Green Tea Caffeine High

I was riding a train on full throttle by the time my last class showed up last night and I was wired.  It might've had something to do with the fact that I was on my seventh cup of green tea for the workday.  And these weren't sissy English "can you fancy  a cup of tea?" cups either.  These were full on Astros cups. Yummy yummy. Needless to say class was exciting and there was tons of laughing, learning and silliness.

Beautiful People on my Classroom Wall

So a couple of days ago I get this awesome card from the Morrisons.  Inside was their New Year's card and a pic of all the kiddos.  Well I stapled it up behind my desk and so of course all my students ask who they are and I say they're my cousins.  Well this brought on two hilarious conversations with two different classes. 

The first one happened with ine of my older classes.  They looked at the picture and asked who they were and I said they were my cousins.  They looked a little harded and one girl pointed at Alex.  "He must've gotten your mom's sibling smile!"  I was like what?  And she explains further by saying that "you and him smile exactly the same."  And she was darn proud of her observation.  Then I told her that he was adopted and they looked at me and she goes "teacher you never told us you were adopted."  This brough on my telling them the story Mom told me about at the life insurance office and the lady asking "where'd Byron come from? In the midst of all the J's."  My students thought that was funny.

The second one was with one of my middle level classes. They saw the picture and then one girl asked if they were mine. And I said that I wasn't married and I didn't have any children. Then one of the girls goes "don't lie to use and hide them from us.  Samuel (another older teacher) shows us pictures of his child."  This brought on my question "how old do you think I am?"  I will admit the guess of 37 cut a little deep. Then when I was done showing them my driver's license just so they'd believe me one student said "Teacher at 28 you're still old enough to have a family."  I asked her why she'd been talking to my mother or my grandmother before she came to class and she understood that and laughed. 

Almost the Start of a New Year

Okay so I'm back on the peninsula and I was thinking that when I got back I'd try to be more consistent with these blog updates as my New Year's resolution, well seeing as today is the 14^th of the month I can't quite say that I've succeeded. However, if I go off of the Lunar calender then it isn't the New Year yet so I'm ahead of the curve. When I got back to Korea I made sure to eat the foods pretty soon that I missed in the short time I was gone. It's funny that here I was with a list of restaurants and foods that I almost had to eat get into my belly while I was stateside and then coming back to Korea there were foods that I had to eat when I got here. Jet lag didn't really hit me when I was flying to the states. I was up for almost 48 hours before my flight with a couple naps so I slept like a baby on the plane and then all I needed was the occasional nap on James's or Grandma's couch. When I came back however I suffered from wicked jet lag. I thought I was a bear there for a short period as I just needed to hibernate.

Before I left and since I've been back I've been riding the train and I used to ride the slowest train almost all the time, but then I branched out and road the medium speed train and then this weekend going to Scott and Heana's I road the KTX (the higher speed, less stops train). I've noticed that the stewards on the trains differ according to the price of the train tickets. The cheapo train that I usually take has dudes that come through to check tickets. Then the medium level and KTX have long legs, skirts and cute faces. However, the customers are usually the same on all three of them. I sat next to one gentleman that I swear I thought I'd have to midwife at some point as his legs were poised so far apart that he could birth a calf. Oh well, what can ya do.

When I was headed up that way after class on Saturday, I had a quick layover in a town for about 20 minutes. I decided since it was 9:50 that I could quickly run into Costco that was right next door to the station before it closed at 10:00. I ran in and was trying to tell the girl at the front I only needed one thing, but she didn't seem to care as long as I was in the store before 10. I was shocked when I got inside as there was no rush by people in the store to be making their way to the counters to start to check out. I grabbed my two giant blocks of cheese and checked out, got back over to the train station and got back on the new train.

When I visited Scott and Heana's I got my Christmas gift box of cookies from Joyce. Heana didn't enjoy them as much. She made Scott and I put them away because they were too tasty. My favorites were the lemon shortbreads. They were quite addicting.

What a deliciously addicting book to read.  Also please note:  This isn't the only type of book I've been reading lately.

There wasn't anything that said I couldn't eat the box.

Someone's belly is happy.

One of my classes this new term (I say new term, it did start in December) is a mid-upper level class that is filled with 3^rd and 4^th grade girls, 10 of them. They definitely make me smile and keep me on my toes whenever I have them. That being said, they produce some of the best quality work that I have seen by students of similar levels.  It's actually become something that I've started copying their homework out of their books and posting it on my walls.  This got my other classes to increase the quality of their work because they wanted their work posted as well.  Now I've got one of my five minute breaks every class making somewhere between 5 to 10 copies of pages in books that are just awesome.

The peninsula is unusually colder right now than it was this time last year. In Suncheon it's not snowing, but it's not warming up to melt the ice that's been on the ground since I've been back. When I got into Seoul after my plain landed there was black ice everywhere and it was hard as hell to walk around with my boots on. Since it was colder I bought a ceramic fan or my apartment instead of using my floor heater since my bed is no longer on the floor and it was one of the best things. Turn it on and have it oscillating and it has a timer on it so it will automatically turn off that way I can put it on, fall asleep, and not worry about waking up as a crispy fried onion.

Melanie and Cathy are making sure that my head and ears are warm.  :-)

Today we had a short meeting and I made barbecue chicken sandwiches with mac and cheese, bbq beans, creamy corn and bread pudding.  Yummy 

Ok that's about it. Love y'all and this will (fingers crossed) be the beginnings of a trend of posts to come. Here's to the New Year and a healthy blogging habit.  I just need to post whenever I tell my mom that I'm posting so that she doesn't give me flack about not following through on my promise of a post.

BBQ Sauce and My New Race Packet

So I was talking about BBQ sauce that I've been using as a chip dip too and decided to take a photo.

I also just got my race packet for my 10k in Iksan this Sunday.  I'm starting to think that green is the universal color for 10ks.  All my numbers seem to be green.  'm also glad that this race has the shoe timer chips.  The ones that are a box taped behind the number are annoying because they just hit you the entire time you're running.  I love though when they release books where all the non-Korean names are at the back of the list.

I think they know me too well as they only included 3 safety pins.

Mexican Catering, The Astros and Chickens

We just finished a week of testing for our students.  I was very proud at how well a lot of them did.  Running has been going well and working out in general has been going better now that my cardio work of doing sets on my punching bag before runs has started again.  I tore a nice size hole in my bag a couple of weeks ago, but with some sewing skills, some twine and enough Kelly green duct tape, it’s good as new.  I don’t know why Kelly green seems to be the only color available here, but I took advantage of it and branded my bag with a new symbol covering up the old Chinese one. 

Duct Tape and Permanent Marker have never looked luckier.

Cool chilly weather has happened here in Suncheon.  Still to quite cold enough to break out the overly puffy jacket, but a light jacket or a sweater are usually par for the course when I ride my bike home after work.  Wednesday night however I made an exception and donned a running armor shirt underneath my retro Astros tshirt to celebrate the leakage of the new logo.  I’m so happy that they’re taking a trip back to the good ole days.  I only wish I could’ve been in Texas so that Pizza, Craig and I could go to the release.  I wonder how long it will take before Korean copies are available.  I’m not overly a fan of orange typically, I’ll make exception for Poke orange unless Dad wears it 6 1/2 days in a row, but I’ve always loved the rainbow jerseys of old and so the Astros going back to the Orange and Navy color scheme makes me so happy.  My fingers are crossed and lots of hope in my heart to see a Navy uniform with Orange pinstripes as a potential alternate.  :-)  Made my day when the new logo leaked.  I’m so happy that brickyard red is hitting the bricks, pun intended.

Orbit sporting the batting practice jersey and the new unis behind him.

The new batting practice jersey.  Probably my favorite.

The alternate jersey.  My second favorite. 

The home jersey.  Very classic.  Very classy.

I've never been a fan of Houston's grey jerseys in the past.  This one isn't too bad.

In celebration of Dia de los Muertos I did Mexican day for the people at work.  I tried to do a rendition of Grandma Davis’s chicken tortilla soup.  I don’t know if it’s a perfect copy of hers, but it was yummy.  There’s not really chorizo in Korea and I wanted to add that flavor, but ground pork with fajita seasoning that cures overnight seemed to come close to remedying that problem.  Also I think this week’s batch of Mexican rice as my best batch ever.  I wish there had been leftovers.  Oddly enough chicken stock or chicken broth is not really available here in Korea.  So I was thinking of what to use and there was a big giant pot of it staring me in the face.  I used the broth from the finished soup and added it to the rice and OMG I’ll have to do that from now on.  I also threw some of the soup broth into my chicken enchilada casserole too.

The spread.

Rotisserie fajita chicken for the soup.

Chicken enchilada casserole.

Rice and beans of course.

I found this at Home Plus and was super excited.  It wasn't quite as tasty as Hatch salsa, but it was definitely better than just average stuff.

Tortilla soup.

After the staff hurricane.

Speaking of chickens, I always used to think the electric rotisseries on barbecues were a little ridiculous.  I wish I could slap my former self out of that ignorant mindset.  My poor little rotisserie got a workout in prep for the Mexican food day doing three birds in two days.  I can’t imagine the type of awesomeness I could create on a barbecue rotisserie where two, three maybe even four birds at a time is possible. 

There will be more chickens done next week for lunch meats.  Barbecue chicken sandwiches will be my lunches for a while as this delicious chipotle barbecue sauce is evidently not something Koreans like and instead of 5000won a bottle or $5, it was on clearance for 300won or $0.30 a bottle.  I lucked out indeed.  It also makes a splendid chip dip.  It’s like a blend between Smokey Moe’s and Bullseye.  It’s definitely not Rudy’s or Stubb’s, but it’ll definitely do for now.

One of the newer guys at work who hasn't been here for any of my other lunches was like “When I heard we were having Mexican food today, I expected just a mini taco bar. Dude this is like… catered.”  Well with tortilla soup, shredded rubbed chicken to top the soup, Mexican rice, refried beans and my boss and his wife’s favorite my chicken enchilada casserole, perhaps it is like catering.  Always fun trying to get into a cab on days I’m bringing food to work.

 After our fun filled Mexican day at work, the boss wanted to continue the fun at the bowling alley.  I usually am good for one game, but by the middle of the second game my arm is pretty shot bowling as Mom puts it like Pat, AKA throwing the ball down the lane as fast as possible making the pins fly everywhere.  This night I tried stepping it up in weight and slowed my stroke down significantly.  We bowled 4 games and my score was relatively consistent through all four and I didn’t have the sporadic open frame like I usually do because of the pure chaos that is me throwing it down the lane.  This time there was more control and so I think staying with this pattern I’ll start to see my score get back up to where it was when I was playing multiple times a week.  I just to put a little more power into it without losing the target control that I’ve gotten through this new method.

Kevin showed up as we were wrapping up our third game.  He noticed something that we all found truly interesting.  The teams were the under 35ers vs the over 35ers.  The first game was close, but the second and third games they truly opened up on us.  Kevin was the first to notice how drunk the under 35ers were compared to how little the over 35ers had drank.  Definitely an enlightened observation haha.

I got a backlight for my bicycle so I won’t become roadkill on my trips home now.  The best part about both my front light and my rear light is both have a cradle and are removable without removing the cradle on the actual bike.  This is nice because I know that nobody can turn them on and wear down my batteries if they’re in my key bucket at my apartment.

That’s about it for now.

Life is Good, but My Apartment ISN'T

Life is good.  Enjoying my daily bike rides to work, made a awesome minestrone soup the other day that I didn't on making "soooo" much but ended up being about 12 liters worth.  Oh well.  If it had been nasty I would've been bummed about it, but it turned out delicious so no harm no fowl.

Runs are going good.  I'm signed up for two runs in November that are close and on Sundays.  Both good things.  Classes are going good too with the kids.

The new apartment that we've been waiting to move into is almost done.  Unfortunately almost doesn't get me into it.  I haven't seen anybody working on it in the past couple of days :-(

My apartment however is falling apart.  The entire complex hasn't had internet since Sunday morning and then to top it all off I as of this morning don't have hot water again.  In July not having hot water stinks but isn't a huge deal.  In the end of October in Korea, not having hot water is not fun at all.  Hopefully it can get fixed while I'm at work tonight.

Until later everyone.  :-)

Perfect Birthday Care Package

So what do you get for the guy living abroad from Texas?  Well you can't ship him a gun, Shiner wouldn't last in the mail, so the next best thing would be a box full, literally full, of chili spices.  Definitely a good day when you look through your care package and it turns the breakroom into a chili smelling bonanza during work.  I don't know who was more excited, me for the present, or the other staffers who know what it means.  Chili days when it gets a little cooler.

Also got a replacement Android tablet while I get some warranty repairs done on my older one and I'm in love so far.  The small size is perfect for fitting in the back of a pair of Wranglers (I specify Wranglers because I doubt they'd fit into a pair of men's hip huggin' jeans like you find over here in Korea.)  The nice thing is that once it is turned on it is almost an exact copy of my larger one that made getting used to it almost instantaneous  .

Got a new TV box at home.  Got a few more TV channels (like 200 more) and so there were a few more English speaking channels mixed in there.  I don't know where anything is anymore though on it.  Oh well.  I wished they had just upgraded our internet instead of our TV though.

Got a farting Bulldog card in the mail today at work.  Totally made my day.

Felt really self accomplished as I registered for my next 10K pretty much by myself (got a little help from a student).  When I went to transfer the fee for it at the bank the teller was cute when I handed her the account number and she goes "Bank?"  and I responded "Post Office".  Evidently that's a banking institution as well over here because she only smiled a little because I looked so perplexed, but got it taken care of.  One of my older students was asking where my next race was and I told her Iksan and she was like that's where my grandparents live and I instantly go "very cool, can I sleep there?"  Her face was priceless as it was a definitive weirded out face.  If Charlie had been in my class he would've offered up Grandma Shannon's or Dee's house in heartbeat for me to stay at.

Gotta go, class starting soon.  Today's topic is Ancient Greece Democracy so for me it's a fun topic.  Oh god, UD what have you done to me.  The ignorance that Georgetown High bred I probably would've thought Oedipus and Odysseus were contagious infections.

On a side note when I looked at the reason one of my younger kids was missing class for two weeks and I translated it and it came back as conjunctivitis I instantly knew what that was thanks to the years working at ESE.

Ok Bye for now.

PTaek Race and Oktoberfest

An interesting start to a race weekend. I had pretty much written off that I was going to get to do the Pyeongtaek race, as I hadn't realized it was a Saturday when I signed up for it. Well the stars aligned, and I managed to get my Saturday class covered for me and so I was cleared for the race. Another issue that arose was how was I going to get to the race. There weren't any trains that went to Pyeongtaek after my class got out at 10 Friday night. So I decided that I would go as far as Daejeon. Got into Daejeon at 2 and checked into a motel. Got some shut-eye, then awoke to catch a 6:30 train to get into Pyeongtaek at 7:30. 8:30 race time I thought I'd be good, as I had printed off a map to show the taxi driver and it looked as if it was a straight shot on a highway to get there.

However, it was more of a rural Texas highway with stops and stuff so it wasn't as smooth sailing as it should've been. At 8:15 I'm still in the cab trying to get loose and stretched. I can only imagine what the cabbie was thinking when I started getting out of my clothes in the back seat. Luckily though I already had my race gear on under my warmups so it was a PG show instead of an adult “tips are appreciated” show. 8:27 I'm still in the cab and I look ahead and we're like ridiculously close, but there's still a ton of traffic so I pay and hop out with my bag. I notice that there are other people still walking up so I'm appreciative that I'm not doing the longest race of the day as those start first. Left my bag in some bushes did a quick warmup and some stretches and took a much needed pre-race pee and I was set. There were a TON of people doing the 10k. I also haven't done a race in Korea yet where the freebee was a t-shirt. It seems like EVERYONE was wearing their free tshirt for the race. The cool thing was that you could tell the difference between different distances as the half marathoners wore blue and the 10kers wore orange and the 5kers wore lime green. I didn't get as good of a warmup as I would've liked so I planned to use the first 2k as a warmup up type workout. Just start in the very back and use the massive amounts of people to keep my pace down and keep my heart rate low.

Well that worked really well as I really enjoy weaving and passing people, so starting slow and consistent in the back allowed me the opportunity to do that for an entire race. A fair amount of wind coming into our faces during the middle 4k. Ran a 43:16 so that was over a minute off of my previous Korean 10k time that I shaved. I think with my training becoming more consistent, my races the next two months will have similar results. I know that I'm capable right now of doing the leap to sub-40 if I adjust my training, but I also know if I rush it, that I'll have to stop at some point because of my knee or ankle. I'd rather take it slow and not have to take a break from racing.

SIDE NOTE: There was the whole spectrum at this race. Lots of Army people from the base. Lots of tall tall Koreans (I don't see many of them down in our town). Shorter Koreans, that make me feel tall (much like what I'm used to in Suncheon). There were 7 Koreans wearing cheetah print running jerseys with Tarzan like sarong shorts, very interesting. One of the half-marathons was wearing a chipmunk costume. There was a Korean marching band that played the opening ceremonies. And then after the race there was a decent band that I would describe as being Korean jazz/blues. Really good sound. I liked listening to them. The guy that played the guitar for their group was really good.

At the finish line they put a 3^rd place marker around the lady runner that I passed with about a kilometer to go. That means I got beaten by two female runners, both of which were Korean as I had seen them when we hit the turn around point. It made me think of the 4^th of July run that was down in Austin one year right before the Willie Nelson picnic. Dad and I had gone down after leaving the 405 ice cream as they were starting the run at 5 o'clock in the evening so that people could stay for the concert. During the run I remember throwing up multiple times and there were ambulances and EMTs everywhere to assist runners that were as I imagine dropping like flies that day. At the finish line I was feeling like death warmed over and Dad comes up and looks at me and says “You know you got beaten by a girl.” It made me laugh and now even still I remember that more than I remember all the miserable hell that was that retarded race.

--Went online yesterday and found out that I placed 20^th overall, 18^th if you subtract the two ladies. --

After the race I started to walk out of the port as it would've been a complete mess for Heana to come pick me up down there. Walked probably a half a mile to a mile away when I found a gas station that I could score some juice at and also sit under an umbrella and watch movies on my computer as I cooled down. Found some police officers that were standing around eating snacks and had one of them tell Heana in Korean the address of where I was at so that it'd be easier for her to come pick me up than for me to try to describe it. She got there and wanted to eat lunch at the place that was right next to where I was waiting and so I had a dosirak (I'll explain in a future post) and she had a noodle soup. Mine came with a warning to her for the white guy that it was spicy, unfortunately it wasn't really. This dosirak however was the biggest portion that I had ever seen. Her portion wasn't that bad either, and so we were thinking that since it so close to the port that these are sailor portions. Hers wasn't spicy like either one of us thought it would be, more of a sesame oil flavor. They were both tasty, just not what either one of us was expecting.

That night after a nap, we hit up Oktoberfest on the base. It was kind of a bummer when we got there that they were out of steins, but we had a few cups of a Honey Weiss that was very tasty and had a good flavor too it. Had a pulled pork sandwich with a barbecue sauce on it that could strip paint (quite tasty but could've used a scoop of cole slaw to complete the sandwich flavor). Then had some nachos, and a chili dog. Completing the spectrum of stadium foods missed, haha :-P.

After leaving the fest we hit up the indian casino (not owned by actual indians, but had the same feel as the one right by OSU that James, Erin and I went to that one time) on base for some penny slot fun. We all made a little, lost more, and had fun.

Then we went for tacos and beers at various bars around the strip.

During the course of the night when Scott would introduce me as his younger brother, his buddies would look at us and be like “really?!” And then they'd ask to see id and then they'd still be skeptical. They were like “So, if my last name was Smith I could find another Smith and claim to be brothers too. Davis is a pretty common name.” 6^th most common last name in the US to be exact, so he does have a point. Nevertheless it was a fun night.

Made me miss similar nights with James. Now his friends either know we're brothers, or some of his friends just don't ask for id like Scott's friends.:-)

Rode the train home Monday morning, there was another nun on the train with me [what is the deal here?] This time I wasn't watching 2 and a Half Men so it wasn't any big thing, haha.

Birthdays

Let me begin by thanking everyone for the love extended my way on my birthday.  I certainly felt it coming from all directions.

I also found it interesting to read through all the texts and Facebook comments that I received.  It was almost like a timeline of all the assorted nicknames I have had past and present.  The only two that didn't make an appearance were stickboy and #3 which are both two of my favorites.  Both of my new Korean ones popped up and a couple just easy ones from family and friends were there too.

Birthday in Korea started with me giving myself a pass on a day of running.  Then it was a 4-egg omelet, an episode of Criminal Minds, then off to work.  At work 2 students showed up for what I was thinking was going to be the most boring day ever in the classroom.  The topic was the Marmaray Tunnel.  My first thought was WTH?!?!  Then as I listened to the lectures I realized that they were perfect lectures for taking notes and working on note-taking skills.

We had a blast during class.  Then, afterwards ensued a night of bowling, darts, drinking and karaoke.  I bowled terrible, played a little better at darts, and sang some of mine and my fams favorites at karaoke.  Let a little red-headed stranger out into Korea with "Always on my Mind" for all four grandparents.  A little "I'm a Believer" for Mom and her sisters and then threw some Beatles and some man in black in there for everyone else.  Ended the night with a duo of AC/DC and Bon Jovi to bring in the morning light.  :-)

Here's to another 365 of good health, happiness and fortune, or at least 2 out of 3. :-)

Korean Clothing

So before I start this isn't a post praising or trashing Korean clothing, just two observations.
First, this last Sunday was the Korean holiday of 추석 or Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving).  This is where you go visit your relatives in their hometown.  So a lot of people leave Seoul to travel to little cities around Korea like ours.  Most of my students are lucky because they don't have to sit in traffic as their grandparents either live in town, or are just a town over.  On my run on Friday I was running past the preschool that I've previously posted pictures of (the one with the awesome window slide) and I enjoy running past this school because they seem to have their kids out of the school a lot taking advantage of the walking trail and just going out and enjoying the fresh air.  On Friday, they were all dressed in their hanboks, traditional Korean clothing, and it was so cute.  There were four classes out walking I guess to a picnic area or something and it was awesome.  It made me think of kids in the us that are that age all dressed up for picture day as it isn't what they typically wear day-to-day.  Wish I ran with a camera.

Second thing was yesterday on my cooldown after my run I was jogging around our neighborhood and I saw a lady walking towards me and I noticed her shirt and it made me chuckle inside my head.  She was wearing a polo shirt with one of those embroidered recoil pads sewn in for skeet shooting.  This made me laugh as this lady probably has no idea why the shirt even looks that way, but I smiled even furthermore because "who in Korea thinks to sell skeet shooting polos?"  

:-)