The charitable effort didn't end that day with the Gapcheon 10K. We continued into the night by playing dart and poker tournaments at one of our favorite local bars here in Daejeon. 8 of us entered the dart tourney - mostly our good friends. 2 groups of 4 set out side-by-side in cut-throat cricket. The top two from each game would advance and play a championship round. It ended up being Sarah, Vinnie, Nic and I ... so the finals were set and included 4 of the same people we always play with on a given night at the bars! I guess all of our practice has been paying off!
Vinnie accused Sarah and I of teaming-up and not going for each other, but his conspiracy theory proved short-lived when I had to bump my own lady-friend down into last place (by accident, babe ;)) just before closing out the game. It came down to the last few throws, but I was able to fend them off and claim my prize of wine and Bailey's! I now had won the race AND darts for the day! I was going into the poker game looking for the illusive triple-crown.
Poker was a well-organized but light-hearted game amongst 20 friends. I worked my way to the final table with a decent chip-stack but started to run a little bit low around the final 4 or 5. One of the guys commented that if I were to win all 3 events for the day, they would each get to take one free kick at my gentile area. It seemed worth the risk, but I fell short and finished in 3rd place.
In the end, the whole event was a TON of fun and raised almost 2 million won (about 1800 dollars) for MS research!
After that weekend came the Daejeon Rock Gym Bouldering Competition. I entered and climbed fairly well for my own personal level but was nowhere NEAR any level necessary to compete with these guys! Two foreigners - both good friends of mind - made their way into the final round so we got to cheer them on but the local pro's crushed everyone and gave us an amazing show in the meantime! here is a quick facebook video of the comp winner climbing the final route! http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=645575311592 I'm not sure if the level of difficulty will show through, but let me assure you, this is SICK (maybe world-class) climbing! He gave one more attempt after this and actually finished the last move - the hardest boulder problem I've ever seen sent!
Then came the big 'Drama Festival' for my school. This is really a big deal every Christmas season as it is the best chance to demonstrate to the parents (and community members too) how awesome and wonderful the students are. Of course then, their success represents the awesome-ness of both the educational system and teachers. :) We dedicated almost half of our classes in December to preparing the various skills that would be put on display! We all worked hard and everything came together really beautifully!!
When the night of the big show finally came, they all wore elaborate costumes and fancy make-up (yeah, at 4 years old!) and went to work! My kids, as the oldest and most advanced kindergarten students got to play the role of hosts and hostess by dressing up and giving the introduction and closing speeches! They did an AMAZING job and I was extremely proud of them!
Before it was all said and done, they sang and danced to Christmas carols, did a ballet performance, a theatrical presentation of Little Red Riding Hood and speeches! They were awesome. Easily the best part of it all for me was how clearly excited and satisfied they were from the whole experience. They worked hard all month and now had a finished product that the could be (and were) genuinely proud of!! I was really lucky to have been a part of it all!!
A few days after the Drama Fest, came our much anticipated (and much NEEDED after the stress of the month) CHRISTMAS VACATION!! Because of the magnitude of the trip lying in front of us, Sarah and I decided not venture far from home for this week off. We stayed in Daejeon and got some serious work done. We both cleaned and combined a bunch of stuff and sent two massive boxes back to Alabama where we'll catch up with them in early May. Then we researched and booked endlessly for our trip and tackled some housework too!
My big project for my apartment was to clean a nasty patch of mold that had been growing in the corner. As it would turn out though, this was no 'spray and wipe' job. I scrubbed through one rotted layer of wallpaper, and the next, and the next, and so on all the way to the cement wall!! To understand how this is possible, you have to know a little bit about my tiny little Korean apartment. It is set up (like most others as far as I can tell) so that all the steam from my shower, moisture from drying my clothes on a rack in the middle of the room and just condensation from the temperature difference along the outside wall have no place to go! Without so much as a bathroom fan to circulate some air, the walls are damp all the time and the only thing to do about it is to open your windows and doors.... only problem being, it's 5 degrees outside and I'm paying to heat the inside so of course opening the windows doesn't happen as much as would be advised. In the end, there was a decade worth of mold that had obviously been covered up and ignored by the building owner forever. Fed up with it, I dug in!
The project was not one I would EVER want to repeat... but I was able to extract one important lesson from the fungal event - vinegar kills mold! And without all the nasty and harmful chemicals that bleach leaves behind in your apartment. Who knew? I also got the satisfaction of fixing problem instead of covering it up. That's the only way I've really known!
Thursday night allowed me to get a good workout at the bouldering gym here in town with some good friends. It was the first time I had climbed in almost a month and kicked my butt pretty good! Either way, it was some badly needed exercise and also carried the good fate of getting invited on a day-trip to Muju Ski Resort the next morning - New Year's Eve!! I jumped at the chance and we were on our way less than 8 hours later.
