Travel – Page 6 – Life In Limbo

24 Before 24: Run a 10K Race!

October 8, 2014

You may remember that a while ago, I announced that I was going to be doing the Busan Half Marathon this fall. I started out that journey feeling really motivated and positively, but unfortunately my body had other plans. After about a week of running high mileage days every day, my knee started complaining and eventually went on strike one morning and I could barely put weight on it, let alone run, without it screaming in pain. I am very stubborn and did not want to give up, especially since I only had 3K more to go to meet my training goal for the day (…) but finally I was forced to listen to what my body was trying to tell me: “too much”. Having started my training a bit late, I wasn’t able to take rest days or chip away at it over a longer stretch – it was all in or nothing, and my body had decided for me. I went to see a specialist at the hospital who didn’t speak much English and told me, in essence, not to run. Ever.

After that, I decided not to be an idiot – a surprisingly difficult thing for me to do. I knew I could run 10K, since I’ve been happily working on my 10K endurance this whole running season, and so I could give myself a break in training and still do the race. Also, considering the fact that I’ve never run a 10K race before it should have been my logical first choice for my birthday list goal in the first place. So I amended my goal to be a 10K race instead of a half-marathon. This sucked for me because I really hate changing goals and because I had just announced I was going to do the half here on the blog so suddenly I was embarrassed as well as disappointed. Thanks to some good friends telling me (in kind words) not to be an idiot (I need constant reminding), I got over it. I took some weeks off and then went back to my normal running schedule of about 2-3 times a week. And then this Sunday morning I woke up bright and early and ran one of the most beautiful runs of my life with a seriously great personal best time.

Busan is home to the Diamond Bridge, a beautiful suspension bridge that stretches across the water connecting two parts of the city. Along one length of the bridge is Gwangalli beach and the mountains, along the other side is ocean as far as you can see. It’s absolutely stunning from the mainland, especially at night, but it turns out it’s just as beautiful of a view when you’re actually on it with thousands of other people on an impossibly beautiful, blue-skied, windy day.

Due to a strange flaw in the registration system for the race, our alien card numbers weren’t accepted and our registration was rejected after the deadline so we couldn’t try to register again. We’d heard from friends that in years past it’s the easiest thing to run it without registering but I was still nervous about not being a registered runner. Up until we were on the bridge I felt sure someone was going to pull me off to the side and tell me no. I needn’t have worried! It was easy to get in (really, no sneaking of any kind was required as there were no barriers or blocks) and nobody was checking.

The race itself was funny, as so many things in Korea are: there was no security at any stage of the race, people walking in totally normal clothes carrying shopping bags, little kids walking along with their mothers, selfie sticks everywhere, and people stopping smack in the middle of the bridge to take photos of each other from every angle. At the water stations they were giving out water and….wait for it….choco pies. Yeah. I also saw a mom and son walking the wrong way up the very narrow shoulder into oncoming running traffic just as the route had narrowed for the final burst to the finish line, presumably to try and cheer the father on from the least ideal spot imaginable. The bridge speakers loudly played some seriously bizarre music, it sounded like the soundtrack to a post-apocalyptic action movie. And so on and so forth.

Walking up to the start and for the first kilometer we were moving slowly, shuffling basically, in an enormous crowd of people of all shapes and sizes. Many people were using the race as an opportunity to just walk across the bridge and I don’t blame them, it was beautiful – I only wish there had been more division of lanes so that the people walking wouldn’t have stretched out so much across the wide bridge that the race, at certain parts, was an endless dodge of people walking or pushing the occasional baby stroller. That being said, there were great volunteers clearly showing people where to turn back for the 5K (it went halfway over the bridge and back) or which lanes to stay in for the 10K.

After the first kilometer, it opened up a lot and I was able to run, albeit sometimes needing to dodge people like I said. Having never done another 10K race I don’t know if this is normal or not! I almost instantly lost my friends after agreeing on a spot to meet up at afterwards, but it was for the better anyways, I prefer to run alone. I turned on my music and my training app and just enjoyed myself, the breeze, the beautiful view and the blue sky. I’m so used to running alone that it was bizarre to be around so many other people. I had to remind myself to just try for my own personal best, to dig deep when I needed to and appreciate myself for trying when I needed to.

I only stopped once for a split second to take a picture, and the rest I ran at a steady pace. Within the last 3K, two of the half marathoners passed me – the half marathon did an 11K loop before running our same 10K route – and I marvelled. They were so beautiful – two African runners with the most effortless gait I’ve ever seen up close. And they flew past me and everyone else, practically catching up with the car that drove slowly ahead showing their time. They had run literally double what I had in the same amount of time and it really fired me up. I dug deeper and ran the last 3K much faster than the previous 7, in the end shaving close to 30s off my average time per kilometer! I had started my tracker about 0.2 km into the start of the race, but I ended up running 9.79 km in 1:03. I trust my app measurements, and that means I ran at a pace of 6’26”, which is a personal best for me.

At the end I felt amazing. It had been like a wind tunnel on the way back, and my ankles were a touch sore, but I sprinted to the finish line and felt totally incredible. I got a little medal saying I did the 10K race and I am still so proud of myself. It would have been foolish to try and run the half marathon, I know now that the 10K was absolutely the perfect goal for this stage in my life. After the race, I found my friends and we were all feeling great. We stepped around picnics spread out everywhere on the pavement with tons of bottles of makgeolli (rice alcohol) and beer and lots of Korean food – all at 10 in the morning! We hopped on the subway and treated ourself to some delicious, well deserved brunch before heading home.

I’m so excited I did this race, and it only inspires me to try to do more scenic races in different beautiful locations in the world. I’m so happy to call this one crossed off my birthday list.

Oedo Island, Geoje, Korea

September 22, 2014

I spent the weekend on Geoje island exploring and eating good food with good friends. Yesterday we took a ferry to Oedo island, a completely stunning tropical paradise. The island was created by a husband and wife team for more than 30 years before unveiling it to the public. Apparently it used to be a rocky island like neighbouring ones in the area, but to see it you’d never believe it. The whole place is lush and green with spots of colour and absolutely gorgeous views.

The ferry made us nauseous (big time) but when we docked at Oedo, it was instantly worth it. The place is wonderful, with sweet gardens tucked away in corners, interesting and modern statues everywhere, palm trees and pathways with a roof of branches. Any way you look there is a beautiful vista, and in the end we just sat in the spot that offered the best panorama of the place. It was easily the highlight of my weekend and one of the best places I’ve visited in Korea.

How to Learn Korean

September 17, 2014

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been making an effort to learn more Korean. I know what you’re thinking: I’ve been here for six months, so what have I been doing all this time?! My mom agrees with you, and is always (rightly, I might add!) reminding me to learn more of the language. I think after the initial period of getting settled, coupled with the mini-upheaval of changing jobs, I never felt like I had the mental space to tackle such a task until lately.

In my defence, Korean is one of the 4 hardest major world languages for native English speakers to learn. The others are Japanese, Chinese and Arabic. The research estimates that you would need 2200 hours of dedicated study to become proficient in any of those languages, which makes the whole thing seem a bit hopeless! But fortunately I spend 8 hours a day talking to cute munchkins who are incredibly skilled at speaking and writing Korean, so I’ve been using them to my advantage.

1. Learn to read Hangul

Hangul is the Korean alphabet with 24 vowels and consonants. It’s actually one of the easiest written languages in the world, even though it looks a bit scary at first. Unlike Japanese and Chinese character systems, Hangul is based on sounds. It was created by King Sejong, quite a popular guy in Korea, back in the the 1400’s. His goal was to improve the literacy rate of the Korean population by making a system so simple that anyone could learn to read it. It was said about the characters: “A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days.”

It’s true though! It doesn’t take long to learn the alphabet, maybe a couple of hours.

I had a lot of success with this infographic, Learn to Read Korean in 15 Minutes. It’s a cute cartoon, but it’s also really effective. I still remember most of my consonants based on the memory aids they give you.

I also love the app Memrise, which I used to solidify my knowledge of Hangul. The system uses smart, user-submitted memory aids to help you learn new letters and words, and they’re usually very on point and helpful. Memrise has all kinds of courses for language, trivia, general memory training and more, and it’s all free. I used this course for Hangul.

Of course, learning the characters often doesn’t help much because although you can sound out and read words, you don’t actually know what the Korean word means. So while I can sound words out phonetically, it doesn’t really help me unless I learn the word itself.

2. Learn some basic phrases

To my credit, I did learn some basic phrases when I first moved to Korea. I try not to go anywhere new without knowing the words for “hello” and “thank you”, and Korea was no exception. Here are my top 4:

????? (annyeong haseyo) = Hello!
????? (gamsamnida) = Thank you
????? (mian hamnida) = I’m sorry
???? (eolma eyo) = How much is it?

You can also learn phrases from an app – there are tons on the app store or online. One that I downloaded (but admittedly have not used much) is this Learn Korean Phrasebook. It’s fairly extensive, very easy to use and has voice recordings of each phrase from a native Korean speaker. It’s helpful to have around in case you need to learn something new in a jam, but I usually prefer learning phrases organically from my students or my friends. I also know how to say “I love you!”, “stop that” (3 different ways), “let’s go”, “don’t go”, “turn right” and “turn left”, among a few other things.

I also very recently discovered the Youtube channel Talk to Me in Korean which will hopefully teach me even more!

3. Learn helpful words

This is where my students come in. I have a few classes that have an English spelling test every 2 weeks. I recently began telling them that on the day that I teach them their new English spelling words, they could teach me Korean spelling words, and that we’d have our tests on the same day. This doesn’t take up too much class time, they absolutely adore teaching me Korean words, and I get to learn something new! I’ve been writing out my words on an index card with the English translation, and practicing them each day while saying the words out loud.

Thus far, I know the words for chair, eraser, orange, pencil, crab, flower, book, earth, sun, bag, hand, finger, face, he, she, we, and person. It’s pretty awesome to see the patterns between the letters and start to recognize some words as I hear them spoken in class.

There are some courses on Memrise that look great for learning individual words as well, like this one for the 100 Most Frequent Korean Words.

4. Practice!

Of course, the most helpful thing you can do when learning any new language is to practice, practice, practice. I’ve been trying to practice saying the phrases I’ve learned to my classes (and laugh when they gasp and ooh and ahh and get excited over my attempts to speak Korean) and to shop clerks (it’s thrilling when they understand and reply without batting an eye). I try to learn new phrases from native Korean speakers both mini and adult, and use the new words I’ve learned as much as I can.

Despite the title of this post, I have definitely not finished learning Korean and it’s very possible there are better ways to learn it that I don’t know about. Do you have any tips on learning Korean, or languages in general? I’d love to hear them in the comments below.

Observations in Korea / 04

September 15, 2014

I am almost exactly halfway through my time in Korea. It's whizzed by for the most part, and I can barely believe we're halfway through September already! It totally snuck up on me, and in some ways it feels like I've been living in Korea forever. Even these past few weeks, there were a couple times when I honestly couldn't remember whether a few things were done differently back home because it's been so long. I've never been away from home or my family for this long before, and with the changing of the seasons I've been getting a touch more nostalgic and wishing I could hang out at home with the people I love. That being said, Korea continues to be equal parts hilarious, baffling, frustrating and awesome, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the rest of my time here plays out. Here are some more random observations from the past few months.

Most of the escalators here work by motion sensor (ie. only start if there's someone walking towards them) which seems like an awesome, efficient way to save energy. What I do find strange are the constant public service announcements on escalators, reminding you to hold the handrails with both hands (??) and watch your children, etc. This was one of the things I couldn't remember whether we had in Canada – do we?

Speaking of public service announcements, there are usually several every day on any major beach in Korea. They're broadcasted from speakers, reminding you in several languages to watch your valuables and that you're not allowed in the water after 6PM.

The oceans in Korea are patrolled and controlled big time, which feels different from home. You're not allowed to swim past a certain buoy line, not even at your own risk, without being shouted at through a megaphone. On the few days this summer when they deemed the water unsafe (a process that to the naked eye, looked a little arbitrary although I do understand it can actually get quite dangerous), lifeguards patrolled the whole coastline, not letting anyone into the water past their ankles. One such time I tried to reason with the Korean lifeguard, saying “Could we walk out to our waists? We can swim!” He replied, “I know you can, but I can't let you because they can't,” motioning to our fellow Korean beachgoers. I don't know if his statement is in any way true or not, but his logic doesn't make a lot of sense to me either way.

Foreigners need to get a health check in order to secure their visa to work in Korea, and it's a pretty intense process. Blood work, urine test, height and weight, vision test, hearing test (I've never even once gotten one in Canada), and a chest x-ray. Most of which begs the question: but why? Some parts I understand, but others not so much. Also, I had a full health check done when I first came to Korea, but when I changed schools they required me to do a second full check even though it had only been 3 months.

In Busan, it is very common for locals to bring their own music on hikes or walks and listen to it out loud through speakers.

Many children here are utterly terrified of teeny tiny dogs – as in scream, burst into tears and run away or hide behind their parents. Big dogs are pretty uncommon in Korea (a byproduct of the fact that most people who live in cities live in apartments), so I haven't observed what they're like around bigger animals, but it's pretty bizarre to watch. I've even seen some teenagers and adults equally scared!

Korea is a country in general very fond of its air conditioners, but for some reason, gyms are not air conditioned. They'll have fans going and leave the windows open, but it makes for a pretty sticky, sweaty experience.

Most gyms provide clothes to work out in and plenty of towels with your membership. This seems very handy if for example if you wanted to stop by on your way home from work but didn't want to deal with the laundry.

At most beauty stores or counters whenever you walk in, you instantly have one of the several employees practically right at your elbow, and they follow you around the store wherever you go. I'm someone who dislikes when people hover even mildly close by in stores, so this for me is always a bit much.

It's really common in Korea for people to order few dishes and share them all together out of the same pot. This tradition has carried over to Western-style food too – I've often seen a Korean couple splitting a single burger.

The men in Korean couples very frequently carry the woman's purse everywhere and all her shopping bags if she has any.

Selfie sticks are really common here. They're everywhere, all the time, with people of all ages. Heaven forbid you ask someone to take a photo of you, right? Not to mention the fact that they look pretty ridiculous. That being said, Korean photoshoots are legendary – it's not strange to hear the clicking of a phone camera dozens of times in a row for identically posed photos – so perhaps they know that no stranger would be willing to take as many photos as they would ideally want!

In the summertime, a lot of Koreans often pitch camping-style tents on the beach for a beach day. From what I understand this is to avoid the sun, as many Koreans don't like to tan and often swim fully clothed.

Taxi drivers are a force to be reckoned with. They'll often get mad and scold you if you get in the cab facing the wrong way from your destination, and some (so I've heard) won't take you if they decide where you're going is too close by or too far away.

Spam is a luxury product here. It comes in fancy gift sets for Chuseok, paired with cans of tuna and bottles of olive and grapeseed oil as a deluxe package worth upwards of $30.

Stores and restaurants can get built overnight in Korea, or at least within a matter of days. It's totally normal to see a gutted storefront transformed into an operating business within two days or less. Renovations happen extremely fast as well.

Squatting is common among people of all ages – from babies to teenage boys to moms to business men and of course grandmothers and grandfathers. It's amazing and inspiring to see how easy it is for them to get into such a deep squat and be totally comfortable in it.

***

Once again, I could go on for hours talking about cutesy phone cases as big as my head, exercise machines in public parks, and how often random locals ask to take pictures with us foreigners even if we're doing nothing in particular. There are so many things that are different here from back home. Whenever I start to forget I live in a foreign country (which believe it or not, can happen!), I'll experience something very Korean and be reminded again. But despite all the differences for the most part it's a great place to live, especially because we are surrounded by so much absolutely stunning nature: mountains, beaches, beautiful skies and rocks and forests. All in all, it's a very interesting place to call home.

See my other observations posts here.