We got our red belts this week. Here's a video of the test we took for them. The last bit is a martial art that we've been practicing called Taegukgwon. It's supposed to help your body maintain rhythm and patience. Enjoy!
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Friday, July 3, 2009
Cordia's Crazy Class
I took this video of my kids yesterday. This is one of my more rambunctious classes. They are Intermediate 2 level which is one level above the beginners. You may recognize some of the from the video of the 4 boys singing and dancing. They were being pretty good until they noticed I was videoing them...then they got a little crazy.
The "magic tricks" that they were showing off are a regular part of class...they think they're so tricky. Also, little Jung does his eye trick every day while I'm teaching them. He's also the kid who always taps the girl next to him while I'm teaching to show her his muscles....as you can see, they're quite big.
The "magic tricks" that they were showing off are a regular part of class...they think they're so tricky. Also, little Jung does his eye trick every day while I'm teaching them. He's also the kid who always taps the girl next to him while I'm teaching to show her his muscles....as you can see, they're quite big.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Beating the Heat
So we're not living in Texas heat anymore, but Daegu's weather is definitely what I would call "muggy." Combine that with mid-90's highs, and it's enough to make me sweat just stepping out the front door. But since we spend most of our time during the day indoors, we needed something to beat the heat in the apartment. We spent a couple of nights with the air conditioner on, which made it nice and chilly in here, but we couldn't help wondering how much our electric bill would go up from that. Solution! Buy a fan. Sounds simple, right? Well, it turns out that buying a fan in Korea may make you sweat even more because, suddenly, you have to worry about Fan Death.
Popular media sources (and even a statement from the government) say that Fan Death is one of the top 5 most common summertime injuries. According to these, when fans operate in a closed room, they can be responsible for suffocation, asphyxiation, and even chopping up the oxygen molecules in the air, making it useless to breathe. Even with adequate ventilation in a room, they can be responsible for hypothermia and hyperthermia if blown directly on the future victim.
So, it is believed to be extremely dangerous to sleep with a fan on in a closed room. This belief has even led to the addition of a "life-saving" device included on most fans sold in Korea: a sleep timer. Just like the clock/radio you have beside your bed, you can program your fan to turn off after up to 2 hours of running. If you feel so inclined, there is a wealth of information about this topic on the net just waiting to be read. Give it a look, and decide for yourself.
As for now, we will continue to live on the edge and sleep with our fan on. Full blast.
Here is one of the many warning messages inside the operator's manual supplied with the fan.
And thank God for this thing. The knob on the left is the life-saving sleep timer. Up to two whole hours of non-threatening breezy bliss.
-Us
Popular media sources (and even a statement from the government) say that Fan Death is one of the top 5 most common summertime injuries. According to these, when fans operate in a closed room, they can be responsible for suffocation, asphyxiation, and even chopping up the oxygen molecules in the air, making it useless to breathe. Even with adequate ventilation in a room, they can be responsible for hypothermia and hyperthermia if blown directly on the future victim.
So, it is believed to be extremely dangerous to sleep with a fan on in a closed room. This belief has even led to the addition of a "life-saving" device included on most fans sold in Korea: a sleep timer. Just like the clock/radio you have beside your bed, you can program your fan to turn off after up to 2 hours of running. If you feel so inclined, there is a wealth of information about this topic on the net just waiting to be read. Give it a look, and decide for yourself.
As for now, we will continue to live on the edge and sleep with our fan on. Full blast.
Here is one of the many warning messages inside the operator's manual supplied with the fan.
And thank God for this thing. The knob on the left is the life-saving sleep timer. Up to two whole hours of non-threatening breezy bliss.
-Us
Friday, June 19, 2009
Half-time Entertainment
These students graced us with songs and dances during one of our breaks yesterday at work. The group of four boys are Cordia's students. Now I know what really goes on in her classes.
Monday, June 8, 2009
A Lively Meal
One of our Korean friends will be moving to Canada this week. Before she left, she wanted to make sure that we had tried live octopus. It's not actually alive. The tentacles have been chopped off and are still pretty lively, much like a snake still squirms after it's been killed. You'll see in the video that we had quite a time picking up a bite to eat because their suction cups would stick to the plate! We thought eating with chopsticks was a chore! Eating squirmy food that sticks to the plate with chopsticks is a whole different story.
We had fun eating it, but we didn't find it too tasty. We've discovered that that is not really the most important part of a meal while traveling...sometimes even the food is just about the experience and adventure!
-Us
We had fun eating it, but we didn't find it too tasty. We've discovered that that is not really the most important part of a meal while traveling...sometimes even the food is just about the experience and adventure!
-Us
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Cordia's Birthday!
It's fun having a birthday in a country that's 14 hours ahead of your home country...then it's like it's your birthday for 2 days! My 24th birthday wasn't too wild. It didn't really get out of hand, but it was certainly meaningful. It started out on Wednesday when we got a package from Becky. And you may not believe me when I say that THERE WAS A CAKE IN THE PACKAGE! That's right...a delicious, moist cake mailed all the way from home! And it was scrumptious. It really was moist and perfect. It even came with birthday candles, so of course, even though I had several days to go, we went ahead an lit the candles, enjoyed a solo rendition of "Happy Birthday," and dug into the cake. Yummy!
Then on Sunday, Mitch baked me my favorite chocolate cake recipe ever: Perfectly Chocolate Hershey's Cake. It was perfectly chocolately, but it wasn't too cakey. Turns out, baking in a toaster oven doesn't produce the same results as you would expect from a regular oven.
Despite what it looks like, I had actually been awake for several hours in this photo. Ha! I guess I just hadn't looked in the mirror.
On Monday, I got a strange looking package from my family....my co-workers guessed that it was a nice painting, but I assured them that it was probably just shaped like that because Mom and Will had duck taped a recycled box together....
Looks like we were both right! The box was made from random pieces of boxes and duck tape, but it had a painting inside!....along with other surprises. Ha! Mom's bag lady habits came in handy! What an awesome display of gifts...they were all super glued, hot glued or taped to the board. Candy, snacks, a Texas Rangers baseball cap from Gavin, some new pants, my sister's regional track video and one act play video, sunglasses, and letters...
A double layered gift. Under all the goodies was a painting my mom made for me. :)
Believe it or not, this was the first of Cordia's birthdays that we have been able to spend together since we met.
May 24, 2006 - Mitch is taking summer classes in College Station, TX, and Cordia is on a vacation to Oregon
May 24, 2007 - Cordia is at home in Sunray, TX, and Mitch is studying abroad in Australia
May 24, 2008 - Cordia is at home again, and Mitch is at the Grand Canyon
May 24, 2009 - Cordia and Mitch are together, in their cozy little apartment in Daegu, South Korea.
I'm very happy that Cordia and I were able to spend this one together finally. I hadn't realized how special celebrating the birthday of the one you love, actually in the presence of that one, is. Given all my adventurous excuses for missing her previous birthdays, I'll say that this was my most favorite May 24 in all my life.
-Us
Then on Sunday, Mitch baked me my favorite chocolate cake recipe ever: Perfectly Chocolate Hershey's Cake. It was perfectly chocolately, but it wasn't too cakey. Turns out, baking in a toaster oven doesn't produce the same results as you would expect from a regular oven.
Despite what it looks like, I had actually been awake for several hours in this photo. Ha! I guess I just hadn't looked in the mirror.
On Monday, I got a strange looking package from my family....my co-workers guessed that it was a nice painting, but I assured them that it was probably just shaped like that because Mom and Will had duck taped a recycled box together....
Looks like we were both right! The box was made from random pieces of boxes and duck tape, but it had a painting inside!....along with other surprises. Ha! Mom's bag lady habits came in handy! What an awesome display of gifts...they were all super glued, hot glued or taped to the board. Candy, snacks, a Texas Rangers baseball cap from Gavin, some new pants, my sister's regional track video and one act play video, sunglasses, and letters...
A double layered gift. Under all the goodies was a painting my mom made for me. :)
Believe it or not, this was the first of Cordia's birthdays that we have been able to spend together since we met.
May 24, 2006 - Mitch is taking summer classes in College Station, TX, and Cordia is on a vacation to Oregon
May 24, 2007 - Cordia is at home in Sunray, TX, and Mitch is studying abroad in Australia
May 24, 2008 - Cordia is at home again, and Mitch is at the Grand Canyon
May 24, 2009 - Cordia and Mitch are together, in their cozy little apartment in Daegu, South Korea.
I'm very happy that Cordia and I were able to spend this one together finally. I hadn't realized how special celebrating the birthday of the one you love, actually in the presence of that one, is. Given all my adventurous excuses for missing her previous birthdays, I'll say that this was my most favorite May 24 in all my life.
-Us
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Strangers
Back home, you don't think too much about how many different colors of skin, different styles, and different languages are spoken every day around you. Really there are so many different kinds of people....different in all different ways...
Here, we've found that a person of a different background is quite a spectical. Since being here, we have had people stop in their tracks to stare at us, take pictures of us, and kids scared off by us. Most of the time, it is not done in a demeaning manor....just out of curiosity.
A few months ago, we went on a field trip with our Hapkido gym. There were about 100 hapkido kidos who went on the trip, and boy howdy were we the center of attention! Especially Mitch. We had a group of 10 or so kids at our heals most of the day...reciting every English word they could possibly think of, taking pictures of us, getting our autographs, giving us snacks, and just standing by us to look cool. :) It was pretty funny....and fun!
Here we are sitting on a bench with our new friends. As we sat on this bench (probably for about 20 minutes) 3 different groups of kids came and sat across from us to talk to us or just look at us if they didn't know English. It was like they had a rotating schedule...."Okay! Your 7 minutes is up! Now it's our turn to sit by the foreigners!"
At the end of the day, we were asked to be in every single hapkido group picture! Even with the kids who don't go do our gym! HaHa! What a fun day....
In addition: It's funny that we made this post today because later this afternoon, we went to play frisbee at a nearby park, and we saw the main kid who was obsessed with Mitch! We had stopped in to get some ice cream at a convenient store, and the kid was there too. He got so excited. He offered to buy Mitch's ice cream, and he stood by us the entire time we were looking at the ice cream selections, making several suggestions. Ha! Ha! What a funny kid..
Here, we've found that a person of a different background is quite a spectical. Since being here, we have had people stop in their tracks to stare at us, take pictures of us, and kids scared off by us. Most of the time, it is not done in a demeaning manor....just out of curiosity.
A few months ago, we went on a field trip with our Hapkido gym. There were about 100 hapkido kidos who went on the trip, and boy howdy were we the center of attention! Especially Mitch. We had a group of 10 or so kids at our heals most of the day...reciting every English word they could possibly think of, taking pictures of us, getting our autographs, giving us snacks, and just standing by us to look cool. :) It was pretty funny....and fun!
Here we are sitting on a bench with our new friends. As we sat on this bench (probably for about 20 minutes) 3 different groups of kids came and sat across from us to talk to us or just look at us if they didn't know English. It was like they had a rotating schedule...."Okay! Your 7 minutes is up! Now it's our turn to sit by the foreigners!"
At the end of the day, we were asked to be in every single hapkido group picture! Even with the kids who don't go do our gym! HaHa! What a fun day....
In addition: It's funny that we made this post today because later this afternoon, we went to play frisbee at a nearby park, and we saw the main kid who was obsessed with Mitch! We had stopped in to get some ice cream at a convenient store, and the kid was there too. He got so excited. He offered to buy Mitch's ice cream, and he stood by us the entire time we were looking at the ice cream selections, making several suggestions. Ha! Ha! What a funny kid..
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