I just got back from a long weekend on Jeju island, the sub-tropical "Hawaii of Korea" It is a beautifully contoured volcanic island about 2hrs car ride in circumference about a 1hr plane ride from Busan. The purpose of the trip was another frisbee tournament, and this one was the awesome. Quite possibly the best tournament I've ever been to.
Everything was taken care of: The $50 tournament fee included two nights in a reasonable hotel with buffet breakfast and shuttle to the fields. The fields were the practice fields from the World Cup, and they were magnificent. So immaculate you would mistake them for astroturf from a distance, yet lush and with a hint of morning dew. Catered lunch; then dinner/party at a local bar. The free dinner was the best western style food I've had in Korea, and the kegs were free and flowing.
The frisbee itself was also of a high quality. This tournament attracts mostly hard-core players as the 22 teams are roster capped at 9 players each. The all-star team from Seoul played some inspired ultimate to beat 3 time defending champions from Shanghai in the finals. The Semi-finalists were rounded out by Beijing, and a team from Tokyo who beat us in the quarterfinals.
My team can lay some claim to being the 2nd best from Korea and 5th in the tourney. Considering the 4 korean teams who made the quarter-finals, we beat the team from Deajeon. But that team had a close game with the champs (10-8 loss) compared to the 4th team who lost 11-0.
I felt like I had my share of highlights and was really happy with my play and with my team. The only lowlights were Hightower pulling a hamstring, and me getting kicked in the ear during a dive. Oh yeah, and forgetting to charge my camera battery, that was also a lowlight. Sorry, and I'll try to get some pictures from somewhere else.
I took a day off for Monday wanting to explore the nature of the island. While the weather was pretty much perfect all weekend, on sunday night a huge storm blew in. It actually shut down the airport for most of Monday, and closed the mountain trails as well. So everyone stayed inside. We went to a sauna / spa which is a great way to beat a hangover. Also I got to speak a lot of Korean with some of the native players.
That night we ate at an Indian resaurant. It was fantasic. Then we went to a microbrewery, why do they only have this on the island? it was some really delicious beer. I hope my own batch of homebrew comes out half as good (only a couple weeks to wait!)
Game by game log:
11-2 win vs. Kuru
the #2 team from Japan could not match our skill or athleticism. We got a few handblocks and a few unforced turnovers, and won almost all of the 50-50's in the air, including the last one which I pulled down for the game winner.
11-6 loss to Shanghai
We had our chances early agains the defending champs but just made too many mistakes. They had a few players faster than any of us and were able to pull away with an unstoppable deep game.
11-5 loss to Bejing
Our worst game of the weekend. We were actually ahead 5-4 before falling apart. Sean got injured in the game, and we were just dropping discs and losing heart as this game wore on. Bejing was really nice off the field, and fun at the party, but poor spirited on the field making and arguing calls constantly; maybe it is on purpose to get us into a bad mojo: if so, for shame
11-5 win vs. Jeju-fury
The Jeju A-team was really fun to play against especially after Bejing. All nice guys. They had several very athletic, but inexperienced players. So they had some ridiculous highlights, but ultimately too many mistakes to be a serious threat. We played very conservatively on offense taking easy short throws all the way up the field.
Sunday
10-8 win vs. Deajeon
Our best game of the tourney. Tight, smart defense, good decisions on offense. Even our least experienced player (it was her first tournament ever!) learned how to find the spots against their zone D and scored a couple pivotal points.
11-2 loss to IKU
We actually were up 2-0 before Tokyo put their foot down. The game didn't feel as lopsided as the score. They played zone the whole game and we would pretty consistently make to within 10 yards of the endzone before making a blunder. They were very fast with good throws and didn't give us a lot of second chances. They went on to lose in a very entertaing comeback win by Shanghai in the Semis.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Update
First of all, sorry for never posting a half year update. First I wrote a long post of the progression of the mundanities, but thought it was boring and provided no real surprises for the faithful reader. Then I wanted to write something more philosophical about how I view my time here so far, what my future plans are, and why; but I lacked the conviction of my writing skill to convey my state of mind accuratly. So in the end I posted niether. For the curious I'll give you a summary of the summaries.
I. Mundanities of daily life
1. the job - the new batch of kids is both more skilled and enthusiastic than the last, which is nice. And I'm using more multimedia in the new English classrooms, and getting better as a teacher myself. Still I consider this an interesting enough job in the short term, but really just a launching pad for adventure rather than the beginning of a career path.
2. social - getting deeper in the frisbee community with weekend trips out of town (including a tourney last weekend about which a dedicated post is forthcoming). Getting disenchanted with badminton crew who are fun to play with, but seeming less and less able and/or interested in having a conversation. Expanding circle of Korean friends though, and having some good times locally. Still no girlfriend .. I need to move to a city perhaps.
3. language - making progress. Actually just in the last week I'm starting to feel a new confidence. My accent and listening comprehension is getting better rapidly at this stage. My vocabulary is between 1 and 2 thousand words. Last night I had a long conversation that was 80% Korean talking about the 4 day vacation I just got back from. So I'm starting to feel like this is not quite an impossible task.
II. Future plans
My current plan is to try to extend my current contract a few months so that it will end at the end of the school year. This will give me a lot more flexibility in looking for a new job should I decide to stay and teach in a different location. Indeed, if I do stay in Korea past this school year I think I will look for a university job. Better pay with same (or less) teaching hours per week, more vacation, and better students. Plus it would be a move to the city (probably Seoul); a year in the country was beautiful and relaxing, but now that I feel comfortable in Korea I'd like to see what city life is like as well.
I'm still having a great time over here. I'm still in my 20's (barely). I don't feel bad about not having a long term plan. I'm a simple man; really I'm basically happy as long as I'm learning new skills, and have a few good friends to share some times with. Some men struggle mightily to achieve great things. I wouldn't mind finding that kind of passion, but it hasn't come to me yet and I'm not going to force it. Maybe you need to suffer in order to find your passion.
Well, I've done things that were objectively difficult: in the physical realm I've completed gruelling bike rides and trained long and hard to attain such skills as left handed pingpong. In the mental realm I had to think a long and hard to solve my dissertation problem; and will probably have to spend even more total hours to achieve a second language fluency. But while it may appear to an outside observer that I was trying hard, I've never felt like I was doing anything besides passing the time during those stretches when I was bored with being lazy. I enjoyed the challenges, but if I had switched one pursuit with another, I bet I would have enjoyed that almost as much. And at any rate, I was never 'suffering for my art'. For now, I will leave the conclusions of this line of reasoning for you to draw for yourselves.
I. Mundanities of daily life
1. the job - the new batch of kids is both more skilled and enthusiastic than the last, which is nice. And I'm using more multimedia in the new English classrooms, and getting better as a teacher myself. Still I consider this an interesting enough job in the short term, but really just a launching pad for adventure rather than the beginning of a career path.
2. social - getting deeper in the frisbee community with weekend trips out of town (including a tourney last weekend about which a dedicated post is forthcoming). Getting disenchanted with badminton crew who are fun to play with, but seeming less and less able and/or interested in having a conversation. Expanding circle of Korean friends though, and having some good times locally. Still no girlfriend .. I need to move to a city perhaps.
3. language - making progress. Actually just in the last week I'm starting to feel a new confidence. My accent and listening comprehension is getting better rapidly at this stage. My vocabulary is between 1 and 2 thousand words. Last night I had a long conversation that was 80% Korean talking about the 4 day vacation I just got back from. So I'm starting to feel like this is not quite an impossible task.
II. Future plans
My current plan is to try to extend my current contract a few months so that it will end at the end of the school year. This will give me a lot more flexibility in looking for a new job should I decide to stay and teach in a different location. Indeed, if I do stay in Korea past this school year I think I will look for a university job. Better pay with same (or less) teaching hours per week, more vacation, and better students. Plus it would be a move to the city (probably Seoul); a year in the country was beautiful and relaxing, but now that I feel comfortable in Korea I'd like to see what city life is like as well.
I'm still having a great time over here. I'm still in my 20's (barely). I don't feel bad about not having a long term plan. I'm a simple man; really I'm basically happy as long as I'm learning new skills, and have a few good friends to share some times with. Some men struggle mightily to achieve great things. I wouldn't mind finding that kind of passion, but it hasn't come to me yet and I'm not going to force it. Maybe you need to suffer in order to find your passion.
Well, I've done things that were objectively difficult: in the physical realm I've completed gruelling bike rides and trained long and hard to attain such skills as left handed pingpong. In the mental realm I had to think a long and hard to solve my dissertation problem; and will probably have to spend even more total hours to achieve a second language fluency. But while it may appear to an outside observer that I was trying hard, I've never felt like I was doing anything besides passing the time during those stretches when I was bored with being lazy. I enjoyed the challenges, but if I had switched one pursuit with another, I bet I would have enjoyed that almost as much. And at any rate, I was never 'suffering for my art'. For now, I will leave the conclusions of this line of reasoning for you to draw for yourselves.
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