MAY

May has been filled with lots of fun and little work.

I like both of those things.

I'll keep it short.

Boseong:

Some friends and I made a trip to Boseong to see the green tea fields which produce most of the tea in Korea, take part in another 10km run and go to a Tibetan-Buddhist temple on Buddha's birthday.

It was a great weekend with fresh air and great friends.

Gwangju:

The next weekend I met up with my friend Jocelyn in Gwangju for a night out. We had a yummy dinner to carb ourselves up for the night of dancing ahead.

I have missed going out dancing and we had been told about a great club that played hop hop.

It was awesome and we danced for hours. It felt like we were in the live version of the movie Step Up. Some people had actual routines to certain songs. Koreans can dance!

The next day we did some shopping and then caught a baseball game.

Ultimate in Mokpo:

The next weekend was spent in Mokpo. A friend had put on an Ultimate Tournament for the weekend which turned out really well.

Before this weekend, I had only played one pick up game of Ultimate. So many friends had said how awesome it was but I never really had much of an interest in it.

Until now. After that weekend, I am definitely a fan of the game and hope to play it as much as I can.

After the 3 games we played on Saturday my body was finished. Having not played hard like that in quite some time and with SO MUCH RUNNING! uhhhhh

I took an ice bath that night!

Then it was back at it on Sunday. I slathered on the A535 and hoped my legs would move as fast as my brain was telling them to!

We ended up leading in the final only to let it slip away.

It was a great weekend.

I

Jindo Moses Festival

The Moses Parting of the Sea Festival happens every year in May where the sea parts far enough between 2 islands that you can walk across.

It's super neat and since it fell on a holiday, many were able to make the short trip to Jindo and enjoy this phenomenom.

There was lots of drumming, sea weed, fish, performances and booze. I tried the local alcohol called Hongju which is 40%. Whoa!

I went with my friends Joan and Jocelyn. Joan has a car so it was lovely to not be crammed in a smelly bus with lots of other people.

We walked around, ran into friends, drank Hongju, took lots of pictures and finally walked across the water to the other island.

Well, we didn't quite make it to the other island as the water was starting to come back in but we were pretty close.

It was super cool and great time.

Beer and Stuff

So this week, I have drank more beer than I have in the entire time I have been in Korea!

In total, it only amounted to about 1 full can of beer but for me, that's a lot!

As I already mentioned, I had a beer with my principal on sports day and the other beer I consumed was today, with my masters father.

A side story to the beer is the heavy bag at our do-jang. Initially, we had it bolted to the wall with this big contraption and it was great.
But, the people upstairs were complaining and that there are now cracks in the wall from our awesome kicking power!

Soooooo, master's dad, the handy man, and who also looks like a Korean version of Morgan Freeman, my favorite actor, had to come up with another way to put up the sand bag.
Let's call her dad Morgan from now on.

He has 4 steel pieces about knee height placed in a square and plans to pour concrete into it and this will be the base for the other contraption to be placed on and then bolted to the wall again!!?

We're all not sure and are very curious as to how this is going to pan out.

I have never seen such a procedure just to hang a sand bag. At other clubs and gyms I've been to, the bags have just been bolted to a beam or whatever and are hanging nicely from the ceiling. No cracked walls and no angry neighbours. Hmmmm

Anyway, today I went to lunch class with fellow waygooks Glen and Erin and of course, Morgan is hard at work planning his structure.

Master decided to actually take care of her new born baby and was unable to make it to class so we did our own thing and then had to help Morgan carry up a bunch of 40kg bags of cement!!!

Definitely not something I saw myself doing when I woke up this morning.

The guys were able to carry them up the 3 flights of stairs on their shoulder so I decided to do the same.
Yeah, no. I made it up one time and one time only. It nearly killed me!

So Erin and I had to be sissy girls and carry one bag up together.

Soooo after the cement carrying and quick vaccuuming afterwards, Morgan brings up a bunch of beer.
Having just trained, beer is not really what I want right now.

Erin and Glen had to leave so I was left with Morgan who also went out and bought some Pringles. Again, not exactly what I want to eat after a workout! Where's my foofy protein shake a fruit!

So he calls me over and opens a bottle and we had some beer and Pringles together.
Morgan shot his glass of beer immediately and I nursed mine. The Pringles however, were surprisingly delicious after a workout!
salt salt salt.

So yeah, these little things are what make me laugh and are moments that I will remember always.
Having a beer with my principal at 1130 in the morning and having a beer with Masters dad after carrying cement up 3 flights of stairs!

good times.

Busted

The other day my friends Carol-Ann and Vanessa came to Mokpo in a car they rented and we had a great saturday together which included a nice run along the sea wall, (even nicer that it was +30!), went for Vietnamese food, then some ice cream, some norae-bonging, some pool and then home. It was great.

Sunday included strong coffee with breakfast and watching America's Next Top Model.

On their way to their next destination, I asked Carol if she could drop me off at Homeplus so I could pick up some more tortilla wraps.
After getting out of the car, I had to wait a while to J-walk across the street. Instead of walking the whole 150 meters to the overpass crosswalk.

When I finally crossed, there were these 2 cops blowing their whistles for the entire time it took me to cross.

Opps. Busted for J-walking in Korea.

I played dumb foreigner and just kept walking and didn't even look at them.

What am I going to do? stop in the middle of the very busy road I was illegally crossing and go over to them?

Then what? We can look at each other and not understand what the other one is saying?

Note to self, don't J-walk. Not when there are cops around anyway!

Sports Day

After a great long weekend, we have sports days at my boys school.
They play soccer, Tee ball, traditional Korean wrestling which is similar to Sumo wrestiling and other games.
For me, this means I get to sit outside and enjoy the beautiful day and work on my ever so important tan for the summer.

While wondering around the grounds, I pass my principal who is sitting underneath the tent at the front of the school eating dried squid, chicken wings and drinking beer.

He waves me over and offers me a beer.
It's 11:30 in the morning.

ok. I sat down and had a Hite (uh) with my principal and had a tiny conversation.

It was nice.