Slivovice & Hagelslag: May 2010

Well, it looks like a quarter of a year has passed since my last update. During that time, winter has faded into a short week or so of Spring, then plunged headfirst into the humidity and heat of the Korean summer. Cherry blossoms have opened their pink and white flowers, wilted, and given way to a thick sea of green vegetation which has taken over the skeletal trees of winter. We've become settled into our schools and life here and are finding that it suits us well. During the week we each drive out to separate corners of the mountainous Miryang district to teach at our respective country schools and then spend the weekends exploring, climbing, and having a good time. We're surrounded by a number of good climbing areas so we've been able to get out quite a bit. We're also surrounded by a number of famous temples and other interesting things to do. Basically, we're happily busy.

(Buddha Shrine set in a cave at one of the climbing areas)

This weekend Buddha gets down for his birthday and so we in turn got an extra day of freedom. On Friday we headed down to Busan with friends to go to the horse races (4 dollars won, 6 dollars lost) and then headed to watch a baseball game. Despite neither of us being gambling or sports fanatics, we both found these activities to be pretty fun. We'd planned to go climbing today, but the weather decided otherwise and so we went to visit a very famous temple set back in a small valley out by one of Kate's schools. This proved to be a nice way to spend the day and we're both kind of happy to now just be relaxing. We are very busy almost every weekend so finally sitting back and taking it easy is a nice change of pace.

(Miryang Arirang Festival - May 2010)

Last weekend we headed up to Seoul to run a half marathon. All in all the race went well. It was not my best race but Kate did very well, placing 11th for the women. We're hoping to run a couple of marathons at the end of the Summer - one at the very end of August and another in early October so this race gave us a good indication of our current running fitness. We were both quite happy with the race considering that we had both been sick for over a month with a combination cold / sinus infection. We both seem to be fully well now, though the day before the race we were both questioning whether or not to run it. Looks like it paid off.