Just a little note on How Much Fun life is.... (-thankyou Korea)

Sometimes I dream of having an ok day. A simple nice day. I want to wake up in the morning and make breakfast slowly, read a book, watch a movie. Play guitar and maybe my ukulele. Have another nap. Write some emails. Clean my room, maybe do some laundry. And then perhaps that evening I’ll see a friend and we will have a good quiet chat over tea and I’ll go home before 10 and go to sleep. Maybe I won’t write about this day and perhaps there won’t be any pictures worth taking yet I cant help but feel a quiet yearning to have a day not worth writing home about. 

A few weeks ago there was a grand quadruple birthday party which coincided with South African national braai day and Pohang exploded into a huge party of volleyball, Frisbee and silliness. This is when we found out that soon there was to be a foreigner volleyball tournament which would be funded by the city hall and there would be a ceremony where they would unveil a special foreigner statue and honour the foreigners of Pohang. We made a team, my competitive friends and I, and the volleyball fever was on. 

I have never been a volleyball player, there have been the odd church camp ball throwing around but I soon realized when I saw my South African counterparts that volleyball is definitely not a South African sport. I was aware that my American teammates were a bunch more skilled than I was and thus, for 2 weeks I began living, breathing and eating volleyball. I had to learn how to serve, how to bump with my hands together, how to pass, all in 2 weeks. We started practicing at 8 in the morning, then during our 1 and half hour lunch break and then a few times after work. When another friend couldn’t make 8am we moved practice to 6.30 and started practicing then. Volleyball entered my dreams, seeing passes in my sleep, watching my serves go out in the tournament and letting my team down. The pressure was on, all anyone could talk about when we were out was who was going to beat who and everyone was ready to “bring it”! (Oh, so many Americans).

The day came. We decked our bodies in glorious paintwork ready for anything that came at us. I was a fit of nerves, failing at any kind of casual conversation. The mayor and his homies arrived. He spoke about how proud he was to have a city that could boast 77 different nationalities and they are VERY happy to hold activities to integrate the communities. They then unveiled a huge globe statue and took pictures and (presumably because we were scantily clad) myself and my buddy Tiffany ended up in the middle of a photo with a bunch of suited Korean men and we were given corsages and exchanged a million, very happy “Nice to meet you!”s. 

And then the games were on. The first game was against our friends and we made a good slaughter. Then a game against one of the main cocky rivals of the day LARD. They had been making all sorts of in your face comments for weeks about their victory and how they were going to “Lard this” and “Lard that”. BUT it was a windy day, the match was almost given over to the fate of the moving air and we took their cocky faces and smashed them into the ground. We won the next game against the US military.  We were elated, so close to the precious 3^rd position (all I really wanted). But OH! We fought so hard for the next game, we were well matched, it could have gone either way. But we lost a tiny yet gigantic 14 to 16. No matter, we had one more chance and again, and as luck would have it, against our cocky friends, LARD. Sadly, due to our previous win they were slightly more subdued and thus ridiculously more focused and. And. We lost. And  went into a sad 5^th place. The depression of losing took hold and I could only sit around in the sand sadly until I realized that 2 weeks before I barely played volleyball and on this day we came 5^th out of 22 teams. 22 pretty unprofessional teams. But still. After I shook off my sadness it was a ridiculously fun day, with free hot dogs and all sorts of festivities and it was so great to be honoured- our silly little fun foreigner community of Pohang. 

Besides the fact that volleyball has been a sole centre of my mind processes, other things have happened. We had a long weekend and bused off to the South middle of the country to the WORLD Expo in Yeosu. One of my friends convinced us the world expo was the place to be and I became increasingly interested in the affair when I started reading about it. The theme of the expo was sustainable oceans and I think its focus was (or is) supposed to be that of taking care and rejuvenating our oceans. For a country as incredibly fish focused as Korea I was excited to see if there were any attitude adjustments that could come about in this country which will eat literally anything that comes out of the ocean (and in ridiculous quantities).

Well I was sorely disappointed. We explored many countries throughout that tiring over packed crowd and stood in long queues to see well, nothing really. Well we saw Peru and there was nothing in there besides an overpriced milk rice thing and a sign that said “Giant squid skeleton” and when we walked up the stairs we saw people sitting on couches and saw NO giant squid. A couple of expos later though I had seen some Thai dancers, and some Cambodian and Vietnamese musical shows and a few movies. Which was all very nice but I was still searching for the countries sustainable innovations for the ocean.Finally we went to the United Arab Emirates and they showed a video where a turtle gets choked to death from a plastic bay and pledged to eliminate plastic bags in the UAE by 2013. Which was exciting. Yet otherwise, there was nothing, just lovely pretty videos about how lovely and nice these countries are and why you should visit them and then a smattering of stats about how much fish they provide the world with. Not exactly what I had in mind.

It was a very festive yet rather depressing day. I knew the world didn’t care much about the environmental situation but I was unaware about the extent to which the world doesn’t care about the environment. The shocking fact of the matter is that no one does care. And thus our apathy is sending humanity very quickly in one very sad direction. 

 We moved on. We left the expo, squashed into a train that was filling up faster than we anticipated and headed to another town where hopefully a jinjibang (Korean bath house) would be more accessible than the packed town of Yeosu. All 7 of my adventure buddies trooped inside, the girls to the girl bathhouse and (presumably), the boys to theirs. There were monkey bars and myself and my 2 friends engaged some Korean women to a naked monkey bar contest. We won of course (We climb so we can win naked monkey bar contests!) and went on to the big communal sleeping area where we escaped the insane heating and found a balcony space with a cool breeze and covered it with a million mats. We met up with the boys and played games, drinking rice wine named Makali and slowly going towards the sleep place.

We found our way the next day to the marshes of Gwangnam. We sleepily walked up a mountainous hill to a nice view. Then we saw a sign that read “4km to the beach”. We had been activity-izing for days and we were ready for a solid beach nap. The expedition took us down the other side of the mountain down a long rocky road to the middle on nowhere. On our left were rocky fields and to the right was an expanse of mud. The expanse of dried mud enticed me and I decided I wanted to feel the texture under my feet so I ran into the expanse only to find myself sinking thigh deep immediately with a million mud animals scrawling around. I screamed and hurriedly used everything in me to climb out of that swamp. I ran out and attacked my friends, making us all into a tribe of mud monsters and we continued on our way. After much confusion and hopefulness in our hearts we walked and walked and finally came upon a hotel where again we asked for the beach. A coke truck was standing there and thirstily, we asked the price. He shook his head and said that oh so glorious Korean-English word “Service! Service!” Service means you are getting fee stuff and he pulled out 7 (very warm) cokes and passed them around to us thirsty muddy survivors. Exalting in the sugar, the caffeine and Korea’s kindness we walked on around another hill and found ourselves finally at the “beach”. It was another pile of mud where the water started 50 metres in. We needed to get home and I wasn’t going to be allowed on any transport covered in mud so I had to get into this sea of mud. We walked to the end of a pier and I jumped off the end in the murky muddy water, trying to get all my obvious dirt off. 

Washing dirt in dirt is not ideal and pretty disgusting but finally I was vaguely decent (yet incredibly smelly). Finally we were ready for the home stretch and a taxi and a bus and another bus, a subway and a bus later we found ourselves back in our beloved city. We ordered pizza and went to one of our apartments for “The Game” (Settlers of Catan- a bit of an obsession) and pizza and I finally made my way tiredly to sleep.

And then there was the Pohang marathon. We had been talking about it for some time but I failed to sign up as I didn’t really understand the website. I was kind of thinking about not doing it as I kind of hate running anyway but it seemed like everyone around my expected me to do it. And WHO can argue with public opinion? I decided to show up unregistered on the day. A Korean friend of mine found people who had signed up but were not running and he pinned my free number to my shorts. And then we were off! AND. Oh running! How terrible yet wonderful it is. It is such a mind game, deciding not to stop, telling yourself you may feel terrible but you can still run another 5 km. The morning was hot and after every km I exalted, not stopping and only grabbing water mid run from the water tables. When I felt the absolute killing exhaustion I set a landmark for myself that I would allow myself to stop but whenever I reached that landmark I wasn’t dying anymore. Finally there it was! That glorious 9Km sign and I knew I was going to run it all the way. A Korean woman next to me said to me in another one of those fabulous Korean-Englishisms “Fighting” and we picked up the pace and ran exultingly to the end line. I got a free medal, a bunch of energy drinks, coffee and a picture with the mayor. What a morning. 

  

How many more beautiful experiences I want to talk about. Like the time we went to this glorious climbing spot, high in the mountains. We were driving up up up this long windy windy windy windy road. Sweet forest smells filled the air and we drove past rice farmers thigh deep in rice fields. At the top we walked some more then down a precarious cliff path to the most amazing amount of climbs. Heavenly. 

And the Busan sand festival. Busan is supposed to be the Cape Town of Korea and it isn’t quite there exactly but it’s pretty rad nonetheless. We watched a little volleyball tournament and then got ready for our flashmob. A flashmob is a mob of people who suddenly do something pretty weird in synch in public. Often it’s a choreographed dance though I did a zombie flashmob once where we simply walked around Cape Town showing our blood covered fangs to anyone who came near. So we learnt this dance and were ready for our first showing. We hurriedly taught some new people the dance and then the music sounded and we jumped in and wowed Koreans with our insych-ness. Now just a side note- Koreans are pretty excited about foreigners when they see the in the street. Often you will be stopped for a photo or a hello or a “Nice to meet you!” (when you haven’t really “met “ them at all). Anyway Koreans get more excited when you do something strange, like handstand or sing a song or just walk around in a group of similarly looking weirdos. So imagine how ecstatically interested they were when they saw a bunch of foreigners dancing in synch in the middle of a festival. We did our dance and were immediately requested to repeat it in a few hours. SO more frolics later we arrived back to do it again. We completed the dance for the second time and then we heard the beginning of our music AGAIN and we shrugged and danced our dance one more time. We cleared out of the big gap in the crowd we had been dancing in and then, seeing that there was still a huge circle of Koreans waiting expectantly for something more to happen my friend Devin and I decided it was time to show off our handstand skills. It was a competition of 3 rounds and wow I have never had a competition to so many shouts and screams from watching bystanders.

 It’s so easy to feel special in this place, someday I will go home and have a handstand competition on a street and everyone will just shrug, or not even shrug, and simply walk on by. 

But I have written so many words.  And there have been so many indescribable times. I cannot explain rock climbing to a non-rock climber and how glorious it is to approach something that seems impossible but little by little you find seemingly tiny holds that hold your entire body and somehow you find a place for your foot and then for your hands again and you feel the strength in your body pulling you up a beautiful rock face. That feeling I get is something I cannot begin to put into words.

I will say something about Korea. I forgot in the last couple of years how incredibly happy and fulfilled sport makes me. I feel so alive competing against myself, learning how to better myself, working towards something. Going forward is such a precious part of life and getting better at something tangibly really makes you feel as if you are doing something with the life and body you have been given. Again I cannot say how grateful I am to be here in this easy life with friends who are so willing to DO things and learn things as well as teach things. Where there are so many opportunities to just do EVERYTHING!