a pretty good reason we were playing in "C" division. The two people we picked up were awesome, and they taught us a lot and, in all honesty, really sort of carried us. I mean, we were there to have fun and would have been competitive in our division, but let's just say (as someone on another team pointed out) we didn't have many people in cleats on the field. The fact that it was windy as all get-out actually worked to our benefit, as we were able to run a reasonably effective defense while our ringers new teammates had enough experience to work with the weather conditions. We were advanced to the "B" division for the second day of the tournament. Where we got spanked by the team that got knocked out of the "A" division.



Part of 18 puppies (including one the people we picked up - the one second from the left)


The whole team


Rich making our super-fancy tee-shirts


There were teams from all over Asia, including multiple teams from China, an all-women's team from Japan who were AWESOME (well, almost all women, as they had one guy because this was a co-ed tournament, but he didn't see a lot of field time), Thailand, the Philippians, Taiwan, as well as a bunch of teams from Korea and some other places I think I'm missing. Also, Jeju is just flat-out awesome. It is almost like taking a break from being in Korea.

Next weekend is a "hat" tournament here in Mokpo, where everyone enters as an individual, says what their experience level is, and then teams are drawn up. It will be interesting to see how many people make it down (or up, in the case of the Jeju players) and should be a pretty awesome time.

Bloodletting

A few months ago, I twisted my ankle pretty severely. Overall, its been doing better, but if I do too much it hurts a lot still. So, since I have had next to no classes this week and needed to get out of school before I went stir crazy, I went to the traditional medicine clinic this afternoon. I really thought about bringing my camera with me, but decided that was too much, even for me.

After a conversation that was mostly in Korean (of which I understood maybe about 20%) and a few questions in a mix of broken Korean and broken English, the doctor drew a couple marks on my ankle and told me I would be treated with cupping, acupuncture, and physical therapy. Since he didn't mention being injected with bee venom (which some friends have had there, and they said it hurt like all get out), I was good to go.

First, they put suction cups on my ankle for less than a minute. They took some sort of pricking tool and basically stabbed the site a few times (it felt bigger than a tattoo needle, but wasn't TOO bad) and put the suction cups back on, drawing out blood. (I wasn't exaggerating about the bloodletting in the title) I'm not sure how long they left the cups on - maybe 5-10 minutes or so.

After, the doctor came in to place the acupuncture needles. The only one that sort of hurt was the one he put on the side of my big toe. These he left in for 20 minutes with a heat lamp aimed at the ones on my ankle. I'm not sure why, but when he took out a couple of the needles they stung, whereas others were basically painless. Anyway.

Next, the assistant came and strapped a couple of what looked not-unlike crash cart paddles that were hooked it up to a machine on my ankle. Basically I was given a massage with electric shocks. Bizarre, but not bad.

The doctor wrapped my ankle with something that looks sort of like an ace bandage with adhesive on the back. They finished by taking me upstairs and letting me hang out in the massage chair for while. Only it was sort of the Cadillac of massage chairs, and it was awesome.

Total cost was less than $5.

Right now, my ankle actually feels a lot better - to the point where I'll for sure go again to get my knees and both ankles looked at in the near future, even if it is just placebo effect. Also, I asked about preventative migraine treatment, but he didn't seem to quite understand what I was saying. If nothing else, I will probably try to get acupuncture before taking the heavy-duty migraine drugs the next time I get a headache.

t-shirts and teaching

I tried to explain to the cute young guy who works in the vice-principal's office why his "I love my hooker" t-shirt both shocked me and made me laugh, but I wasn't able to explain it in either Korean or English ("hooker" wasn't on long list of occupations I was supposed to memorize at Ewha - THAT I probably would have remembered) and I just wasn't willing to use interpretive dance for that one.

Also, I like the younger kids, but the novelty wears off pretty quickly. They cry. They cry when they get answers wrong, they cry when they get answers right and someone makes fun of them for it, they cry when you move them because they made someone cry. I think part of it is because it is a special day for them, so there is just a lot more excitement about coming to my class. Or, you know, they just tend to cry.

One of the things that is really great is that even though my newest co-teacher speaks next to no English at all, she really will be an awesome teacher once she gets her own full-time classroom. She engages the kids who have trouble keeping up and the kids with special needs, she adds a lot of ideas to the textbook boring-ness, she is great with the cry-ers, and she has no problem coming down like stack of bricks on the 6th graders when they are being annoying. SHE GAVE A DIAGNOSTIC. Awesome.

Well, at least there's that...

I got my wallet back today, less the money that was in it. It still just makes me so freaking angry, but at least I don't have to deal with getting a new alien registration card.

I also got out of playing volleyball for the school. I don't know if I've explained this, but there is a big thing about playing volleyball every Wednesday - "teachers' sports day" - and there is also the city-wide tournament. I was supposed to play hitter/blocker for my school's team, but with the problematic ankle and my lack of desire to stay after school to practice, I had been avoiding it. I went down yesterday and told the person who organizes everything (who is also my co-teacher from last year) that if there was a Korean teacher who wanted to play, I didn't want to take her place. All of this stuff somehow is related to status in the school and in the eyes of the principal/other teachers, so I'm opting out. (I'm pretty sure she knew, as she had plugged someone into the position already...)