As is very common when you are an expat living in Korea, a friend of ours recently finished her contract and decided to move on. What is always a sad happening offered JM and I the opportunity to gain some freedom. We purchased her scooter and have been touring around town on two wheels. It's great to have the freedom to go where we want, when we want! Also, with my sporadic work schedule, having transportation to get to and from home is awesome. Biking to work was a great workout, but teaching when you are sweaty is not ideal. I'm very happy to have my own scooter!
Jennika and I have been trying to keep fit in Korea. It isn't always an easy task. After what seems like the longest days of work, we are often left wanting the comforts of a couch, some junk food, and a mindless tv show to decompress before bed. For the past month, we have been going to Hulk's Boxing (I admit sparsely) and Jennika has been organizing pickup ultimate on the weekends.
Hulk Boxing is run by Jennika's friend, Amy, who is a kick-ass boxer from Canada. She has been keeping the ladies of Cheonan fit with her Boxercise class, an aerobics type class based on boxing. Recently, her and her husband opened their own boxing club that offers various workout options, boxercise included. Personally I found boxercise to be fun. It has a good mix of aerobics and martial arts. But, I tend to stick to the crossfit circuits.
My last time at crossfit things went awry. We had just eaten a nice salad for supper and biked to the club. During the first half of the workout I started to sweat profusely. Like gushing out of my pores. I new something was wrong because, to be frank, I never work that hard. I told the trainer I needed to take a break. I sat down with a queazy feeling and then it came to me. My supper wanted to escape and I had no say in the matter. I went and hugged that porcelain princess and tried to replenish my liquids. I haven't been back to the club since. Not sure if I'm scared to go back.
After our Pandamonium season finished, I started organizing pick up in Cheonan again. We have been getting a core group of people joining us on Saturday or Sunday afternoons and a few randoms who rotate weekends that they are available. It's been great! We've consistently been getting enough for a mini game. And on my birthday we had enough people come out to have a full 6 on 6 game going! Ultimate was my saving grace in Montreal. I met so many friends who I am still in contact with. It's a great way to meet people, get some exercise, and have fun. Some nights we've even been going out for dinner after. As an expat living in Korea, what more could you ask for?
If you are new to Cheonan and looking for a new activity, join our Cheonan Ultimate Frisbee Facebook group to receive invites to the pick up games, tournaments, and other Ultimate related activities in Korea.
June 8th
June 16th
Fueling up on some BBQ after the game.
Dark team on the line!
June 23rd - we had some great first timers who rocked!
Wow .. a whole year has passed since we started writing the blog! One of my first posts last year was about my birthday. And now here I am, living in Korea, celebrating 27.
All week I had been spoiled with cards coming in from my family. Getting mail from home, especially when anything that ever arrives in your mailbox is in Korean, is a welcome treat. Sarah even shipped me some Reece's Peanut Butter cups, which after the trip looked more like peanut butter pancakes.
The contents of Sarah's package - including pictures!
Mom's Card
Pancakes!
Everyone made the days surrounding my birthday feel special. I was treated to lunch by both Christine and Bre (my coworkers). One day I arrived at school to a gift on my desk from my closest Korean colleague, Grace. She gave me a traditional Korean jewellery box for my birthday. It's gorgeous!
The night before my actual birthday, JM and I joined our friend Nick and company for some NOREBANG! If you don't know what that is, well it's the Korean version of karaoke, but you are in a private room with just you and your friends! So you get to sing all the songs you want, and you don't have to listen to the random people in the bar who suck! It was our first time, and it was awesome.
Disco ball in our private norebang room
Nick being thoroughly annoyed by us singing Justin Beiber. Hatin' on the Beebs!
This year, my birthday fell on a Saturday. I was treated to breakfast in bed, but then JM had to work in the afternoon, giving some demo classes to potential students. I went with him to school because, even if JM wasn't around, I decided to make the best of it.
Yummy!
Bringing me breakfast!
JM being adorable
Home made card!
Funny Korean gift bags
A long time ago I had promised my after school class, Creative Expressions, that I would take them out to Korean BBQ for dinner. They eat cafeteria food every day - it gets boring. But admin had told me I could only do it on a weekend. This Saturday happened to be the first that I was in town (not traveling for frisbee), so I told my students to meet me at Bugil's front gate and we would head downtown. This is a class that I absolutely love. They are wonderful, funny, energetic, and all around pleasant students to teach. We went out for grilled meat and they surprised me with Ferrero Rocher chocolates for my birthday. It was so sweet.
Lunch with my students
Through Cheonan Ultimate Frisbee, I had organized a pick up game for later that afternoon, and we had the best turn out yet! Might have had something to do with the fact that I milked the birthday thing ... but who knows. ;)
Finally, on the Sunday JM and I went out for a really nice dinner. We hadn't been to any of the steakhouses in Cheonan yet, so we decided to try VIPS, where they also have an extensive salad bar (that has way more than just salad). It was delicious! I had a really lovely weekend and birthday. Thank you to everyone who made it special!
Not a day we have celebrated in the past (*cough* JM forgot), we decided to get dolled up this year and go out for a nice pre-Valentine's dinner in Cheonan before I left for Thailand. What started out lovely, ended up with me face planting on the icy sidewalk. But more about that later ...
We headed out to A Bis, a fancy Italian restaurant in Cheonan that has a unique atmosphere. The building is a house. A HOUSE. There are no houses in Korea that are traditional by western standards, but this building looks like a house/chalet from the Swiss Alps. And so, it became an Italian restaurant. The inside was so cute, with lots of period decor. We ordered a pasta and a salad to share and I was pleasantly surprised. The cheese was good, and the pasta was not over cooked (I like it al dente).
On the way home from our romantic dinner, my fears were realized. In Cheonan, the genius planners decided to line the sidewalk with marble. Yes, slippery when wet marble. So in the winters, or when it rains, the edge of the sidewalk is especially slippery. And you can imagine that on a fancy date night, I ate it pretty hard off the edge of the sidewalk and onto my knees. I could barely walk after and I had tears streaming down my face. Sadly, the evening was kind of ruined. But the dinner was good! :)
Merry Christmas!! Our day was special, even being so far away from home. Last night we spent the evening eating and playing festive games with my Flipside Fitness crew. This morning we decided to be just us. We skyped with our families as soon as we got up. Then we ate some breakfast and opened our presents. Jean-Marc got me an iPad stand so I don't have to lean it against various objects or my laptop while I'm Skyping back home and a couple books. He had previously told me about one of them, the Omnivores Dilemma, and I am looking forward to reading it. I also got JM some books that I ordered from the USA, one from a philosopher that he really likes, and a good quality knife set for the kitchen. Which he proceeded to cut himself with before he even got it out of the box.
Rather than going anywhere tonight, we decided to host a dinner party for those who, like us, cannot go home for Christmas, and/or have no where to celebrate. While Christmas is not as popular a holiday here as it is back home (in Korea it is supposedly more of a couple's holiday rather than a family one), it is still a national holiday, so everyone gets the day off.
There were 11 of us in total; two of my Bugil colleagues, one of my boxercise girls, six Nigerian exchange students who we met playing frisbee and JM and me. JM and I cooked 3 chickens and stuffing and everyone else brought different dishes to compliment: quinoa, potatoes, chicken skewers, and many desserts. We played a board game called Life's A Pitch where you must pitch your answer to the person who reads a scenario. Whoever gives the best pitch in the judge's opinion (which could be funny, plausible, clever, or just plain silly) is deemed the winner of that round. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and it made for a very fine evening with good company and lots of laughs.We hope everyone back home also enjoyed their day.
Both JM and I enjoy playing ultimate frisbee. In fact, playing pick up in Montreal and meeting that group of grad students is one of the fondest memories of my Masters. It really kept me sane knowing that every Tuesday and Thursday I could head out to the field and run off the frustrations of working in the lab and feeling like my research was going no where.
Discs of Tron - my champion indoor team, winter 2011
Multiple Scoregasms - one of my summer 2012 teams
Before moving to Korea, I joined the Korea Ultimate Players Association Facebook group to get involved. Unfortunately, KUPA is based mostly in Seoul and that's still a good chuck away from Cheonan. Two hours on the subway or train (in 1 direction!) just to play a game of ultimate is a little much. So JM and I decided to start a pick up group here in Cheonan. With everyone's work schedules being different, we opted to organize a weekend game. There is a huge soccer stadium just behind our apartment and it serves as the perfect venue.
Last weekend was our first attempt to organize pick up in Cheonan. I had heard that a guy tried to start a group awhile ago and it didn't take, so I was trying not to get my expectations too high. I posted the link to our event on three different FB groups: KUPA, Cheonan People and Flipside Fitness hoping to get anyone in this city who might be interested to come out. We ended up having 11 people show up (including JM and I) - six of us were from Bugil and the others were from elsewhere! Some people just saw our post and showed up, never even having played ultimate before. They are my favourite!! Brave souls that come out to learn a new sport and meet new people are the best. That's exactly how I started playing ultimate in Montreal and look how great that turned out!
We had a 30 minute warm up where JM practiced throwing a disc with the new players and taught them the rules. Then we set up the cones and got our game on. The level of play was perfect. No one was too hardcore and everyone seemed to have fun. I even took a disc to the face .. TWICE. It felt great to play again.
We are going to try and make this a weekly occurrence, alternating Saturdays and Sundays to give people who have weekly Saturday or Sunday commitments a chance to play. Already for this weekend we have 5 people signed up! Cheonan - see you on the field! :)
This is the entrance. On the mantel is a crochet piece my mother made for me when I was a young thing. The words on the piece are "I just got to be me." The hat was given to me on my first tour of Bugil Academy
Sporting my best Angus Young finery. In the entrance of course.
The bathroom just to the right of the entrance.
Spare-bedroom number 1. It has airconditioning.
The view of the living room from the entrance.
View of the living room from the second spare bedroom.
The kitchen (a bit messy). Looking from the living room. Tons of cupboard space.
The second spare bedroom. Not lucky enough for it's own airconditioning, but it does have a queen-sized bed
