4:38:05

Season End Marathon in Seoul (42195 Race)

Fueled by granola bars, glucose tablets and the desire to make my three and a half months of training pay off, this past weekend, in fact, on Sunday the 27th, I completed my first marathon.

With a time of 4:38:05 I was by no means breaking any records, but I completed the entire 26.2 miles or 42.195 km, and that was exactly what I intended to do.

The course paralleled the Han River in Seoul. After running for 13.1 miles in one direction, the course simply turned right back around and retraced itself for another 13.1. From the entire course I remember seeing the North Seoul Tower, many bridge pylons (the course crossed under a bunch of bridges) and some canola flowers that were in full yellow bloom due to the uncharacteristically warm weather that we've been experiencing. The weather on the race day was a bit chilly and overcast. For running it was perfect.

The entire run was pretty uneventful. The hardest part of the course was the last 10km stretch. I could feel pre-cramp "twitches" in my left quad and my right hamstring, so it took all my mental energy to will my legs to keep from cramping, but all said and done, it worked, and I finished the race.

In the last few km I could feel my body running out of energy, so I was popping glucose tablets (the ones diabetics take) and I could feel my blood sugar rising. Specifically, I could feel the tiredness and tingling feeling disappear from my body w/ each of the tablets. It was very strange, but I was very glad I had them with me.

I finally crossed the finish line. I felt like I was in a bit of a daze, and it was almost hard to stand up. I also was having a bit of trouble balancing.

In any case, I did it and I feel really proud of myself.

I just re-read this and realized the post is somewhat hazy in the way it recounts the details of the race, but that's exactly how the race is in my mind. It's a bit hazy.

Well, that's all for now.

There's another marathon in March. I'm thinking about that one too!

Thanksgiving

In the picture to the left you can see 8 people. Behind the corner there is actually a 9th. About 15 minutes after this picture was taken a 10th person showed up, and about another 15 minutes after that an 11th and 12th and 13th person showed up. So just to make this crystal clear, in my one bedroom apartment I had the joy of very very cozily sharing Thanksgiving with 13 of my friends. Two of the the people, Jon and Rathi are from England, and five of the people, James, Esther, Won-Me, Hee-Jin, and Ashley are Korean, so more than half of our little "family" was celebrating their first Thanksgiving EVER.

Though we would have loved to have all the traditional foods (i.e. turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, etc.) they are 1) very hard to come by and 2) EXTREMELY expensive. Regarding the turkey, since no one we know owns an oven, had we wanted to buy a turkey, we would have had to fork over about $90 for a fully cooked 8-9 pound turkey. So, we decided to simply fill our feast w/ as many "American" foods as possible. The resulting feast consisted of, pizza, donuts, ice cream and potato chips. I ended up adding some Kimchi to the mix (most for our Korean guests) and my friend who is Korean, James, brought some Sundae (blood sausage) and pig liver. So, all told, we had quite the multicultural Thanksgiving feast.

We even went around the "table," or rather, we went around the circle and talked about the things for which we were thankful. Interestingly enough, I think my friends who are Korean were the most shy about the experience. My theory is that there were a couple of things at play. First, my friends who are Korean don't hang out w/ us expats as much as we all hang out w/ each other, so they shyness could be due to that. Second, though all of them are COMPLETELY fluent in English, maybe when put on the spot it made them a little shy, and third, I've noticed that in Korea many people do not show/express too much emotion in public. Talking about the things in life for which you are thankful is a pretty emotional thing to do. Regardless, everyone shared their thoughts, and it was really wonderful.

We finished the night w/ a game of catch phrase, and then around 11PM everyone headed home.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Friends, food, "family" (real and fictive) and the joy of community are all blessings, and I for one and extremely thankful to have them all in my life!

Farming and Kimchi

Farming and Kimchi

And Mr. Park does it again! Every time I hang out w/ this 69 year old man, I end up having a really enjoyable and culturally rich time.

In the picture on the left, starting from the left there is Mr. Park, Mrs. Kumi (Korean women traditionally do NOT take their husbands name), Me and my friend Amy. Behind us is a pile of just about 100 Korean cabbages, a.k.a. Napa cabbage. Regardless of what you call them, I cannot deny the fact that picking them and then wheeling them the approximately 500m to Mr. Park's house was sweat inducing work. But let me start from the beginning.

I have been enjoying copious amounts of chigae, and as you know from the recipe I included a couple posts ago, Kimchi is the key ingredient. In fact, the better quality Kimchi you use the more tasty chiagae you can make. So, in my never ending attempt to learn how to cook various different world cuisines, and just recently realizing that the Kimchi back in the states is not nearly as tasty as the stuff we have here, I figured I need to learn how to make the stuff. And that's where this all started.

Earlier this week Mr. Park told me that he and his wife had begun to make their annual batch of Kimchi. Keep in mind, their annual batch includes enough for them to sell to some distributors and to stock their shelves. This roughly translates to about 2000 cabbages. Again, the pile you can see in the picture above is just about 100 cabbages, so we're talking about a TON of Kimchi. In any case, as making Kimchi is something only married women (and older married women) typically know about, I was very excited to hear about Mr. Park's wife making her annual batch because none of my younger co-workers know the process. In any case, I asked Mr. Park if I could come watch his wife in action, and he was thrilled at my interest.

Yesterday afternoon we left Samnam, header over to Pangi Elementary to pick up Amy, and headed to Mr. Parks house. Mrs. Kumi greeted us and gave us a snack of sweet potatoes (also grown on their farm) as well as some sort of peanut tea. Mr. Park then showed us the approximately 4 trashcan sized bins FILLED w/ cabbage that would soon be turned into Kimchi. And keep in mind, these four bins will be filled dozens more times as they process a few tons of cabbage into Kimchi...all by hand.

In any case, I was excited to learn the Kimchi making process when Mr. Park suddenly asked Amy if we were ready to go pick some cabbage. Not wanting to be rude, we both obliged him and after gearing up w/ work gloves, as well as a couple borrowed coats and hats, we headed towards the cabbage field. Mr. Park lead the way since he had a big wheel barrow type device for transporting the cabbage and since he also knew the way. Seemingly effortlessly, Mr. Park dragged the wheel barrow at a very brisk pace and we finally arrived at the patch.

In less than 20 seconds, Mr. Park had begun slicing the cabbages right at their tap-root. Amy and I assumed we were supposed to fill the wheel barrow, so we did just that. A few minutes later we had filled the wheel barrow to capacity (about 20 cabbages) and then Mr. Park instructed Amy to "stay there" while he walked with me back to his home. This time, Mr. Park briskly pulled the filled wheel barrow.

We dumped the load near his front steps, and this time I got to drag the empty wheel barrow back to the field. I'm a bit embarrassed to say this, but I don't think I was able to pull it as fast as the 69 year old man. Regardless, we arrived back to the field and now it was completely dark.

Amy and I then continued to fill the wheel barrow and tote it back and forth until we had picked (and wheeled back to Mr. Park's home) about 100 cabbages.

Then, quite sweaty and surprisingly tired (we only worked for about 30 minutes) we washed our hands, headed inside, and enjoyed a super delicious dinner of dumpling soup and side dishes. To Amy's credit: She's a vegetarian and they served us meat dumplings. In the most subtle and thus polite way possible, Amy at everything except for the meat. She even at the dumpling rapper, and she didn't mention anything otherwise. (And to quickly rant about vegetarians, one of which I used to be...to be quite frank, sometimes they get preachy and expect everyone to cater to their needs. Amy's not like that at all. She rolls w/ the punches and makes the best of what ever meat is thrown her way. Mad respect.)

Finally after play farmer and eating dinner, we got to learning how to make Kimchi. It went something like this.

Mrs. Kumi dragged out two large round tubs. One was filled w/ cabbage and one was filled w/ the Kimchi chilli paste. She also got out a square container which we would use to store the finished product. In the middle of their living room Ms. Kumi, Amy and I put on rubber gloves and aprons and began the process of spreading the chili paste on the cabbage and then packing the cabbage into the square storage container. We worked for about 30 minutes and then were done.

Here's the whole process (only the last part of which we experienced)


How to Make Kimchi:
1. Take a Korean/Napa cabbage, remove and dispose of the outer leaves until you are only left w/ the whiter inner "heart" of the cabbage.

2. Cut the cabbage heart into quarters the long way.

3. Create a bucket of salt water. (I don't know how much salt to use in the mixture, but do it to taste...it shouldn't be CRAZY salty, but it also should not be too weak).

4. Dip the quartered cabbages into the salt water. Shake off the excess water and then put the "brined" cabbage into a storage container.

5. Sprinkle additional salt onto the brined cabbage.

6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you have used all the cabbage.

7. Let the brined/salted cabbage sit for 24-48 hours (the cabbage should look pretty wilted when it is ready. ) Make sure the cabbage is sitting in such a way that the water which is drawn out can drain off or at least not touch the cabbage. Ideally, put the cabbage into some sort of strainer and put the strainer over a bucket

8. Take the cabbage and rinse off the excess salt.

9. Rub the chili paste(yang-yome-jang)* all over the cabbage and pack the cabbage into an airtight container.

10. Let the cabbage sit in the refrigerator until it ferments to taste, or if you are in a hurry to get it fermenting, leave it out on the kitchen counter for 3-5 days (again, really judge when it is done by taste...the longer you leave it out, the tangier it'll get.)

11. Voila, you have Kimchi...this stuff can be eaten (provided it's been refrigerated) for up to a year after it's been put in the container. (In fact, I have some year old Kimchi that Mrs. Kumi gave me, and it's DELICIOUS!)

*Here's how to make the chili paste...and since Mrs. Kumi didn't give me an exact recipe, I'll approximate it here. The finished product is a semi-viscous dark red paste/soup. She said that all she uses is garlic paste and Korean chilli paste. The mixture was thin enough to spread all over the cabbage, but it was not drippy or runny. It was able to amply coat the cabbage. It was also just mildly spicy. In fact, it was not that spicy at all. If I were to make my own, I might try to use a stronger pepper. Regardless, it seemed like the mixture was about 1:1 chilli pepper paste to garlic paste w/ maybe a little extra water thrown in. I could imagine a Cuisinart would be perfect for making the paste.


Okay...That's all for now. To recap, Amy and I got WAY more than we bargained for, but I' super happy we got to experience this part of Korean culture. Everyone here gobbles up TONS of this stuff, and now, I have the secret to make it!

Standing in a Row

Occasionally, there are some kids that stand in a row in the front of the school during the morning. I never never realized until today (when one of my more fluent students told me) that those kids are being punished for some sort of wrong doing.

Part of me thinks it's a great idea, part of me thinks it's a horrible idea.

Regardless, before this morning, I used to try and talk to the kids, and I could never figure out why they wouldn't talk to me. Now, I just feel like a bit of a chump :-)

Anyway, I'm just gearing up for the marathon this Sunday, so I've been lying low, watching TV, getting to bed early, and well, that's about all.

I've been watching Breaking Bad. Be careful, it's addictive!


Tomorrow, a bunch of people are coming to my house for Thanksgiving...we're eating pizza. Details to follow!

On Newness and An Old Familiar Rhythm

I reap great enjoyment from trying new activities and going to new places, and I reap great enjoyment from doing things that are part of my good ol' familiar rhythm. In Denver, I had gotten stuck into only doing things that feel into part of my normal routine. I had lost balance between the same and the new. It takes more energy to seek out the new than it does to walk down the path of the familiar, and sometimes, at the end of a busy work week, all I wanted to do was head up to my condo in the mountains and ski. Without a single complaint, I can report that I skied and biked a ton of days last year. However, I did just that: skied and biked a ton of day. Where was the newness? There was none.

As I am always striving to better myself, a new part of my effort will be to remind myself that although it takes energy to seek out newness, the input is always almost less than the benefits that are output, and thus even though at the end of a busy week I understandably tend to do the same old same old, I need to muster up a little more energy to seek out the new and in doing so ensure that I don't let a place become stale or uninteresting.

In the future, I'll continue to do the things I love, but I'll seek out new places to ski, new routes to bike, and in doing so keep my surroundings fresh and exciting.

I am coming to realize the sense of staleness I felt in Denver, in largess, was due to my lack of seeking out the new.

Filler

Paragliding

I don't have much to say this week.

In a nutshell, I went paragliding last weekend. It was SUPER fun, and I'm now completely convinced that I eventually want to learn how to fly solo.

Last Sunday I ran 15-miles, and to that end, I'm running a marathon on November 27th. I'm really excited to run the race, and I'm really excited to take the month of December off from marathon-training and just go back to working out for sake of the enjoyment it provides me.

I'm in the process of figuring out what I am going to do for winter break. I'd love to come back state-side, but I'm trying to save some money, and though it'd be a true joy to visit both Denver and Boston, I think using my time off to come back to the states would prove to be anything BUT restful.

I found a small Asian-grocery store in my town. I know you're probably thinking, "Aren't all the grocery stores there Asian?" but they don't have the type of stuff I'm looking for, i.e. Thai and Indian spices, etc.

Eh, I guess that's all for now. If this came off as quite bland and uneventful, that's quite reflective of how this past week has been. Like I said earlier, I'm quite excited to run the marathon on the 27th, and then not have to devote so much physical and mental energy to that goal.

Chigae (again)

So, I just had some more chigae. Where as before last week I was only eating chigae from the equivalent of Korean fast food joints, I am now eating chigae from those same places but also a new little find right across from my house. I believe I wrote about the place before, so to quickly recap, there is this restaurant literally 20 feet from my house and the food there is TO DIE FOR.

Tonight I made the arduous journey over to the restaurant, ordered my usual, kimchi chigae. Being the only one in the restaurant, I figured I'd seize the moment and try to ask the chef (an approximately 50-60 year old woman who is insisting I call her "Mom") to watch her cook my favorite dish. At first I didn't think she understood what I was asking, so just sat back down at the table, but minutes later, she brought out all of the chigae ingredients to my table and using the burner that is in the middle of the table, cooked the chigae right in front of me. It was great!

Here's the recipe.

1. Get some good ol' stinky kimchi (the older/more fermented the better)
2. Add about 1 cup of kimchi, and about 1 cup of hot water to a pot and bring the whole mixture to a boil.
3. Once boiling, add about 4 ounces of pork. (I'm not sure of the cut, but it looks like thick cut bacon, and it cooks/becomes tender with only a little cooking, so I'm quite certain it's NOT pork shoulder...maybe it's loin, but loin is more lean than this stuff...again, I think something like thick cut bacon (minus the smokey flavor) would be right) Also add about 4 ounces of tofu, 1/4 cup scallions, 1/4 cup roughly chopped onion and about 1 tbsp of minced/pressed garlic.
4. Bring the whole mixture to a boil and let it cook on high for about 5 minutes. Add salt to taste, and voila!

If you're inclined to make the above recipe, keep in mind it serves about 2 people, and DON'T forget, the better the kimchi you start with, the better the chigae.

Anyway, I'm super excited to have received this little cooking lesson. I tried to leave a tip (tipping is not something you do in Korea) for "Mom" but she adamantly refused and then insisted on sending me home with a doggie bag of extra chapche (noodle salad). I'm totally blown away by her hospitality :-)

Sundae and Commitment...I know, a bizarre combination.

To the left is a picture (not one I took) of Sundae. Pronounced soon-day, it is the first food I have encountered here in SoKo that I'd rather not eat. Now, I won't go as far as to say that I don't like it, but I will say that if ever I find myself faced with Sundae and some other option, it is quite likely that I will take the 'other option.'

If you've yet to Google Sundae, than you don't yet know that it is a sausage filled with glass-noodles and pigs blood. Yep, as the sausage cooks, the noodles get saturated in the pigs blood, the blood itself coagulates, and voila, the sausage turns into a semi-solid mass.

An unsuspecting victim, or someone near starving might gobble down quite a bit of this Korean specialty before even thinking to ask about its contents, and admittedly, I ate a couple of bites before asking my co-teacher about what I had just consumed. However, and I'm somewhat embarrassed to write this, as soon as I knew what I was eating, I no longer fancied the dish.

The moral of this story is that mind can conquer matter. Quite simply put, had you told me that Sundae was made of something I considered appetizing, I likely would have eaten the entire dish and asked for more, but the notion of gobbling down loads of coagulated pig-blood sausage, well, just turned my stomach.

So, I'll check that off the list of "strange things I've eaten." I'm still trying to get my paws on some dog (pun intended), and I'll report back on that as soon as I've barked up that tree (pun intended again).

Also, and this next piece is totally unrelated to the above post, I've come to discover a pet-peeve I didn't realize I had: Flakiness. I'm not talking about the type that comes from filo dough, or the white ones that come from a dandruff ridden scalp, I'm talking about flakiness in people.

I think it is of the utmost importance to "say what you mean and mean what you say." And yes, I know that is super cliche, but it's also super important. I try to be a person of my word. If I say something, I do it. If I don't think I can do something, I don't say it, or at the very least, I'll always tend to under-promise and over perform.

In any case, I think being good to your word is the first way to communicate to the world that you are a dependable, trustworthy, mature, even-keeled, well put together person, and as simple as it may sound, I sometimes have to put in a concerted effort to not be a flake. Commitment, in any form, be it in a romantic relationship or friendship, be it about agreeing to meet your friend at a coffee shop, or be it about agreeing to take a hike, is something that takes work. By definition, actually DOING what you say you are going to do requires energy. Heck, doing anything requires energy. But, what I've discovered from trying to live by my own advice and doing what I say I'm going to do (and believe me, I have definitely broken some of my commitments before), is that it makes me happier, it makes me more confident in myself, and I think people around me pick up on that vibe too.

I didn't have a particular point to make but rather the desire to just express that thought. And now come to think of it, maybe this is the point. There's no to commit to anything to which you don't think you can come good on. The trick is knowing before you commit to saying something, and thus feeling obliged to follow through with action, your own personal boundaries and will to do the thing to which you have just verbally committed. Or, in more simple terms, you don't have to commit to anything you don't want to do.

I firmly believe that. And here might be the larger point. I think life is WAAAAAYYYYY too short to live for the next moment. I think life is way to short to commit to something that you detest right now with the hope of enjoying yourself later, and I'm not trying to argue against deferred gratification. In fact, I believe strongly in the notion that oftentimes enjoyable things come after some of the upfront "grunt work." But, I also believe that enjoyable things can also come after some upfront work that does not seem like "grunt work" and which is enjoyable in and of itself. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, I don't necessarily believe in the notion of "no pain, no gain." I think often times you can gain even more if along the journey you aren't in pain.

To try to tie this all up for your sake (and frankly, for my own), I think it is extremely important to realize that it is not necessary to commit to things that you do not enjoy. Avoiding such commitments will allow you to engage in activities and experiences that lead you down the road to more enjoyable experiences, and additionally will have given you a great ride along the way.

And I think the big realization I'm having is this. You are the only one who can decided to what particular path you are going to explore. Again, the trick is knowing before you commit to saying something, and thus feeling obliged to follow through with action, your own personal boundaries and will to do the thing to which you have just committed.

Completely distilled: Discover what you love, and commit to doing what you love. If you commit to things you love doing, it is easy to keep your word.

Snitches Get Stiches And End Up In Ditches

When during my first year at The Contemporary Learning Academy (CLA), the school at which I taught in Denver, I asked a student to identify who had thrown a paper ball across the room, he said to me, "Mister, snitches get stitches and end up in ditches." And if you've yet to figure out what that means, in other terms it means, if you tattle-tale on someone, you stand to get beat up or hurt in some way.

That was the ethic amongst the students (or most of them) at CLA. From affairs at school, to affairs in the streets of their neighborhoods, most of my students staunchly believed that 'snitching' was taboo. In practical terms, it meant that most of my students handled almost all situations without consulting any formal authority figure such as a teacher or a police officer. Sometimes, I'd hear about one kid getting jumped by a gang of other kids, and though had I been the one who was jumped, I would have immediately thought to call the police, that thought would have been one of the last for most of my students. So, to recap, at CLA snitching was taboo. Period.

Fast forward to today. In my classes, I often play instructional games with my students in order to facilitate them practicing the key phrases for the day. Often time I award the winning team with candy, or penalize the losing team by requiring them to clean my room for two-minutes after class. Today, I was not giving out any candy which meant that the losing team had to clean the room for two minutes.

As class came to an end, it became clear that team one had lost by quite a few points, so I excused team two and three, and asked team one to hang around and clean the room for two minutes.

Team two and three shuffled out of the room, and team one came rushing towards my desk. Exasperatedly, about five students, in the best English they could muster were trying to tell me something that seemed extremely urgent. For about 30-seconds, I could not figure out what they were saying. And then it hit me. They were telling me that two of the students from team one sneaked out of the room with team two and three. More over, the remaining members of team one went as far as to write done the full names of the two who had left, and they told me the name of their homeroom teacher.

I was totally taken aback. Not only had about five kids come forward to tell me about the two students who had left, but they had NO hesitation in doing so. Their ethic seemed to be one that openly acknowledged a wrong had been committed, and knowing they were on the "right side of the law" decided to come forward and point out the situation.

There are tons of thoughts in my mind as to why students at CLA are extremely unwilling to tattle-tale whereas my students at Samnam have no hesitation, but since I'm off to dinner, I'll have to get back to that later.

In short, I think my CLA students unwillingness is related to most of them being raised in a culture where they held minority status, where at least in part due to that fact, were socialized to distrust authority figures in general, and moreover have come from a history of oppression and subjugation from the dominant class. Though I do not yet know my Samnam students as deeply, I can at least say that here in racially homogenous South Korea, I'm sure many of my students are coming from a VERY VERY different place.

More on this later...Now it's time for some Chigae.