Loss of a coworker and the gain of a Chi-town Boy!

So over the past weekend, I was a little active as the things were just getting started.  First of all, we had a little going away party for Courtnie, who decided not to chance her work status in Korea, since her tourist visa was almost up.  She caught a plane back to San Antonio on Saturday afternoon from Seoul.  Friday night, I cleaned my apartment so I could have a bigger place with a nice table in the kitchen area, and more space too.  I moved all of my stuff out between midnight and 2 am to Courtnie's apartment. During this time I was also cleaning my apartment, because Michael, our new teacher was moving in early Saturday morning.  We were told Friday afternoon or evening, that he would be moving in.  Originally he was going to get Courtnie's apartment, but I decided to take her place, and give him mine.

I did manage to wake up at 6 am, Saturday morning and carry Courtnie's HUGE suitcase downstairs, and lugged it down the road to the taxi area in our neighborhood.  Then, I was able to fall asleep, after reading this wonderful book that I just recently finished.  I'll give a review on the book soon. Fall of Giants is the name of the book though.  Great piece of literature by Ken Follett.

 It's nice to be an even bigger apartment as well.  I've cooked dinner or breakfast probably three or four times already.  I may even cook for Annie when she comes to visit next weekend as well.  She came this weekend, but only for Saturday night.  She left Sunday morning and visited her family in a city that's near Daegu.  I spent a few hours at a Jiu Jitsu tournament watching some of the guys that I train with near my work.  The tournament was fun to watch, but the few foreigners that participated didn't do so hot.  This was just a local tournament, with almost all of the athletes from just this one city.  There were even seven or eight girls that fought as well. 

Some Random Pictures

I thought folks may enjoy some randomness over the last week.

                                           Korean Coworker Jason, along with Miss Brittany

                                           This bowl is brought to your table as soon as you walk in this restaurant

                                         Jack, yours truly, and Miss Courtney

                                         Some of this fish was alive only seconds ago

                                             My home cooked meal Chicken Spaghetti

                                        Need some candles for your birthday?? How about Roman Candles?

Middle of the week

Happy Hump Day Everyone!!! So it looks like I will be staying at my current job for much longer than I expected.  One of the girls is going home since she's had even more trouble with her paperwork than me.  Well, at least this time around she's struggled just as much.  FBI background checks evidently are taking a long time to get done these days.

Anyway, I was able to spend some good time last weekend with my coworkers. Brittany, Chris, Courtney, and I all went on a hiking trip to the local park that is pretty close to our apartments. I just didn't realize that there was an entrance right down the entrance from our apartment.  We were all pretty tired when we finished our 8 km hike, but it was enjoyable, and the scenery was great (minus a few clouds in the sky).

Sunday, I stayed at Courtney's place for most of the day watching UFC, and then watching Paranormal Activity movies too.  We actually started the day off around 8:30 am, with a trip to Home Plus. That way we both had our grocery shopping for the week taken care of.  The Paranormal watching was fun, but the third one felt like a lie.  We watched the trailer and it seemed that all the good parts were missing from the actual movie itself.  Brittany came over and the three of us watched The Last House on the Left, which is a pretty good movie, done by Wes Craven.

Anyway here are some pictures from our hiking trip.

                                           Courtney with some locals

                                             Four of EFL's five foreigners

                                             The new guy -- Chris

                                               Courtney

                                           Brittany

                                               Your's truly

Almost the end of October -- yay!!!

So, at the end of next weekend, I could possibly be employed by a Taekwondo School here in the Daegu area. That, or I will be working in a different place for a month or two.  I've had paperwork troubles again, but at least people want to help me out, or at least employ me.  The owner of the health club that I use, is a very well-known Taekwondo Master Black Belt around this area.  He wants me to hang out with the kids that learn at his gymnasium, and help the, practice their English conversation skills. Apparently the people that bring their kids to this place have a good bit of money which may help me land some private jobs as well.

Work has been pretty easy for the most part.  The night classes are getting better too.  That's probably due to my energy levels increasing more and more throughout the week.  I'm trying to treat my body a little better than I have been doing.  I'm not trying to exercise too hard everyday.  Also, getting plenty of sleep during the weather change is helping out too.  My little tendon problem with my wrist has improved, although I still feel some minor pains from time to time.  Who would have thought I'd cringe in pain from time to time, just by trying to put my hand in my pocket?

Annie, and I had a rough go at it this past weekend.  Once again, neither of us communicated our plans very clearly to each other.  I was taking a bus with The Young Falcons group to the Seoul Air show, which she didn't really understand.  She thought I was just coming up to Seoul with the director of the group.  Then it turns out her brother wanted to go with her to the Air Show as well. So unexpectedly, I was to meet him.  When we did meet, (after Annie and I scrambled around the Air Show to find each other for an hour or so) he was apparently angered by my tight hand-shake.  I met his "girlfriend", who didn't really say much either though.  Annie calls her his friend, because at the moment, he's still married.  That's just a weird situation.

I'll keep things short and not go into details about the rest of the arguing, or griping we did over the weekend at one another.  We did manage to see the movie Real Steel together.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, and she at least said it was "interesting".

I'll put some pictures on here from earlier on in the month as well.

These are pictures from the Lantern Festival in the Jinju area, as well as a few from the South Sea area.

Pains getting easier to deal with -- REVISED

. . . . . Probably because the pain's not been there as much the last few days. Then again, I just started typing and felt a flash of something.  At least I'm not going 100% at Jiu Jitsu though.  I'm learning to defend myself so much better, instead of trying to over power my opponents.  Technique is almost everything in that sport.  My instincts are getting a little better, but much room for improvement is still needed.

This weekend was definitely an interesting one as well.  The owner of the health club wants me to help teach some little ones next month.  Part of the deal is working at his Taekwondo place teaching the little ones in English as they are learning the sport.  Heck, I don't even know much about it.  It could be a fun time though. 

Annie came and visited me after a rough experience of missed buses, on Saturday.  We went with two of my coworkers to the local animal shelter.  We all walked a dog to start with.  Turns out the dog I was walking had a back problem, so I carried her the whole time.  Actually she was the one that Annie picked out, so Annie walked the scruff ball that I chose instead.  She wasn't too fond of the dog part it seemed.  Then we visited the cat part of the shelter and she had a 360degree turn around.  She was ready to even take one or two of the cats home. 

I'll continue this later. My body is telling me that it's bed time right now.

So Saturday night was finished at the local sushi restaurant that's literally a hundred yards away from my apartment.  We came home and watched Transformers 2 on the TV.  Sometimes we have good movies on TV, but most of the time they are repeats.

Sunday, we went downtown and met my friend Greer, who went to high school with me back in Memphis.  We had to straighten a phone deal out which ended up getting taken care of on Monday morning instead.  So, Annie and I went to a park and had a long talk about the future, jobs, and life.  I told her I had this crazy idea about living in Bulgaria sometime in the near future. She was somewhat accepting of it.  I said we go live there and write books about her experiences, being two foreigners together in a foreign country figure out how to live.  I think it'd be a cool thing.   She also thinks we could do great having our own academy together in Korea.  As long as she'd give me time to see my family during the year, I'd be fine with that idea.  Personally, Bulgaria would be much more exciting in my opinion.  I'm getting a little tired of Korea these days. If I didn't have her or Jiu Jitsu, I wouldn't be here.

Then we decided Annie should go back to Gongju (where I lived in the Spring), so she could fix the phone problem for me before work.  Well, as it turns out, she couldn't get a bus ticket or a train ticket for the next few hours, so she was stuck with me in Daegu.  Then I recommended that she take the KTX (fast train), instead of take a two hour Monday morning bus ride. The bus station isn't far away from the bus station where she needed to be anyway.  She finally accepted my recommendation, though she can't sleep on the trains well.    Turns out, she was very impressed with my recommendation -- "Why didn't I try this before?" Let's not answer that one! Anyway, things are good between us for now.  Maybe I can even get her to go live with my in Bulgaria.  I'm not sure what we'll do, but I'll touch some lives there somehow.

In pain again -- a little worse this time

So I'm enduring a messed up hand or wrist to type this at the moment. I messed up some tendons, maybe, through lifting weights or not "tapping out" in Jiu Jitsu early enough.  My week has been a pretty good one though.  My classes have gone really well.  We have a new teacher named Chris, who has replaced Sean, whose last day was yesterday.  Sean is from Canada and is going to spend some time in Australia after his year in Korea.  Chris comes from Stockton, California, and is a recent graduate of St. Louis University.

"Cultural Differences"
This always gets me in Korea.  So my teammate gives me a ride home last night.  We talk about hobbies, and so forth. We talk about our girlfriends and share some pictures.  Then we talk about drinking.  I explained that I don't really care to drink much.  When I do drink, I tend to favor some Korean rice wine, or just a glass or two of beer.  Well, then the conversation goes to how much can you drink.  I have some problems with this.  I've been asked this several times in the last few years -- How much can you drink? Really, I'm not in college anymore where I did have a few big nights.  The thing is Koreans don't usually practice self-control at all.  They just drink, and drink, and drink some more.  I was asked how many bottles of the rice wine, or how many bottles of beer.  I wanted to just say one or two drinks is fine with me.  I'm not looking to get cirrhosis of my liver anytime soon.

Anyway, I'm off to the gym. My thoughts are with Grandpa Tower right now, as he's recovering from some  extensive surgery at Baylor Medical Center there in Dallas. Thanks Dad for the updates!!

Bummed knees, Some Good/Bad News, and Hello Weekend

Stretching is a good thing to do!!! Stretching is an even better thing to do, when you really care to do it.  Stretching for five minutes doesn't cut it.  Stretching for ten minutes, hopefully cuts it.  I'm saying this, because that may be the reason part of my left knee is purple from my Thursday night sparring at Jiu Jitsu.  Gotta have a way to blow off steam after standing for almost seven hours straight -- with ten minute breaks every hour, but that doesn't always help.

Tonight, I then went to my usual place for some sparring with one of the guys that is a blue belt.  Well, I did much better with him on Monday night than I did tonight.  I think I tapped out about ten times, at least.  Finally, towards the end though, I got him in side control, and managed to try out a new choke on him and it really worked well.

Yeah, I lost plenty of times to my boy, but at least I got one good one in.  I'm in some great shape these days, and I'd really love to get a blue belt, but I need a different job to do that.  What I mean is, I need a job that will let me train every day for a few hours. Training two or three times a week for a grand total of five hours doesn't quite cut it, though I've made some good improvements.

Be back in the morning for more!!