Today (Thursday) was also a half day because of testing week, but instead of going home at 1, we all hung out until 2 and when all the students were gone the teachers gathered in the new gym to compete in a grueling multi-athlon of events like tossing hula hoops onto big orange cones as pictured above.
The teachers were divided into three teams: first grade, second grade, and third grade (my team). We started off with a little bit of group stretching and then prepared for the first event, tug-of-rope. This tug-of-rope involved three ropes laying on the center of the basketball court, and each time lined up behind the baselines, and when the whistle was blown you had to run out and grab the rope and pull 2 of the 3 to your side. To make it tricky, men could only touch the rope once a woman had. Our team actually lost this event to the first grade teachers, just barely. We got a little confused about our strategy on the final round and too many people ended up on one rope and they were able to take the other two easily.
After this we moved on to basketball free-throws, with everyone on the
team shooting at the same time for about a minute or two and you see
how many you can make. We went third during this event, and actually
won this event with a score of 24 made baskets. I made a bunch and
probably would've made more but too many people shooting at once means
balls collide at the rim and knock the others away. Our original
strategy had been to have 5 shooters and the rest of the team rebound
and pass the balls back, but that fell out of fashion quickly, although
the woman next to me kept handing me the ball every time she got one.
After this basketball game we moved on to the hula hoop toss pictured above, another event which our team won, with a score of over 200 (30 points for a cone in the 3rd row, 20 in the 2nd, 10 in the 1st) and our margin of victory was about 50 points over the other teams.
Then we moved on to something even more awesome, women-only basketball, 7 on 7 full court, with just about no rules except out of bounds and jump balls if too many people piled on. There was traveling, double dribbling, kick-balls, fairly hard fouls, and pretty much everything else you can do wrong in a basketball game. Our women lost to the first grade women, and then I'm not sure who won between first and second grade. During the basketball, they set up ping pong tables to the side of the court, so a bunch of the men started playing that.
Once the basketball games had ended, we had a nice ping pong and badminton intermission to take our minds off the stress of competition. Then it came time for the final event, a relay race.
For this event, we lined up, about five of the members of each team, and faced a strenuous obstacle course. First, you had to jump rope twenty times, as soon as you finished you picked up the baton and sprinted forward to a hula hoop. Contrary to what you may think, you only had to go through the hula hoop, so stand in it and pick it up over your head or pick it up and put it down over your head, your choice.
Once out of the hula hoop, you advanced to a bunch of wafer cookies hanging from a string, you had to take a bite out of a cookie without using your hands, and then you moved on to the bottles of yakult (yogurt, basically). We were warned beforehand that three of the yakult bottles had been spiked with spicy pepper, but I was determined to chug my two bottles as fast as possible no matter what. Once you finish the yakult you had to do a somersault across a mat and then run to a low table with candies in big piles of flour. Of course, you had to grab a candy with just your mouth and try not to breath in too much flour, and then you finished the course.
The race was fairly close the whole way through, and they had me running the anchor leg against the second grade team's male teacher. He took the lead on the jump rope but I ran past him and got through the hula hoop first, and quickly bit the cookie and then went to the yakult table. He was able to catch up here because I tried to pull off the foil lid, but I was advised to just poke it, and I actually finished my two bottles before my opponent. I dove onto the mat and did a roll, coming up feeling way more disoriented than I thought I would, but I recovered as quickly as possible and ran to the pile of flour. I identified the pile that still had a candy in it (there weren't many left at the end) and quickly picked it up, inhaling a bit of flour into my nose in the process. I was well ahead at this point and I cruised across the finish line for the victory with ease.
One of the ladies on my team told me that because of me we won the whole thing, which might be possible considering we won the free throws and hula hoop toss, but Hye-hyun thought the first grade teachers won so now I'm not sure, although I'm pretty sure we were definitely the best team.
After the competition, all the teachers headed over to a restaurant to eat dinner, we were offered the choice of a mudfish soup or a pork cutlet, and considering lunch today was some weird mushroom soup and a bunch of kimchi, I went for the pork. At this restaurant, I also tried Soju for the first time and impressed Hye-hyun and the other English teacher next to me with my ability to drink it, although in my opinion 20% isn't very strong for a hard liquor. That's probably just the UW Badger in me talking though, as we have a great tradition of going for low price and high proof alcohol. I told Hye-hyun I am sort of a heavy drinker, and she said I should go drink with the male teachers and the principal, but they are probably way heavier drinkers than I want to be. Anyways, there'll be enough of that this weekend with my birthday Friday and the 4th on Saturday.
Dinner was good, and afterwards I was given a ride home around Maseok the long way (it seems weird to think that I could've driven myself home a better way than my Korean driver went) but I guess that's what happens when you actually go outside now and then.
Also today, I decided to be an SK Wyverns fan, mostly because their team name is the Wyverns and they have decent colors and the best hat of any Korean baseball team. I do like LG after going to the game last night (mostly for their chants), but I can't pick them because Graham and Johnny (a Canadian) already support them. Also, LG is basically the Minnesota Twins so if I'm going to buy a souvenir jersey I want it to be cool and ridiculous. So now I'm watching SK beat the Eagles, the worst team in the KBO, by 8 runs, yay!
I'll be honest, you may not care about that but I just wanted to show how awesome I am that I have written about everything up until this very second, after falling behind about a week and a half. Hopefully from now on my posting won't be so lackadaisical.
After this basketball game we moved on to the hula hoop toss pictured above, another event which our team won, with a score of over 200 (30 points for a cone in the 3rd row, 20 in the 2nd, 10 in the 1st) and our margin of victory was about 50 points over the other teams.
Then we moved on to something even more awesome, women-only basketball, 7 on 7 full court, with just about no rules except out of bounds and jump balls if too many people piled on. There was traveling, double dribbling, kick-balls, fairly hard fouls, and pretty much everything else you can do wrong in a basketball game. Our women lost to the first grade women, and then I'm not sure who won between first and second grade. During the basketball, they set up ping pong tables to the side of the court, so a bunch of the men started playing that.
Once the basketball games had ended, we had a nice ping pong and badminton intermission to take our minds off the stress of competition. Then it came time for the final event, a relay race.
For this event, we lined up, about five of the members of each team, and faced a strenuous obstacle course. First, you had to jump rope twenty times, as soon as you finished you picked up the baton and sprinted forward to a hula hoop. Contrary to what you may think, you only had to go through the hula hoop, so stand in it and pick it up over your head or pick it up and put it down over your head, your choice.
Once out of the hula hoop, you advanced to a bunch of wafer cookies hanging from a string, you had to take a bite out of a cookie without using your hands, and then you moved on to the bottles of yakult (yogurt, basically). We were warned beforehand that three of the yakult bottles had been spiked with spicy pepper, but I was determined to chug my two bottles as fast as possible no matter what. Once you finish the yakult you had to do a somersault across a mat and then run to a low table with candies in big piles of flour. Of course, you had to grab a candy with just your mouth and try not to breath in too much flour, and then you finished the course.
The race was fairly close the whole way through, and they had me running the anchor leg against the second grade team's male teacher. He took the lead on the jump rope but I ran past him and got through the hula hoop first, and quickly bit the cookie and then went to the yakult table. He was able to catch up here because I tried to pull off the foil lid, but I was advised to just poke it, and I actually finished my two bottles before my opponent. I dove onto the mat and did a roll, coming up feeling way more disoriented than I thought I would, but I recovered as quickly as possible and ran to the pile of flour. I identified the pile that still had a candy in it (there weren't many left at the end) and quickly picked it up, inhaling a bit of flour into my nose in the process. I was well ahead at this point and I cruised across the finish line for the victory with ease.
One of the ladies on my team told me that because of me we won the whole thing, which might be possible considering we won the free throws and hula hoop toss, but Hye-hyun thought the first grade teachers won so now I'm not sure, although I'm pretty sure we were definitely the best team.
After the competition, all the teachers headed over to a restaurant to eat dinner, we were offered the choice of a mudfish soup or a pork cutlet, and considering lunch today was some weird mushroom soup and a bunch of kimchi, I went for the pork. At this restaurant, I also tried Soju for the first time and impressed Hye-hyun and the other English teacher next to me with my ability to drink it, although in my opinion 20% isn't very strong for a hard liquor. That's probably just the UW Badger in me talking though, as we have a great tradition of going for low price and high proof alcohol. I told Hye-hyun I am sort of a heavy drinker, and she said I should go drink with the male teachers and the principal, but they are probably way heavier drinkers than I want to be. Anyways, there'll be enough of that this weekend with my birthday Friday and the 4th on Saturday.
Dinner was good, and afterwards I was given a ride home around Maseok the long way (it seems weird to think that I could've driven myself home a better way than my Korean driver went) but I guess that's what happens when you actually go outside now and then.
Also today, I decided to be an SK Wyverns fan, mostly because their team name is the Wyverns and they have decent colors and the best hat of any Korean baseball team. I do like LG after going to the game last night (mostly for their chants), but I can't pick them because Graham and Johnny (a Canadian) already support them. Also, LG is basically the Minnesota Twins so if I'm going to buy a souvenir jersey I want it to be cool and ridiculous. So now I'm watching SK beat the Eagles, the worst team in the KBO, by 8 runs, yay!
I'll be honest, you may not care about that but I just wanted to show how awesome I am that I have written about everything up until this very second, after falling behind about a week and a half. Hopefully from now on my posting won't be so lackadaisical.
This is actually dad, I'm here with grandma showing her how to blog to you.
Padre
hi.
padre