Ultimate days!

I'm a man who needs nothing

yet has EVERYTHING.

: )

Once again, it's been ages since i've last written any kind of update. when it comes time to try to balance doing stuff and writing about doing stuff....... DOING STUFF usually wins. of course it does. If I didn't view life that way, this blog really would be lacking the essence that makes it feel worth writing - go, do, NOW! :)

I guess if the month of October had to be described as succinctly as possible, the word 'ultimate' would come to mind. primarily of course, because of the many consecutive weekends spent traveling around the country as part of the city-wide Ultimate Frisbee team - The Daejeon Pandemic. **obligatory shiver when you read the name** And secondly, due to the ultimate nature of the kinds of people I've been meeting and spending my time with!

Let's go all the way back to early October when the frisbee team was still new and talking basic strategy. Our second weekend of disc was down on the beautiful beaches of Busan. Sarah, Vinnie and I made our way down a day early and started the party drinking and relaxing on the beaches in the gorgeous early fall weather. When Jason found us there, he had the beautiful offer to meet up with a good friend of his father who would be happy to treat all of us strangers to a dinner ~ sounds too good to be true?? it actually turned out even better than it sounded!! we would quickly come to realize that this family friend was "kind of a big deal" in Busan! While treating us to drinks and a +$50 /person prime-rib dinner directly overlooking world-famous Haeundae Beach, he handed Jason a room-key to the $400 per night (or much much more??) Westin Chosun hotel!!!

The Westin Chosun in the background where we got our free room on Haeundae Beach!

after we all hugged Jay and gave due props for the sitcom-worthy hook up, we headed out onto the town, feeling something like celebrities. eventually we landed ourselves at the Paradise Casino just down the shore. there was only one spot open at the blackjack table so we pooled 20 bucks each and took turns sitting with the stack. We made a mad run and ended up cashing our mutual bankroll close to 500 a couple hours later!! we found a night cap spot with a sweet Phillipino band and finally stumbled our way home at 4-something in the morning laughing and dancing at the ridiculous luck that was being poured onto us everywhere we could turn! the mood of the night definitely matched our high-roller hotel reservation and fancy-pants dinner!!

The spectacular view from our balcony at dinner - Haeundae beach at night.

We woke up the next day and checked out of our hotel - there was, after all; still some frisbee to be played that weekend! we forced lunch into our slightly feeble stomaches and went to work playing 2 or 3 matches right there in the sand on Haeundae. things were going smoothly until the only other undefeated team at the time - the Busan Heat - stepped up and gave us our first loss of the season. We chalked it up to home field advantage and promised to meet them in the finals at the end of the month!

The home turf of the Daegu teams, host to half of our matches throughout the season.

The season continued and everyone on the team (and in the whole league, for that matter) grew closer to each other, better at frisbee and more and more enthralled - perhaps to the point of an unhealthy obsession - in the game of Ultimate. i was completely in LOVE with it; for the simplicity and pureness of the game, as well as just for the opportunity to compete in an organized sport once again - something that I tended to take for granted growing up and through college. This was my chance to get back into the action; an ultimate extention of college life; and, in that sense - a continuation of feeling young, healthy and excited!!

The weeks leading up to the playoffs netted me a very difficult decision. The frisbee playoffs happened to land on the Saturday before my marathon I had been registered for and looking forward to all summer. There was, of course, a possibility to still do both. however, it involved a train to Daegu Saturday morning, Frisbee playoffs all day, a train to Seoul that evening, find a place to sleep for 5 hours and then take a 2 hour bus to Chuncheon at 5 AM before the race, run more than 40 kilometers without stopping, bus back to Seoul and finally a train back to Daejeon. It would have been absolutely NUTS and that actually gave it extra appeal in the mind of a guy like me. But in the end, I decided to enjoy the weekend in Daegu with my teammates after the tournament, win or lose.

What does that mean for my marathon that i've been studying up on, training for, talking about, working toward since last spring??? I didn't do it. : ( it was sad to give up on something I had dedicated so much effort toward, but the bottom line in the decision came to this - there will be plenty of marathons,.... but only one chance to party in Daegu, South Korea with all of these incredibly awesome new friends I'd grown so close to - hopefully celebrating Daejeon's first Ultimate Frisbee championship all the while!

So off to the finals it was! We worked through the day beating two teams to earn our bid against the number one ceded Busan Heat in the finals just as we had promised them. We had a bit of an interesting history leading up to the game: both teams had finished the regular season 11 and 1, both of the teams' only loss coming against one another! The stage was set for a battle. Corny or not, I hadn't felt thas much like a gladiator since standing at the starting line of the conference cross country meet of my senior year in high school. ; )

We came out flat and they got ahead 5 - 2 on us shortly before halftime. We picked up the slack and battled back to take our first lead with about 5 minutes left in the game!! Time started to tick away with our lead holding at 7 - 6. "Final possession" was called while Busan had the disc way back literally in their own endzone - they would have to progress the entire length of the field and score without missing a pass to force an overtime period - one interception, one out of bounds or any incompletion would result in the end of the game and our victory!

any facebooker's that are interested (and friends with Sarah?) can watch the 2:30 video of the final point here: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=877165236945

WINNERS!!!! Daejeon Pandemic - Fall 2010 Daegu Ultimate Frisbee League Champions

We must have posed for 300 pictures with our golden trophy and all the booze that accompanied him!

The after-party was almost just as exciting as the game itself. Nearly the whole league made it out to Daegu's downtown and we let that city have it until the WEE hours! What an unforgettable season with some of the funnest people i've met in recent years! - to think i stumbled upon the league by accidentally running into and striking up conversation with one of the Daegu guys on an island who happened to be wearing his DUFL t-shirt this summer!? STRANGE HOW THINGS WORK OUT! (Thanks, Chris! sorry we knocked you out in the semi's!)

Thank you, Pandemic!!!!! :)

Icing:

On Halloween day, some of my teammates hosted a tournament in Daejeon where everyone who signs up is dropped into a hat and picked out on to random team for the weekend. This is where I first got my hand in a game i had slowly been learning about throughout the disc season - "The Icing Game" i guess you might call it?? whenever someone tricks you into unknowingly grabbing a Smirnoff Ice (a kind of lemony malt liquor drink about as strong as a beer) you have to drop to a knee and slug it down. they might hide one in your backpack, in a bag of tortilla chips, in a cake box or even hanging on saran wrap over the toilet bowl for when you lift up the seat! ;) that's the fun of the game; you always have to be on your toes!

Enjoying my first Icing at the 2010 Daejeon Hat Tourney. tastes like kool-aid spiked with sprite! what's not to love???

Halloween night was an absolute RIOT with all of the frisbee peeps in town! We went as the Daejeon Sparkle Party (which I'll thank most of you to not pry too deeply into) but it vas a super fun opportunity to dress like ziz posh gay German-Austrian man. Who vouldn't have a great time viz zat, yah?? :)

........ (sorry, Ma!) :)..........

Our costumes - The Daejeon Sparkle Party with John Lennon and Yoko.

Life at work has been incredibly functional and civil these days! Enrollment is still MUCH more healthy than previous months (and climbing weekly all the while)! we have a boss who DOESN'T live in her office, and co-workers who teach and truly care about the kids! All of which seem like a given, i'm sure... but trust me when i say "you'd be surprised!"

Once our new boss was comfortable in her role, I was able to step back down to my normal duties as just a teacher and eliminate some of the extra hours and stress that came with the brief stint as English Teacher AND Educational Team Manager. Things are going great now and the school is a place that anyone should be proud to send their kids!!! (p.s. none of my bosses will ever read this so you know i'm not just ass-kissin!)

The Kid's College - Dunsan crew on our November field trip to the flower festival!

Little "Amy". I snapped the photog because someone was jumping on my back and i wanted to see who it was. It accidentally turned out to be one of my favorite shots of my travel so far.

This is a part of my life that i will NEVER forget (thanks in part to pictures like this one).

me and Muc surprising my co-worker Da-Jeong. Most Koreans would consider this kind of behavior out of the question as it does not 'save face'. guess Muc and I haven't been in Asia long enough to adopt that one! ;)

muc caught me showing off a little bit! :)

running out of chances to climb at my beloved Daejeon Wall!!

Pandemic season end party!! a LOT of people got iced that night!

The Daejeon boys doin' their thing up in Seoul for Gina's birthday!

There's no people like frisbee people!!!!

*smooch*

Sarah and I are doing better than I could easily explain to you in a couple of paragraphs, so you'll just have to take my word for it. it couldn't be more perfect!! we've started to realize that our time in Korea is winding down a bit and with exactly 3 months to go.... it will be over 'tomorrow'. with that, will start our next chapter that involves 2 months of travel and a few months of family vacations back home!! Broey will be meeting us here in Korea in the middle of Feb and then.... the world is OURS! the heavily edited (but nearing finalization) itinerary is....

(March) Vietnam

Cambodia

Thailand

Malaysia

Singapore

(April) Egypt

Italy

Switzerland

France

Spain

(May) ALABAMA

(June) MINNESOTA

Can't wait to see everyone again back home or out on the road somewhere!!

The people reading all of this probably already know and have her in your prayers, but please keep my aunt Mary, (who recently found out that her cancer has made a resurgence) in mind!! We love ya', Mary!! Be strong!!!!!!

weekend done with SEOUL!

Hey all! few fun updates to send back home... :)

Summer is here and things are finally starting to pick up out-doors-wise. Sarah has bought her own climbing gear and we are almost ready to start hitting some rocks full force! in the meantime, we have been showing her mother and daughter around Korea! We'll get to that later though...

Wednesday we got to go on a field trip with my school and checked out the local zoo. It was a little bit shabby of a zoo but apparently the best they've got around here. It kind of reminded me of Como Zoo where the anmials hung out on concrete in small spaces and looked mostly unhappy and lifeless. I think maybe i've been spoiled into a zoo snob though now after living so close to Omaha Eppley for that year plus. Hard to enjoy any other now!

But the kids had fun of course and we got to spend the day in beautful sunny and 70's weather instead of in the classroom. The highligh of the zoo was the safari ride where we actually drove a mostly-glass bus through the 'cages' which were much bigger and more comfortable looking. Lions, tigers, bears (oh, my... i know), zebras, giraffes, an elephant, etc that could walk right up to the bus! Very cool. : ) here's a couple of pics from the day.


William looking in awe at the giraffe :)

The driver was throwing them snacks! This was the most fun for me and the kids alike i think!

Thursday, i played hookey from Korean class again to go climbing with the crew.... only to find out that the wall was closed all weekend for a competition on Sunday. BUMMER. so i tracked down the other place i've been meaning to in daejeon which is the local bouldering gym. a friend had given me directions so i headed out with his map in hand.

I expected a bouldering gym but instead i found the COOLEST basement i've ever seen! This gym seemed to be someones old basesment totally converted into a massive bouldering area totally packed with holds and routes of all kinds! even all alone, i had an awesome climb sess and then headed to our now-regular screen golf thursday night! - improving but still have a LOT of work to do!



If i have my way, this is exactly what my basement will look like someday. visible in this picture are less than HALF of the holds that were on these walls. no square foot left uncovered! SIGH dream come true! :)


Then comes Friday. An advisor to my boss offered me dinner after work and i would have been a fool to turn him down eventhough it cut my packing time for Seoul down to about 15 minutes. I crammed some stuff in a backpack, shoveled in some food and headed to meet Sarah at the bus stop so we could go meet her mom and sister at the airport. We had about 3 hours to manage a 2 hour trip so we are way ahead of schedule, until...... bus is SOLD OUT! instead, we have to walk to the subway, subway to the intercity train station, train to Seoul and then use Seoul's massive subway system to get to the airport almost an hour away from there - it ended up taking us over 3 hours!! Not to mention, there had been a delay in one of the connecting flights for Sarah's family and we were not even sure if they had gotten off the ground in Tokyo or not!

amidst all of this, a thought occured to me... "man, am i glad the marathon is Sunday and not Saturday! I can't imagine how terrible it would be to have to run already tomorrow morning after all of these mix ups and run-arounds..... OH S***." It struck me just as i was thinking about how bad it would be that it actually was the case! I had Sunday the 29th in my head and realized that could not be correct. I called muc who was at his computer and he confirmed - i had barely eaten, barely slept and we still were nowhere NEAR going to bed.

Finally, as we sat helpless outside of the baggage claim, Sarah's mom and sister appeared magically form behind the big double-doors and life became good again!! we shuttled to a nearby hotel, checked in set my plans for morning and passed out.

I slept for about 3 hours and BARELY decided to force myself to put my feet on the floor and make my way to this race... it probably would have been better if i just stayed in bed but instead, almost 3 hours later, i was toe-ing the line in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the world 'ready' to race. Being outside the US, there were no mile markers - only Kilometers so that certainly was an adjustment but i kept on pace for the first 18Km (about 12 miles? - i was actually on pace for my best half time ever until right about this point!). The last few Km's were MURDEROUS however... i slowed significantly, was dizzy to the point of worrying about passing out and was in pain all over my body. I finished just under 1:36 - about a minute and a half over my best time - and practically collapsed outside of the finishing gate.

I have never had to work that hard on a race or been that fatigued after one. Maybe major over-share but i actually had to pee in my shorts a little bit becuase i could barely control my body functions and was too exhausted to move anywhere more appropriate. it took me 20 minutes to walk away from the finishing gate!!

Bottom line of that story is....... I WILL NEVER RUN A RACE THAT UNPREPARED AGAIN!!

then the tourism began! I met back up with the gals (Sarah's sister loves when i say that word - gals - guess they don't have it in the south :)) and they were very patient with me as i hobbled on behind them as we tourized Seoul for the 2 days that would follow. We saw it all and did it all, i would swear by how tired i was!

A demonstration of ancient battle and martial arts near Seoul Tower. Fun! :)

One of the last things we did was to take an elevator to the top of Seoul Tower where you have a 360 degree view of the entire city from about 1000 ft above sea level. They had distances to most major cities in the world written on the window that pointed toward them so i couldn't help but think about home and take the picture below:

Heading THAT way soon!!! it's strange the things that i'm looking forward to seeing and doing back home (other than the obvious friends and family of course!)


1. My cat!! i miss little blue more than i realized i would!!
2. Taco Bell, Davani's and Subway.... to name a few.
3. Driving a car! will i remember how??
4. Twins Games!!... this would be higher on the list if i wasn't too lazy to go and re-write this now
5. Hot tub! haven't found one here!
6. non-smoking clubs and restaurants - seems like everyone smokes here.
7. having a sofa to lounge on... my apt is bare bones.
8. listening in on conversations when you're bored... tough to do if you don't know the language their speaking.... reminds me of everyone constantly telling secrets around you... i wanna know!! :)
9. Bowling, casino nights, Karaokee on a stage instead of a little room!
10. Bonfires and the cabin!

AH, it's all coming up so soon!!!!!! can't wait! :) especially now after writing this!

This week: wednesday off for yet another holiday!! hiking and exploring with Sarah's fam, Busan city on the coast Friday night and Jeju Island Saturday!

thanks for reading! see you SOON!!

Alive and well!

Well, HELLO everyone!! I have no idea how to summarize these past few months, but I will certainly try my best to do so without too many boring details. After that, i'll try to post something every couple of days to stay up to speed!

After a couple weeks of shoddy communication, false alarms about the security of my job here and changing departure dates, I was seriously wondering if this was a good idea to be coming over here. My childhood friend, Ryan (muc), was already here in this city and was able to clear some things up enough to reassure me that i should just get on whatever plane they tell me - and that's exactly what I did. 30 travel hours later, I was here in Daejeon, South Korea with a suit case and two backbacks! I arrived Sunday morning and had my first full day of teaching less than 24 hours later.

i was lost, confused, frustrated... you name it. After making a dozen or so children cry on my second day and feeling totally hopeless as a teacher, I was trying to think of what kind of jobs i could get back home if i bailed. I was miserable for one full day!! day 3 saved me though and everything fell into place. i'll never get tired of hearing "Thank you teacha!" at the end of a class or the hugs in the morning that they run up to give you. It's insane to think that some of these kids i see more than their fathers do!! it's amazing how quickly i've grown attached to these little tykes! those are the things that make all of the 'hoarse voice from screaming at kids all day in a language they hardly understand' worthwhile.

looking back now, i can't understand how two months have passed! two months have made me 100 times the teacher i was, and also 10 times the person i was!!

outside of school, life here is incredible as well. mountains and National Parks EVERYWHERE. Beaches, islands, museums, nightlife, great food, ZERO concerns about crime... it's a great place to be! My apartment is in an ideal location walking distance to subway, main bus junction, all of the bars in downtown Daejeon, bowling, my school, a park with running trails, soccer field, basketball court, workout area..... it's hard to ask for anything more!

I'm sure you all have heard about my new girlfriend too, right?? Sarah is AMAZING and we have been extremely happy together since the first week i arrived here! was definitely NOT looking for anything like that, but she was too perfect to let get away! we compliment eachother beautifully and have a ton of fun. HOPEFULLY, she may be able to join me next month when I come home for Tonz's and Schmelle's wedding - it's a longshot, but we'll see! she is a proud Alabaman for your information... come to the other side of the world and meet an American!? :)

I spend my weekends either traveling around the country, hiking or bar hopping the city with dozens of other foreigners - mostly other teachers here for the same reason as me from all over the world. i met an incredible group of people by chance in my first week here and the crew of party people has been gowing steadily ever since. there are far too many pictures already to put up on this site but they are all on facebook (http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=185106315&ref=profile) for your viewing pleasure.

Too much else to say so i'm affraid i'll have to spare you a lot of stories at the moment. many of them may surface as i go on writing this blog this year....

for now, i'll leave you with my attempt to countdown the strangest sights/quirkiest cultural differences i've encountered so far.

10. Many restaurants here, you sit on the floor and cook the food yourself on a BBQ in the middle of your table.

9. There is no shower in my apartment - instead a showerhead that attaches to my bathroom sink and mounts on the wall.

8. my monthly salary is 2,200,000 won. yep, i'm a millionaire!

7. every park has gym-style workout equipment in it outdoors for free us.

6. This is an extremely active culture. you will find thousands of people on top of a mountain on any weekend day - women, children and elderly alike. THOUSANDS.

5. I lost muc's phone in a taxi my second day here and the cabbie brought it to his house two days later! "everything is like the 1950's here" -muc

4. I once saw a bus-stop transaction where one person got off the bus and another got on without the bus ever even coming to a complete stop.

3. the service here is UNBELIEVABLY GREAT! most restaurants have a button on the table that you push when you need something and employees litterally RUN to you. (another example; Sarah dropped her chopsticks on the floor at dinner the other night. they had barely hit the floor before an employee heard the sound and brought her some new ones.) :)

2. School-aged girls' school uniforms include their hair-do. everyone has the same 'lego-style' getup.

1. Bars commonly leave full 70 dollar bottles of wine sitting on tables or shelves as a display and apparently no one ever steals them. They also don't allow tipping and stay open until 6 am.