Another great weekend. Sadly, Friday I didn't meet up with my teammates to teach them English because one one of them was not feeling well. So I stayed in, rode my bike, and had another friend over my apartment and we studied, hung out, and ordered out some awesome food. That was the first time I have ordered out in Korea, and it is very interesting! They give you actual dishes (like ceramic - is that what they are called?), and you eat, and then you put the dishes outwide of your home and the take out place comes to pick up the dishes...it is great! And eco-friendly :) So that was a fun night.
I'm not sure if I wrote about going to the cinema Thursday..? So I will mention it briefly. I went with Chol. It was very interesting! To get a ticket there, you take a ticket, and the counter displays the ticket number when it is your turn to get a ticket. I expressed my surprise at this situation, and C was like, why, what happens in America? And I said, we have to wait in line! So old fashioned. Haha. Crazy technology! So he chose the movie - I was all up for a Korean movie - but he picked Mamma Mia. I feel bad....he thought it was a comedy - which...it was comedic...haha. No it wasn't too bad, but it was definitely a strange feeling for a movie - I think most musicals are, because people just randomly start breaking out into song. But with him already being very tired and with the added surprise of the musical nature of the film, he slept for probably half of the movie. I felt like the girl who makes her boyfriend go to a chick flick against his will...haha...especially since I was an American with a Korean guy - I feel like people were probably thinking...oh man, stinks for that guy...hahaha. Naw but he chose it so I don't feel that bad. (I still felt kind of bad...haha). But that also was a weird experience because it was the first time I saw an English film here, and I felt like I was in the States while I was in the movie theater (there were Korean subtitles but they weren't very noticeable (many times they were in white writing)), and I'm with someone who speaks pretty good English...but after the film got out - I felt very strange. I'm walking out of an American movie, an American, with all these Asian people surrounding. Out of the month and a half since I have been here, I felt like I stuck out more here than anywhere else. Maybe I didn't stick out, but I was very aware of my Americanness. And I also felt a little responsible for the movie not being fantastic...like I was representing my country and I somewhat failed the Asian people with this film (I'm not saying it was horrible - it is just the nature of the musical and the cinema together that often leaves a lingering awkwardness...). But it was a great experience :) After that we went to Haeundae and walked around - we went to the place where my team always runs and swims on Sunday - it was great to see it at night with all of the lights. Very beautiful!
Saturday I rode my trainer again for a while and discovered the CNN chanel on my TV so I got to catch up a bit on the election debates and such. It was weird watching people speak fluent English though...and it was weird to see American personalities too...haha. So I stayed at home until swimming practice which was at 4p. When I got there, the hotel (we swim Saturdays at the Grand Hotel, which is a big fancy hotel in Haeundae, one of the most expensive (if not the most expensive) place in Busan) was all decked out with red carpets and such (the hotel already always has one or two big chandeliers in its lobby, so with all of that and the red carpets and the men in nice suits, it looked very fancy. When I got there I was able to walk right in though, although the men looked a little tentative about letting me up the elevator, but I saw another guy do it so I figured it was fine.
So we swum, showered and such, and then went downstairs to meet. Normally we all meet in the lobby and then go to dinner. But tonight Coach was not there because he is in Japan with his family, doing some triathlon stuff (I think his son is racing or doing a camp because he borrowed my bike bag to take his son's bike on the ferry). Anyway - the couches which are normally in the middle of the lobby were pushed off to the back, and there were lots and lots of people in the lobby, all dressed really nice. I just chilled on the couches and waited for everyone else to come down. But occasionally there would be a lot of people screaming, and photographers running aside some Korean people, I'm assuming movie stars and/or singers, etc. One guy looked like a Korean Snoop Dog kind of - the people went crazy for him. It was great :). The other people just looked very dressed up and important by the way others treated them. When the other guys got down from showering, they told me, "Korean stars." Haha. And we looked for a bit. They also told me that the Wonder Girls, a very famous Korean girl singing group (I'm thinking popularity like the Spice Girls when they were popular) were there. I don't think I saw them though. I don't know, maybe they were some of the girls I saw go upstairs before the guys came down. Anyway. That was very interesting :) Next time I go to practice there I will try and take some pictures to show you what the lobby looks like - even with no red carpet it is really fancy. Oh - so the reason everyone was there - haha - every September/October there is the International Film Festival in Busan, and I think that they were there for the premiere of a movie, because there was a big billboard-sized poster of a movie in the lobby. So that was that. Very interesting :)
Like I said before, normally we go out to dinner afterwards, but since Coach wasn't there we didn't. I had planned to meet up with some English speaking friends after dinner, thinking it would be around 8 or 9p. But we got out at 6:30p, and my friends weren't meeting up until 9p, and today was literally the first day I did not bring my Korean books with me. Actually. Growl. So I thought about just chillin for two hours and meeting them at a nearby subway where they were all going to meet, but I decided to go home instead. And by the time I got home it would have taken me at least another hour to get there, and I would barely have made it...and then would be really tired...so I just gave up on that and stayed home and studied/made some CDs. So that was a bummer about not meeting up with my friends but I think I needed to stay home and chill - although it would have been nice to go out. Maybe next time.
Today - we met as usual at the Yacht Club at 10am (the youth tri tream is just finishing up their bike ride). S, G (the other triathlete who coaches the youth team -he always swims with us at the pool but hasn't been training with us much otherwise until this weekend - I think he is going to start doing most of the weekend workouts with us from now on :) ) and I go off to Haeundae, and jump in the water. We swim for about 10 minutes, and then S suggests swimming a bit and then running back on the beach. I was all for that! So we all decided to do circuits of that and agreed that if we did 5 circuits then we wouldn't do a 40-50min run afterwards like we normally do. So we did that...ahhh it was sooo much fun!! On the last circuit, my arms were pretty sore. And the running on the beach was awesome - hard! I thought they would want to jog back and just do a continuous circuit with no stopping, but we actually would jump back into the water after running and wait a minute, and then start up again - so the run was more intense. But there were a lot of other people on the beach that day, strangely -I think maybe it had something to do with the film festival, for the main venue for the festival is actually right on the beach - but anyway, we were in our caps and goggles running about 500m across the beach every 10-15 minutes or so...haha....it was awesome. We looked so cool. Hahaha. Ahhh that was soo much fun!!!
So that was my day. I am kind of tired, not having been sleeping as much as I would like, so I think I might take a nap now. Na-jjam-ja-da - take a nap :) Something else noteably happened today but again, I can't write that here, so that will take the form of an email later on. Let me know if you are interested in hearing that... :)
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