Hello everyone!
I hope that you are well and enjoying your summer. Mine is cruising along too quickly, yet it's still bringing me a fair bit of enjoyment. Before I get into the usual updates and ramblings, here's an exciting thing: today is my 10,000th day of life! Woo hoo! haha. I don't remember why I looked into it a while ago, but one day I sat down and tried to find when his day would come, and today's the day. 10,000 is a pretty big number, and it makes me stop and reflect a bit -- what have I done with my 10,000 that really makes them all worthwhile? I think that there are a few things I'd list out, but I'll save those details for another day and another message.
Since the beginning of June I have spent a weekend in Japan, run my first race, helped some high school boys hone their frisbee skills and even gone paragliding for the first time. It's been a pretty full and active last couple of months. My trip to Japan was, as you could guess/already know, motivated by frisbee. I went there with a group of Koreans and foreigners to play in an Ultimate tournament in Fukuoka. I didn't realize until we were about to leave that this tournament, unlike one I had participated in a little before then, wasn't actually an international tournament; on the contrary, it was a Japanese tournament to which we'd been given an invitation because of some good relations between a few players from each country. We brought two teams to join the other 12-16 Japanese teams playing.
This tournament lasted over two days with each day being a separate event. The first day we had a hat tournament, during which all the players were completely randomly assigned to randomized teams. This day ended up not being so great for me. For some reason, I played more poorly right at the beginning than I'd almost ever played before, so by out later games, I think that other teammates were (reasonably enough) much more hesitant to include me in plays. I dropped two discs in the end zone, and I completely missed another disc … that was flying right at me … and it then hit me right in the mouth. I essentially did things during the first two games that I'd never done before in games, and it was pretty disappointing. So these things coupled with some weird (to me) aspects of Japanese-style Ultimate caused that first day to not be quite as grands -- at least as far as frisbee was concerned.
That night I went out with one of the other players who speaks Japanese, and the two of us went around to some local food stalls/restaurants to eat some authentic Japanese food, and it was fantastic. The food and atmosphere were both great, and they make me excited for the next time I visit Japan … which will happen in October! Woo hoo again! On that first day I connected with one guy from my team more than with the other players, and I decided to go visit him in Nagasaki during one of my long weekends this fall. I hope/think it will be a sweet time. So then came the second day of frisbee, and on this day I played with the Korean team I had originally intended to play with. My memories fail me a bit, but I think that during those games, I played with a wholly new set of people with whom I'd never played before, which provided both its own pros and cons. I was able to do a few things that I wouldn't have done with my regular season team, yet at the same time we didn't click as well as that team had (by the end of our season). The second day was fun, even though I left Japan with no wins, 2 ties and a bunch of losses.
Around this trip (for most of June and all of July), I've been constantly saying goodbye to friends who have finished their time in Korea and are moving on to something new. Prior to this mass flight only a couple of other people (who left back before Spring) had played as large of a role in my Korean life as all these newly-departed/ing folks have. I don't have much more to say on this topic other than this: I don't really feel sad about these friends leaving, but I definitely feel pretty depressed by their absence. And this is ok. Over the past year, I built so much of my life around these people and my relationships with them that I have lost a lot, but even now -- without them around -- cool things can happen if I'm open and willing to embrace more newness.
A few weeks ago, I went to a race in Seoul -- Color Me Rad. For anyone not familiar with this specific race, it's the one during which people can throw a colored powder on racers, such that by the end, each person has captured a little bit of the rainbow on his/her clothes and body. The colored powder is dyed corn starch, so it's nontoxic, but it still doesn't taste so great. haha. I went to this event with two of my coworkers, and we all had a blast. This was the first time I've ever signed up for a race (because it's technically a 5K), but it ended up not being much of a race after we started. People tended to spend more time walking and chatting than running or jogging. The three of us tried to jog for most of it, although we also slowed down for the color stations and at other arbitrary times. All in all, it was a great experience, and I encourage others to seek out any Color race in their area.
This past week I had a vacation from work, so I went away two weekends ago to a small city on the other side of the country (it took 6.5 hours to bus there … and about 5.5 hours to bus back … whew) to hang out with newer friends and a group of school boys who have an interest in frisbee. An Ultimate player from this city, Youngwol, set up this week as a time for people to come and show her students what Ultimate can be like. She's been single-handedly working with these boys to develop their skills, and she's been doing a great job, but there's only so much a single can teach about a team sport … when the students have never really seen the game in full action. Thus a group of us came to help remedy that situation. And it was a blast. Because of the nature of my work, I hardly spend time around older teens -- kids who are developed enough to really grasp concepts and offer their own insights, so this weekend was especially good for me. By the end of weekend, I had connected pretty well with the students, such that by the time everyone else had to leave (because they needed to be home by Sunday night … and my bus home left Monday morning), I ended up going to dinner with just the students. My friend who's been working there is yet another whose contract will very soon finish, and although she hopes to find another teaching spot in the country, she doesn't yet know if she'll still be around. I'm hoping to maintain contact with these guys and either visit them or host them here, so that we can continue to build skills and work on the future of Ultimate in Korea.
And just this last weekend I was able to try another new thing -- paragliding! I went with 2 other foreign friends and 5 new Korean friends to a smaller city about an hour away. All in all, it was a pretty fun experience (you can find pictures on Facebook … and videos on youtube), but it was definitely one of those that had way more lead up time that "in action" time. We arrived at the mountain around 11 am on Saturday, and because of the weather, our last jumper didn't glide off the mountain until a bit after 5 pm. Whew. It was a long day. But it was really cool. We each fly down with an instructor/coach sitting right behind us, and I was expected much of a free falling feeling as we came down, but it ended up being amazingly smooth from the top down to the ground. I would definitely do it again, and I recommend anyone else to try it as well. Maybe it's a little scary to just jump off a mountain top … but it ended up being a sweet ride down.
Now, during last week (bookended by my two weekend trips), simply spent the week relaxing, reading books, playing games with friends, watching some TV shows, studying a little Korean and sleeping. It was pretty much exactly what I needed. I had been intending to go away for the middle/end of the week, but things changed so I didn't end up going … all for the better. I don't realize, really, until after I have a forced slowdown (like last week) how much I tend to just live on stress. I fill up my schedule to the brim (and a little more) and don't look back because I do like being busy … but it takes its toll after a while. I hadn't realized just how busy I'd been keeping myself until I had whole days with no solid plans ahead of me. It was amazing. I'm hoping that I can hold onto this impression and keep myself from getting too busy yet again. I need to slow down a bit more and remember to value and guard my downtime … even if I'm the sort who doesn't intrinsically want to give that time value.
During this past week, I did read 2 books; one was ok … but the other was great. Gary Schmidt, an English professor at Calvin, has written a number of great books, and I just finished Okay for Now (which is a companion book to The Wednesday Wars). Schmidt has a fantastic gift for being able to blend heartache and hope into a beautiful, compelling narrative, and that's certainly how that book was for me. If you've not read anything by Schmidt yet, I encourage you to find it on Amazon (or any other local store) and get it. I think that you'll not regret having done so.
Ok. Time to get back to school things. I wish you all well, and I hope that you're finding ample time to sit back, relax and enjoy the things that you love doing. As always, I would love to hear from you, so please hit me up with a message about your life and what's new there.
pfn,
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