Blogs from South Korea, Asia - page 348

The training is taking it's toll on my body, as I now have a slight fever and headache, as well as a sore throat. I have managed to communicate my predicament to the other students with my crappy korean, so they have been very helpful in getting medicine for me. I have slept for much of the day, apart from this mornings running session, which I sat half out of. I am alot better now having the day off, but realized just how boring the life of a korean fighter must be - sleep, wake up, train, eat, sleep, wake up, train, etc, etc...and these kids do it day in day out - which explains why there is not an ounce of fat on these kids (or more to the point, there is ALOT of crap ... read more

Today begins week four of teaching at Jung-ang Girls' High School. So far, so good. I'm loving the students more each day-- gosh, what energy they have!-- and I have a feeling already that they will be what I miss most when the time comes to leave Yeosu. Last week, I taught about vowel pronunciation, and this week I'm talking about different kinds of greetings in English (from "Wassup?" to "Good morning, how are you?"). Many are pretty good at English already-- they've been taking English classes since elementary or middle school. But, in most English classes, the students and teachers do not speak in English. They only learn grammar, how to dissect sentences, random vocabulary, some reading, etc. Little conversation and little writing. So my job, thus, is to teaching speaking and writing. I've been ... read more

Pung Saeng boys have had a competition over the last 4 days (from the 7-10). Both the middle school and high school feilded competitors. The high school competed over the last two days. There were approximately 10 players from the High school. All of them fought extremely well, with the School taking home 1 gold, 1 silver and 2 bronze. The competition standard was very high, probably higher than that of the Korea Open, as many of these kids are literally fighting to get into a good university. As I had 5 days worth of competition, I decided to leave early, and head back to the Dorm for some much needed rest with the Phillipines boys, who were leaving today to fly to Thailand for the World Cup tournement (good luck!). After an hour sleep, the ... read more

The Australian team's final day at the Korean Open proved to be a mixed bag. We came away with one Bronze and One Silver. Dounia (Friend and fellow VTA club member) fought very well today, but was KO'ed by the Korean girl in her final fight. Up until that point, Dounia was evenly matched with her. Despite the KO, she fought very well, with this being her second international event. Duncan (South African team) fought as well, but was unfortunate to meet Korea in his fight. Alot of the play went Korea's way despite Duncan fighting very well. Alot of the scoring is questionable, even though you may have hit, usually it does not register or the Korean player gets the score. This has been the main theme through this tournement. Despite that, tonite is the ... read more

We went to Guemsam on Saturday with two families for the Ginseng Festival. Guemsan sells 80% of Korea's Ginseng in its market. It was crazy, everything there was made of Ginseng: We had deepfried ginseng, I bought ginseng candy (great for sore throats), Ginseng chocolate, and my favorite, ginseng honey (I put it in my green tea). They had all sorts of home remedies made of ginseng, liquor made of ginseng, and an assortment of other things with ginseng in it. Guemsan is a smaller town, and they aren't really used to seeing foreigners there, so we cause quite a stir as we explored. The funniest part of the day was when we were exploring we were accosted by these two girls who were filming a piece on the ginseng festival. They only spoke a little ... read more