Crazy Shenanigans; IM CHINA; Adventurous Weekend

I think Thursday was one of the first relatively boring days I have had here. We were supposed ot have our fall picnic day at Allak, which was supposed to consist of us going to Haeundae to ...look around? Yea, I think look around and not have class were the objectives of that trip. Sounds good to me! But it was raining...so we didn't go :( So I did nothing. And I legitimately almost succeeded in accomplishing nothing. I think I made some revisions on my syllabus for the teacher's class on Friday, and maybe attempted to study Korean, but that hasn't been working - I need a library, or better yet, a better textbook. But enough complaining. I did catch some sweet sleep Thursday night though, much needed. So it was productive in some sense.

Friday was actually a fantastic day. I gave speaking tests for 4 periods, which was nice because I got to talk to all of the kids individually, which I haven't yet done at Allak. I get to continue this on Monday because we have the rest of the 6th graders on Monday, so that will be fun. The speaking tests were in my room, which is adjacent to the room in which I teach the 6th graders (my co-teacher's room). So two kids would come in my room, one would have a speaking test for lesson 11 with my co-teacher, and another would have a test with me on chapter 9. The rest of the students were in the other room "doing worksheets". In addition to this being a very fun (yet tiring) day, I also discovered that I feel much more powerful in my room than in my co-teachers' rooms (which makes sense). Sometimes there would like maybe 6 kids in the room (when there wasn't supposed to be but I didn't say anything unless they were being obnoxious), and at times some of the kids were pushing each other and hitting each other, and I FREAKED OUT. Well, not really, but I stopped giving my test, looked over with a stone-cold glare, and yelled "HEY - NO" really loudly in an I-mean-business voice. If they didn't listen I got up and started to walk over in my I-mean-business walk, and they scattered out. If they didn't stop I kicked them out. But it was weird - in the other classes, I don't feel quite comfortable doing that. I'm sure its because I am teaching in another teacher's room, and while I am co teaching with them, they have certain rules which they have enforced for a while before I got there, and also things happen which they allow that I might not think are appropriate. So I try to stay out of things in their rooms. But when it was my room, I felt infused with the power and not at all afraid to use it. I would feel 100% completely comfortable picking up a child and placing him or her in the hallway if they were hitting another child in my room and didn't listen to me when I said stop. And if I told them to do pushups while in my room and they didn't, I would make sure they did what I said or else give consequences...while in other rooms if the teachers ask me to have them do pushups and the kids don't do it I kind of just sit there lamely and say...huh...ok...well...maybe if I just keep saying 'get down' they will eventually do it... so yea. I tapped into my power source Friday. I'm sure I won't be using it all that often, but now that I know it is there I think I might be able to utilize it more efficiently in the other classrooms, to a more mild extent, if necessary.

After school, I was chilling in my office not doing Korean (rawr) and some 6th grade boys came in to say hello. At this moment I had actually just gotten a message from S and I wanted to speak Korean to him so I had the boys come in to help me...haha... So anyway. They helped me a bit, I talked to them in English, and then things started getting a little rowdy...they were wrestling, jumping on my couch...which at first, OK - but then I am thinking, naw, I don't want one of the kids to get hurt and then have to deal with it. So I tell them to stop. But they are 6th grade boys, so once I turn back around they start again. Next time I turn around, one of the boys is on the floor with his pants down...(his underwear was on, thank goodness!)...hahahaha - I just think that it is funny that that is what 6th grade boys do - tackle each other and try and pull their pants down. Hahahaha. And they were tickling him, I think. Well, he was laughing. Anyway. I separated them after that and made sure they understood 'keep the pants on'. So I go back to talking to my friend, they are being noisy, whatever. I turn around again a few minutes later and another one of the boys is now on the ground. It looks like he is being strangled because his face is all red, but I think what was happening was that he was holding his breath, because a few of the other boys had taken off his shoe and put it over his airholes!!!! (aka nose and mouth...hahaha) Oh man. When I saw that, I said, 'hey, no no no no!"...however, this was all amidst uncontrollable laughter (not like I-can't-breathe laughter but laughter that I couldn't stop because it was so ridiculously funny - I'm a bad teacher...) so they of course didn't stop...oh man...I am laughing now just reenacting the scene...hahahahaha. Wow. I love it. They are fun boys, but I'm glad they left soon after that. I might have had to kick them out just because I don't know how to handle situations like that and not burst out laughing...haha.

Also on Friday... I FINALLY SIGNED UP FOR IRONMAN CHINA!! I had been wanting to do that for a long time. Last year when I registered for IM Wisconsin, I had to pay with check or debit card, so I figured the same to be true for China. But since I was a little frustrated that I wasn't able to yet register (because I didn't have sufficient funds in my American debit account because I still wasn't able to transfer money), I decided to go online and see if I could register from my Korean debit card. That ended up not being an option, but I WAS able to pay with a credit card!!! So now I am officially doing IM China!!!! I am soooo excited. And now I have something to dedicate myself to, something tangible. I feel so much more focused and more content, and am psyched to start working on getting my times down to try and qualify for IM World Championships in Hawaii :)

Friday night was great too - I went out with my friends again, which was really really fun. I really like the group of people with whom I stayed in contact with from Orientation in Seoul. They are really cool people, and the people with whom they hang out are awesome too, so even amidst my lack of having time to meet the cool Americans/Canadians etc in Busan, I get to meet them through the few awesome friends I do have. Yay. The only bummer about that night was that my teammate and his friends were supposed to meet us and ended up not being able to at the last minute, which was very sad - we were all excited to have them come :( But he said that they want to reschedule soon so I'm looking forward to that :)

Saturday - haha. So we did our first ride over 36 miles...about 63 this time, just over 100km. It actually probably wouldn't have been over 100km if we hadn't gotten kind of lost... Ok, well to start off the day, we left from Nurimaru (where we run and swim on Sundays) instead of the usual Songjeong Beach, so that we could add in the extra kilometers. And in between Nurimaru and Songjeong Beach there are some decent hills - I'm not sure if it could be classified as a mountain...but it kind of looks like one once you have passed over it...anyway, hills much bigger and steeper than we are used to, so that was great :). After 50 km, we had some lunch - one of my favorites - sachonjjajang - mmmmm - and then headed back (it was me, S, and another guy J who just started training with us recently - he had been training with the team before but he got injured so he was out for a bit, and now he is back to run and bike with us :) ). S had said that we were going to take another way back, and I was thinking maybe to avoid the somewhat big hills that we rode on the way there (because he made the comment soomewhat soon after finishing the hills), but alas, the other route we took not only had a huge mother hill (that term (mother), for people who are not familiar with it, means 'oh my gaaaaad that's big - it is in no way meant to be offensive to the female parental unit, rather maybe it could be seen as a compliment - larger than life...authority...? I don't know...moral of the story, mothers, please don't take offense :) ) instead of two relatively big ones, but it was also on a very main road...haha. At least I can comfort myself with the fact that I am riding with other triathletes who have experience riding in Korea so they know what is acceptable and what is not acceptable (at least more so than I would), so I didn't worry about it being dangerous. It was a b**** to climb though. You would see pretty far ahead in the road, but there were some turns occasionally, and at least three different points, the road turned and you just saw at least another 400 more meters of climbing and then another turn in the distance...not knowing what the future held...it was actually kind of invigorating. I know I said it was a bad word, but I use that word with love. You can love and embrace the pain (as most of us triathletes do), but let's face it - pain is still pain. So yeah, that was that. About 5 minutes later I got a flat - staple in the tire - and we were already running late because of taking a long time for lunch and departing a little late (we were running late for swim practice, not just for getting in back in time for general...life...), so I felt especially bad when I fumbled a little bit trying to get the new tube in (which should NOT have happened because I change my tire at least twice a week to switch from my trainer-back-tire to my outdoor-back-tire - although I don't change the tube there but still), and I also fumbled a bit with my CO2 cartridge - more understandable since I haven't had to use one of those for months and my adapter was not in the correct position for maximum air slow/transfer (am I losing people? sorry...). Also, I'm not going to lie I was hoping to impress S and J with my tire-changing skills and efficiency as well as my CO2 skills, but I kind of failed there. Bummer. Although it probably only still took about 6 minutes, which isn't that bad. ANYWAY.

So now we are definitely running late. J isn't coming to swim practice because he and swimming don't really get along. So he leaves us soon after, and S is saying we are going to take a faster road because we are late. However, we ended up on a street going against traffic (on a main road...like main like no shoulder and Korean taxi drivers and buses...), and a street which by some stroke of fate did not have any crosswalks anywhere in sight (which is hardly the case in Busan). So...haha...we are riding up on the sidewalks (and occasionally back on the streets when the sidewalk spits us onto the street if we couldn't get back up because of a big lip or people walking 5 abreast blocking the entry to the sidewalk) for a bit, and then finally come to a crosswalk. We then crossed the street...but we still had to make about 5 more maneuvers - maneuvers which...let's just say at times I was legitimately pretending that I was invisible because I felt like drivers were going to throw things at me. But lots of sidewalk riding..anyone who is a cyclist reading this, it was pretty much like an alley cat race (I think - at least from what I have heard about alley cat racing). I'm just hoping my tire is going to hold up, because I didn't get all of the CO2 into my tire because of my poor adapter-usage performance and we were riding over chunks of unevenness every 30 seconds at points. Basically...it was an AMAZING ride.

Anyway, suffice(s) to say that we got to swim practice a little late, although not too bad because we always start a little late. And swimming today was longer than normal, and I was tired from having ridden 50% more than we usually ride on Saturdays (although I was the one who suggested the additional mileage - I don't regret it but I'm just being honest that I was tired...haha) and we were booking it through the streets (and sidewalks) of Haeundae for the last 10-15 minutes, so yea, I was a bit tired. Although, strangely...my sprints today were a good 2 seconds faster than previous days...!!! I was super pumped about that. But then we did some drills with the dolphin kick AKA the devil (at least for me - I am so horribly bad at it -I tried to explain to S that I didn't know how to do it and he was basically just like, yea, mmhmm, just do it (he didn't say that, haha) - but then I was like - can I maybe practice it before I do the drills? Seriously, let me show you what I am doing to prove to you that I have problems. So he laughed, and he showed me how to do it. I tried again, and he was like...yea, maybe you practice...hahaha. So I had him show me one more time and then I actually got it down after a few minutes, which I was super proud of, because this kick has been killing me for the past 2 months whenever we have to do it in practice - I look like a class A fool. Or at least, I used to :) So I got that down - but it is still hard - we did the dolphin kick (the butterfly kick) with the crawl stroke, syncronized so that one kick was simultaneous with one arm going into the water, and the next kick simultaneous with that arm pull, and then the other arm, etc. By the time that I got it down and had done 3 out of my 10 assigned drills for that kick, it was time to leave...haha. Oops.

Today, we did our usual ocean swim. The water was like 6-10degrees cooler(Fahrenheit) than last week (by the way, I think that dude that came up with that system of measurement for temperature has one of the hardest-to-spell last names I have ever encountered...I don't think I have ever spelled his name right on the first try, and if I have it was luck...). I'm glad I brought my wetsuit! And, also - this was the most intense ocean water swim I have ever done. It was leashing out the fury like giving candy to trick-or-treaters (if you live in a populated neighborhood). I legit got taken at least a foot off course by a wave at least twice, and my cap almost came off twice (once I had to stop to put it back on because it was basically a goner) as well as my goggles. And this is while I was swimming, not diving into the water with any notable acceleration or anything. Multiple times my stroke was interrupted by a big wave which overtook my momentum (which was actually pretty powerful today, I was really getting into a 'damn-you-ocean' rhythm and was modifying my breathing well for those frequent occasions where I went to breathe and there was a huge mother-wave there (sorry for the repeated usage but it is justified for this weekend's activities) displacing the air which I was hoping to use to supply my body with oxygen. But I adapted pretty well, I think, without sacrificing my rhythm much at all. Oh the skills you acquire during training sessions like these. In all seriousness, they are extremely useful, and you can only really learn them in such situations which at the time make you want to get out and call it a day.

Wow, my butt hurts from writing this blog. Maybe I should shower? I still have ocean on me. Yea, sounds like a plan.