Quality Training, Quality Food, Quality Times

Last weekend was filled with great workouts, great food, and great company. I finally did a long ride – 7 hours – which was awesome! I was planning on riding to Gyeongju (about 100km away from Busan) and meeting my Coach there, because he had to be there on Friday for work-related business and was going to stay the night and we would drive back together on Saturday. However, Coach and I miscommunicated concerning the directions, so I ended up missing the turn which would have led me to the road I was supposed to take to Gyeongju. Thus, I turned around, and went to take a different road, one which I knew a lot better (but which apparently does not go straight to where I wanted to go, and would have almost certainly gotten me lost because I would have had to switch roads a few times and thus ask multiple people for directions). Now I am running about 3 hours behind schedule. I get to the other road and start on my way for the second time. Well, I’ll keep a long story short and say that I decided to try and be slick and take a more direct route, but it ended up being a really busy road, which was rideable, but on which I did not want to ride another 56km – definitely not. So I turned around…for the second time…and never made it to Gyeongju : ( I met Coach in Haeundae 7 hours later, so at least I got some quality miles in.

After biking, swimming was…tough. Really slow. I sat in the hot tub for probably the majority of the time that I was at the pool. Haha. (I still swam 2000m though : ) ) After swimming, we went to an amazing Chinese restaurant called Jang-kweh and ate jambbong, or Chinese-style hotchpotch noodle of vegetable and seafood (I copied that out of my phone dictionary hah). I had had one of my more favorite meals at this restaurant with them a few months ago, so I was really excited to eat this food because I know it would be amazing. And it was. I was so hungry too because since breakfast I had only eaten snacks along the way on my ride. Oh man. SO DELICIOUS. And so spicy. I love it. Before I went home, Coach called the team’s mechanic to make sure he could look at my bike on Sunday because I was having a few problems, which I thought was so nice. Ah. Oh man.

Sunday was a beauuuutiful day. So after riding with the team, we went out for some beauuuutiful food : ) However, strangely enough, the traffic was absolutely fantastic. I could not believe how many cars were on the road on such a beautiful day! Coach said that this was the case because the weather was so nice, and thus everyone wanted to go out and enjoy the day. I understand that concept. But – wouldn’t people want to be OUTSIDE enjoying the day rather than stuck in their CARS in bumper-to-bumper traffic? No lie. It took us about … 45 minutes to go 3km. INSANE. I mean, walk to the subway and use that ingenious invention! The subway never gets clogged! Amazing. And sad. But anyway. So we went to this dubu restaurant (dubu being ‘tofu’ in English), which was so incredibly delicious. I never liked tofu when I was in the US but in Korea I really really like. Like my mom said, its probably because we don’t know how to cook it in the States. I gotta give it to them – Koreans really know how to make food ridiculously delicious – so I am not surprised that I liked it so much. There were 3 different types of tofu – actually, maybe 4 because the appetizer-of-sorts was also tofu – oh man – ahhh soooo good – and then there were the usual side dishes, rice, etc. But the main food was the tofu and also a big pan of mushrooms and other less important vegetables (I say that because of the relative quantity in the pan). I would never imagine that one of my favorite meals would be tofu and mushrooms. Go figure.

After that I was going to go home, because I was tired from the weekends’ workouts. We sat in traffic for a long time, and then when we were almost to my house, Coach asked me if I wanted to go to a ski resort. Hahahaha. Oh man I love it. I love my life. I love the randomness of that question. And my answer consisted of me perking up to a point which slightly frightened Coach’s wife and said, “YES! LET’S DO IT!” Haha. Wow. I have some problems, I won’t lie. Anyway, so we drove probably 45 minutes or so to Yangsan, a city outside of Busan, and drove up the mountain to the ski resort. It was so much fun!! (driving up the roads I mean…driving up the roads and imagining biking up them was the most fun part of our excursion…not to underplay how great of a trip it was!)

When we got to the Ski Resort, I was really excited. I wasn’t sure if we were going skiing or what, because we all got out, and Coach told me to get my warm clothes. So I’m thinking, ‘we legit just might be going skiing! This is so cool! Never would I ever had guessed that today I would be at a Ski Resort!’ But alas, we did not end up skiing – I’m not sure if it was due to the fact that the slopes closed until 6p for maintenance/sweeping (and we got there around 4:45) or if we never actually were going to ski – but I am telling myself that we would have skied if the slopes were open because that is a better would-be story : ).

After hanging around the lodge for a bit, we went to do some more back-road driving. Oh my GOD was it beautiful. I so badly wish I had my camera – although I took some pictures with my camera phone, which came out great, but I can’t put those on my computer so that makes me sad. The roads were narrow and hilly, mountains surrounding, the roads nearly on a cliff which lead down to a dam (specifically Milyang Dam) in one area and a river after traveling down the road a bit. Wow. We would get out of the car periodically to look around and suck up the beauty. Coach would jump up on the fence and hang over the edge like a little kid. Haha. He is so great. We would also yell at the people who were walking their bikes up the hills. Haha. All in good fun, of course.

We continued to ride this road for a while, and he also showed me a nearby place where the PNU Triathlon team would train in the summers – ahh so amazing! If I have vacation in the summer (separate from the vaca to the US) I hope to come here and train. Oh man. I really need to go back there and take pictures because attempting to explain the beauty is just making me sound like a blubbering idiot. Anyway, after seeing that, they took me to a temple called Pyochungsa in Milyang (the town/city/area), right near where we had previously been sightseeing. Apparently it is one of the 4 most famous temples in South Korea – so that was awesome! It was really beautiful. I amongst seeing other amazing things, I went inside one of the temples, and honestly, it was probably the most aesthetically-pleasing place I have ever been in. The colors were so bright and vibrant, with loads of fruit in bowls at the base of the big golden Buddha (I’m not sure if the fruit was real and if so why it was there, aka if it was for people to eat or just for show or for offerings or something, but it really contributed to the beauty of the place), and the walls/floor were a dark brown which seemed to fuse all of the other bright colors together in a majestic splendor. I could have stayed in there for a very long time, just looking. I hope to go back there someday. Such a beautiful place.

We explored some more backroads after visiting the temple and then headed to dinner. Tonight's dinner was especially entertaining - live entertainment, if you will. If I'm not sure if I have mentioned this before, but in Korea, the standard of assuring the freshness of food is to serve it uncooked and have the guests cook it at the table (or the waiter/waitress cook it for you right in front of you). Normally, however, the food consists of sedentary items, such as vegetables or already-dead pig, octopus, etc. - but tonight, I was in for a special treat. They had asked me if I have ever eaten eel, to which I responded that I had not. I was excited to do so, because I had heard that it was very delicious. But I was unprepared for the fact that I would have to watch my soon-to-be dinner squirm in futile attempts to preserve dear life right before my eyes. I like to think that I have a strong stomach alongside a determination strong enough to suppress any queasy-feelings that my stomach may let diffuse, but I have to admit I myself was squirming a bit when I saw these dozens of pinky-sized creatures slithering around in a pan, slowly being roasted to our liking. I was especially caught off guard in the 'I am tough - no big deal' department when one of them wriggled its way out of the pan and onto the table towards me and Coach's son...haha - Coach had to bat the little guy with the spatula and guide it underneath the pan directly into the flame. After a few minutes of this entertainment, I was able to suppress the minimal lingering feelings of being grossed-out after they had died (or at least sedentary enough to appear dead) to enjoy the delicacy. What an interesting dinner. : )

The next day, classes for the 2009 school year commenced. This year, I will be teaching 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grades al Allak, which I am pumped about (pumped about the fact that I have an almost-equal split of the four grades!) Monday and Friday I teach 6th grade (but only 6 classes in total so its not that bad), Tuesday I teach 4th grade, Wednesday is 3rd grade and Thursday is 5th grade. Since 3rd and 4th graders only have English one time a week, I will see them every class, but since 5th adn 6th graders have English twice a week, I will only see them every other class (like last year). But its ok - I like the fact that I will still be in school every day so that my presence is a more stable, permanent thing, and thus I think my role as a teacher will be more ingrained in their minds as opposed to my role as a guest teacher who occasionally visits.

This year will be very interesting, and will be filled with many new challenges. The school just spend a decent load of cash on a new English center, so now rather than having two English classrooms on two different floors, we now have three adjacent English rooms - Sujeong's room (for 4th and 5th grade), the English Center (into which I believe my 'office'-type place will be relocated very soon), and Mrs. Moon's room (for 3th and 6th grade). Currently, I am located adjacentlyto the left of Mrs, Moon's room, in a room which will soon be turned into the lounge. So that's the layout for you. I will soon take pictures - the rooms actually look quite impressive. Bright colors, window shades with pictures and English stories/poems/etc on them (very impressive, actually), and in the English Center, many fun tools to assist children in their English education. As my teachers keep reassuring me, I will be much more busy - but I am excited at the prospect. I think I will have a lot more liberty to decide how I want the English center to run, as long as it is productive. However, I think we will probably be getting a lot of outside teachers and other people coming to watch classes and look at the English Center, so I am not particularly psyched about that. I think I will have a lot of extra stress put on me by the teachers (which I'm sure I would put a decent, although appropriate and deal-able, amount on myself anyway), which is going to be tough to deal with (it seems that if you are not stressed out here then you are not doing your job - that is just an observation, maybe not true - but that is one thing that I am not a huge fan of...). But hopefully everything will work out fine : ).

The kids are great. I really like my classes, and I really like starting out the year with them. One girl gave me a picture of a famous tv star after class - it is actually awesome - I am using it for my bookmark in 'War and Peace', haha. Quite handsome, I must say. Other students will often come up to me and point at my face and either say directly to me or askance to their friends, 'teacher, what is that?' I have to repeatedly inform them, 'yea..it's acne...' haha. I must say I don't think that it is getting worse lately - I mean it certainly has gotten worse since I came to Korea but in the past almost 7 months I think it has gone from decent to bad to a bit better so I am confused with all the attention it is accumulating lately - but whatever. I'm glad I can let things like that not bother me. I really should see a doctor soon...

Gosh, life is so busy lately. I've had so many random things come up that I have hardly had a strictly-structured (unaltered) schedule spanning 3 weeks since I have been to Korea, which kind of stinks because it is much harder to manage my time that way - not knowing how long certain things will take if they are not stuck in a normal schedule which you have to deal with on a regular basis. But anyway, lately people have been coming in to look at my house - so hopefully I will be moving soon, which is good. Although if I do end up moving soon, I will have to pay movers to move my stuff, because I cannot expend the energy or time needed for such an activity so close to IM, especially on a weekend, when quality training must be done - so that's kind of a bummer. But no problem. Also, I've been having to do a lot of work at home lately because I have been preparing a lot of powerpoints for class, but I do not have powerpoint on my computer at work. This is...quite frustrating, because I usually do have a decent amount of time at work to get these things done, but not the resources. And I do not enjoy having to give up a workout to get ppts done because I cannot afford to give up sleep. I tried this last week, and ended up getting sick and thus had to cut my workouts short this weekend (which I am not happy about because this weekend was supposed to be a hard training weekend...rawrrrr). But hopefully soon I can get that worked out as well.

On Wednesday, after practice, I got to see my Coach's office. It's a new office, because they recently relocated to a new building on the PNU campus, which is actually now right across from the track, and thus incredibly convenient! Before, it was all the way down the huge-butt hill - but now I would say it is in a more appropriate location considering the fact that the building houses the Exercise Science-related offices (there is also another building sort of attached which houses a bunch of exercise rooms and a gym, etc - its pretty nice : ) ). Anyway, it was really cool to see where he works. I went up there with him so I could help him with his lecture for the next day, which he would have to give in English. This semester, he has to give a serious of English lectures, which he is a little nervous about (totally understandably, especially since the English education that his students have received in high school and college is much better than that which he received), but we spent a good deal of time going over a few of the lectures (as well as looking up IM stuff online...hahaha. Awesome.), so I think it helped him out a bit. I am so glad to be able to do that sort of thing for him, because really, he does too much for me considering what I believe I do for him (although I always try my best to do be as helpful as possible). Anyway, that was a fun night!

And on Saturday (two days ago), I finally rode to Gyeongju - ! - although not entirely...haha. Because I had gotten a bit lost last time, Coach met me in the morning and we drove the first 25km or so along the route which I had attempted the previous weekend. I was a bit surprised at this though, because I thought he was going to meet me in the morning with his bike and that we were going to bike there together - but we drove a bit, and then he dropped me off after showing me the way through a few cross-streets. Then he would drive ahead and make sure I was following the right road (!), and at a crossroad about 2 hours in, we met and he had me follow his car through some streets of Gyeongju until we got to a bike path-type area which I would then ride circles around for the next 90 minutes to complete the 4 hours (minimum) that I had planned for the day (I planned to ride 200km that day but since I was sick from the dearth of sleep that week I had to cut that in half..bah). It was incredibly windy too so my self-esteem was a bit damaged when I would look down at my speedometer, but no problem. At least I got some quality saddle time in.

After riding for 4 hours, I met him in the lobby of a ridiculously nice hotel, changed out of my clothes, went to lunch, and then drove home. I couldn't believe that he spent his entire morning and afternoon accompanying me in his car on my ride to Gyeongju. What an amazing thing to do : ). When I gave him a more proper thank-you on Sunday to show my appreciation, he merely said, 'hey, I'm your Coach!'. Wow. : )

The next day, I was not feeling too hot (again), so I took it really easy. I rode for about a half hour with the youth team, and since we ended up doing drills that day, I was able to help out without having to ride. The drills were really fun too - I've never done bike drills before! Coach brought cones and we practiced bike handling skills. It was so much fun! And the weather was AMAZING. So I was really thankful for that!

After youth practice, I forewent swimming because of feeling poopy, so we went to eat Bulnak (bolgogi and nakji....sooooo good!) and then rode home, to accumulate a good 65 minutes of riding. Hah. Boo. But at least I can count that as a rest day :)

Ok time for class!