Sports and Exercise, with a few bumps.

I must admit, I never expected myself to be so active during my days in South Korea. I guess part of me knew that with less responsibilities at home, I'd have more opportunities to go out and do things; and boy, do I sure take advantage of that. For those who've read my prior posting, I mentioned I was doing swimming weekly, not at the same place mind you, but every Saturday I make my way to a nearby Community center (which Noel mentioned to me) and have been swimming there Saturday post my Korean Language classes.

It's been quite something to swim again, despite my first attempt being quite a disaster, my continued periods of swimming have proven much more rewarding, and I've been less sore or exhausted by being in the pool or the hot baths, so no further problems will plague me (hopefully). I do still need to buy a swimming cap, and I don't really like borrowing those they have at the center, but hey, when you need to swim, you make due.

Speaking of activities, this week was quite a tiresome
one for me, so much so that I actually didn't go swimming this weekend. Since the weather is turning so nice these past few weeks, and because our current theme project at school was based around sports, we had been organized to having sports day, twice, during the week. Sport's day is as it may sound; its a day where you play fun activities with the kids such as ball rolling, tile flipping, relay races and then some. We had to make it two days because we couldn't handle all three sets of classes in one session. Kinder and the older block of Elementary students had their day on Tuesday while the earlier block of Elementary had their's on Friday. Pretty much, it was a day packed full of fun in the sun with children running around like wild animals.

Probably the best thing about teaching is playing around with the kids, I always enjoy any time to go out of the classroom and play about with my students; it helps build bonds between them, though maybe they just enjoy the sheer fun of getting out of class. Anyway, my job through the festivities was to manage the "Ball Rolling" game, which involves two very large, blue and red colored balls that the children had to roll down a lane and back again; whoever finished their line first won.

Simple really, the other games weren't too complex either; though one that really got me surprised was Parachute Running, which actually was something I never heard about. The children wear colored parachutes on their back and run from one end to another. The parachute is suppose to hold the the child back, but since the wind was low, the chutes were more of show and a hassle for some kids; though many of them wanted to make the chute poof out and ooh and ahh their friends.

Suffice to say, the games, being almost with an Olympic motif were often fair sided, both teams would manage to get equal points before the final event, which was a tug of war. Now, let me just say, there are three male teachers, and a bunch of female teachers; so when one team has TWO of the three male teachers, it makes the game pretty one-sided. Thats how I felt when I was in that game with Kevin and Bryan on the other side, tugging both me, a few female teachers, and a whole row of kids over to their side.

At the end of the games, all of us were tired, but it had been a very fun week. It was also my first full week at Hapkido.

Hapkido, a Korean version of Akido, is a Defensive base martial arts. Through training of body and mind, you're able to develop skills and movements to counter attacking foes. Its exactly what sort of martia arts I've wanted to learn, and the Master there is very friendly and passionate about teaching us. I'm part of a class of 6 (including myself) of varying ages, so its quite nice to see others, both young and old, taking part in this discipline. I hope to achieve great things with this by the time I leave, and seeing it three times a week for 120,000 Won a Month doesn't sound so bad either.

You can guess with both Sports Day and Hapkido during this week, I was pretty tired, sore, and more or less busted up because of my activeness with the kids; like stated before, its the reason I missed swimming, but next week won't be the same, since its just Hapkido, I'll be back on the physical action routine once more.