Love the Travel
25 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Friends, International Schools, Life, Travel
Moving to Korea, we were pretty stoked about all the new travel opportunities. Turkey was exciting because of it’s proximity to Europe, the Middle East, and Northern Africa. Korea is exciting because we always wanted to go to Thailand, Japan, Nepal, the Pacific Islands, Hawaii, Southern China, Mongolia (the list goes on and on). For our winter vacation this year, we took a climbing trip to Thailand, and recently, for our spring break, we took a week to go back-country skiing in the world’s powder Mecca: Japan.
Tim and an old friend from our time in Quito, who now works in Singapore, planned the whole thing out. They found a tiny little ski resort near the city of Aomori on the most Northern tip of the main island, called Hakkoda-san. What was so special about this area is that there is only one tram up to the saddle of old volcanic peaks and then all the skiing off this mountain is back country! We also lucked out enormously. While we were there, we had powder turns maybe 4 of the 7 days. We even had a couple, very rare, blue-sky days. That was fabulous. We’ve not skied good, long, powder runs since we lived in Colorado and those were pretty far between then. I love deep powder. Only trail running after the endorphins have kicked in can match the elation I feel making tele-turns in some knee or thigh-deep soft stuff.
The other great thing was simply experiencing some mountain culture again which is something we deeply feel the lack of in Korea. It’s what will eventually drive us on to somewhere new. The area we were in attracted our kind of people, even though they were Japanese. They were friendly, smiling, crusty old souls with super fat skis and old faded shells. This was so refreshing and it really rejuvenated us to have some real winter surrounded by feelings of home. Of course it helped that the skiing was fantastic!
Tim took some really great pictures of our adventures so you need to click here to go to his blog, Teaching International.
Kitty Love is the Best Love
17 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Kitties and Cute, Life
I’m a huge fan of my cat. Seriously–she’s awesome and she adds so much happiness and comfort to our lives. If you are thinking you can’t take your pet overseas, guess again, and reconsider.
Running Songdo
05 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in Incheon, Korea, New Songdo City, Running, Songdo-dong
Every time we move, I am anxiously concerned with where and when and how much I’ll be able to run in my immediate vicinity. In Quito we had Parque Metropolitano, complete with a five mile loop trail and various interconnected single-track on the top of one of the upper ridges of Quito. That was a beautiful park, chock full of eucalyptus trees and sufficiently high enough above the city that in many parts of the park, you could believe you were in wilderness. And while I could run all year, as Quito is the land of eternal springtime, being on the equator means that you only have until 6pm to be done with your run because you can bet your arse I won’t be caught out alone in the park after dark. Yikes. So that was a serious limitation.
In Turkey we lived right beside beautiful rolling, empty hills, where you could literally run trails all day long because there were fresh water springs throughout. This was a wonderful sanity-preserver with two serious downfalls. While in Turkey you are safe from people, on the Anatolian plains, you are not safe from wild dogs and our precious hills had a large, aggressive pack of them. Many a run was cut short by those damn dogs. We also had a serious mud season out there from about mid-November to mid-March. So a large part of the year, I couldn’t even run outside. That will bum one out real fast!
Behold, Songdo, where I can run all year (when it’s not TOO cold) and all night if I need to. The city developers have taken great care to make walking (running!) paths of rubberized track surface, dirt, and pavement all over the city and around the city parks. I can even link up to actual trails in Incheon on longer runs, but this is about running in Songdo proper. The Pros: it’s safe, clear, and right out my door. Almost all the paths are lit at night so I don’t even need a head lamp on night runs! There are no wild dog and no serious mud. I can run all year, all hours of the day or night. Cons: No wilderness. It’s city running. It’s totally flat (which might be on your pro list) so I have to find some other way to incorporate hill training. The parks have piped in classical music which is totally annoying. So, you give a little, you gain a little. In the space between I find my sanity. Win!
Korean Ice
21 Feb 2012 2 Comments
This past weekend we climbed ice at one of the several man-made parks here in Korea. It was certainly bigger than I expected, better and more varied than I expected, and less crowded than expected. After 5 years not climbing, I was a little rusty and am sore now. But it was great fun and I can’t wait to explore more!
New Songdo Peek
16 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in Korea, Life, New Songdo City, School Tags: new songdo city
I forget that my blog can’t see my Facebook, and vice versa. Duh, right?
So here is a video about New Songdo City. The school is obviously Chadwick, which is fun, but the video is nice because it gives a more recent view of what the city looks like lately. With the San Francisco Search Fair beginning tomorrow, I’m getting an abnormally high number of hits on this blog. I’m guessing teachers are searching for info about Chadwick and the city and landing here? Cool!
It really does look like this–there are many buildings, parks, people walking and biking everywhere, and much more on the way.
Korean Drivers License
09 Feb 2012 6 Comments
in Booze!, Korea, Life, Travel
–this my first post written entirely from my iPhone! Technology is incredible!
Yesterday, Tim and I, having recently become car owners, had to get our Korean drivers licenses.
This our new Hyundai Starex, a diesel 4×4 with seats that fold down into a bed. We have owned cars in every country we have lived in. But this is the first time we’ve felt compelled to follow the foreigner license law. Koreans are a bit like Germans in their love for following rules.
Getting one of these puppies was a pain in the ass. We had to take half a day off of school due to inconvenient office hours. We first had to make an appointment with the US embassy to get our affidavit notarized saying that our driving licenses are, in fact, our licenses. This now costs $50. Side note: it now also costs $50 to add extra pages to your passport. This was free when I did it. No longer.
Once we had our stamp, we walked 3 blocks down to the Korean Press building at the City Hall subway stop. We went to the office and began the paper work, but, of course, you have to have two pictures. So we left to go get pictures made–thankfully only a block or so away. We went back to office. But before they can give you your new license, you have to take an eye exam. They sent us back out to the tube and we rode 3 stops up to a clinic to get our exam and about 20 very official stamps. This whole process was very 3rd world. Not like the Korea I’ve come to expect.
We returned to the license office and after much more shuffling of things, they confiscated our Colorado licenses and handed over these colorful things:
After all of the hours of running around, we went over to the Base where I was rewarded with one of my two most favorite beers ever:
And so all was well. The End.
Life Changer
27 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
When I was in second grade, one book changed my life. It was Charlotte’s Web and it so profoundly affected me that from that moment on, I went from being a kid who didn’t care one bit about school and books, to an avid reader and voracious book consumer.
I’ve finally met my second life changer:
A book so good that when I finished, I navigated back to the beginning on my trusty little Kindle and re-read the book, just in case I missed something the first time when I was so excited I might have skipped over some precious nugget of information–and just because I didn’t want it to be over. And when I finished the second time…….just kidding, but I did skim over and re-read my favorite parts. This is serious for someone who currently has about 800 unread books sitting on her Kindle and an insatiable need to read them all. To not immediately begin a new book–uncharted territory, my friends.
A little background info about your humble narrator:
I discovered running the summer before my freshman year of high school and it (and running cross country on a successful, close-knit team), more than any other experience has really defined me and set the tone for the rest of my life. Ever since high school and a short stint of collegiate track and cross country, running is something that has always been in my life. It comes and goes in waves mostly defined by the seasons, my location, and to what degree of injury I’m currently experiencing. But it has remained a constant, and I love running, deeply. I’ve not found any other thing I can do that can match the sense of elation I can attain trail running–except for skiing in perfect powder and that just doesn’t happen often. Running is a sure thing. But I have had moments (months/years) where I treated it like something I had to do, or something I needed to do to stay skinny, or something that is going to be painful that I’ve just got to muster through.
A few years back, I tried to train for a marathon, but instead I contracted a staggering and game-ending case of IT Band Syndrome. Over the course of the years since, I have rehabilitated this injury and continue to prevent it and treat minor flare-ups. But I’ve been too scared to try marathon training again. When I was originally getting this injury diagnosed, the prevailing message from sports doctors was to stop running. Running is bad for you. Even complete strangers feel compelled to tell me I’m going to need knee replacement surgery because I keep running. Even in Boulder, ultra-running mecca of the USA, every sports doc told me to take up cycling instead. I just simply could not believe this to be true. And I hate biking. I love running. I should be able to run.
This book changed my life because it has changed my knowledge about and my attitude towards running. It taught me how to find the joy in running again. And now, rather than waiting around for another injury to crop up, or enduring a 30 minute run so I can eat chocolate cake, I am embracing the sheer exultation and artistry of running that made me fall in love in the first place. I am treating running like a holistic part of my life rather than something I do on the side.
The book has generated A LOT of press and misconceptions (but it’s also changed hundreds–maybe thousands of lives too). Yes, the book makes the case for barefoot running and aggressive vegetarianism, but that is not the point or what it’s about. Probably one of the most exciting pieces for me is the evolutionary link that is made. We evolved to run long distances together in order to run down our food. He reiterates the point: what other species on this planet has the urge to gather by the tens of thousands to run 26 miles together? We were made for running, not cycling, you silly Boulderite docs. The link is also made that because we were persistence hunters and trackers, we also had to develop the need to be empathetic, make connections, think hypothetical thoughts, and make future predictions. And thus you have technology and science and the reason why humans have advanced the way we have. It’s exciting to consider. We are the running people. I loved one quote from the dude in his 90′s still running that Dipsea race in California, “you don’t stop running because you get old. You get old because you stop running.” Consider me inspired!
I guess really the important lessons are that you have to correct your technique (which is where the barefoot stuff comes in), build strength, and work on your eating habits (in other words fix a lot of things in your running life) in order to run with joy injury-free. And if everyone in the world were to realize all this and reconnect to their running roots, like they were born to do–like they evolved to do, you’d a have a happy, healthy, crime-free world. Because like I learned in high school, running makes you a better person in your heart and soul, too.
