Marathon #2

This morning I ran my second marathon. The first one that I ran was really small, with maybe only a few thousand runners. This one was the Seoul International Marathon, and there were around 25,000 runners. It was quite a different experience, because I was actually running with people the whole time, and there were spectators cheering and groups playing instruments.

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The marathon started on the North East side of Seoul near some of their palaces and old history stuff. After winding around, (and even passing my apartment) it ended in Olympic Stadium on the South East side of the city. (First and Second pictures, respectively)

I took this picture at the start just beacause I thought it was so funny. The people are standing in line to use the bathroom. Notice how the mens line is super long, and the womens line only has a few people in it. It's just the exact opposite of what usually happens.

The marathon culture here is absolutely crazy. I talked to a man at the beginning of the race who had run 235 marathons. This was his 100th marathon with the same pair of shoes! When I asked how many marathons he runs in a year, he said he did 56 last year. He also has a friend that did 108 last year! They rarely have marathons in the middle of the week, so he must have run every single Saturday and Sunday. (No, I never want to get anywhere near matching this.)

I am also baffled about the refreshments that they provide. Yeah, they have water and sports drinks, but there are a few things that just don't seem to fit. They always have coffee mix (coffee, cream and sugar, we call it "candy in a cup") before the race. The worst thing though is the chocopies that they have during the race. I consider chocopies to be the Korean equivelant to a ding-dong. It is two soft cookies with a marshmallow in between, coated in chocolate. I get a little sick just looking at the things as I run by. Plus, someone said they were really dry, so you would need lots of water afterwards.

This marathon went much better than my last. On my first one, I absolutely died at the end. I had to stop and walk multiple times in the last 6-7 kilometers. This time, my last 5k was actually a faster pace than my average for the whole thing! I finished in 3 hours, 31 minutes and 9 seconds. This was 8 minutes faster than before! Multiple times I found myself behind a man who had "Impossible is Nothing" written on the back of his shirt. I smiled everytime I saw it. I don't have any pictures of me because I didn't have anyone else with me. Plus, when you finished they rushed you out of the stadium, and I wasn't able to go back in after getting my bag. Hopefully there will be some pictures on the website within a few days.

Next up for me is my vacation to Vietnam. I leave next Saturday and will be there for a week. I'm super excited, but haven't had much time to think about it. Now that my marathon is out of the way I can finally focus all my attention on my trip!

Leeann: I love you so much, and hope everthing goes well when you get deployed. I'll be countin the days until you are back safely.

Love you all,

Stacie

I'm Back

Okay, so I do realize that it has been about 5 months since I have last posted anything here. For a long time I just plain didn't have anything interesting to post. Then it got to be such a long time that even though I did have something to write, I was too embarassed about waiting so long that I didn't do it. So here goes....

Since I last posted in October I have done a lot of things. I ran my first marathon, visited home, became an official member at my church, and started volunteering at a local orphanage.

I can't believe that there are only three months left in the school year. I know that time will go really fast because we have so many things left to do at school (2 assemblies, read-a-thon, book fair, international day, sports day, field trip and Spring concert, just to name a few). Recently we had our first ever Science Fair for the whole elementary school. I sure had a hard time figuring out what my first graders would be interesting and they would actually understand. We ended up doing projects about food decay. Each group did a different type of food. We put one set of each type of food in the classroom, and one in the refrigerator in the staff room. Pretty simple, right? I figured that it would at least be relevant and something that they could apply to their lives. I thought the whole thing was going pretty well until one child, after four weeks of working on this project asked me what a refrigerator is. Wow, I really failed on that one.

About 6 weeks ago I decided that I really needed to find something to do with people outside of work. I found a group on the website Meetup that was visiting an orphanage. I thought that would be a great thing to do, so I signed up and went. I didn't know that they had just started doing this, and there wasn't really any organization yet. On my first visit, the kids ran around the room for 3 hours, fighting over treats that volunteers had brought, screaming, climbing on tables, walking on the piano keyboard, etc... It was one of the craziest experience that I had with kids. There wasn't any staff from the orphanage in the room with us, and the volunteer organizer didn't really seem to care. Many of the volunteers were there for the first time and didn't feel like we had the authority to discipline these kids. Once I realized that this was just a start-up operation, things didn't seem so bad. We have things so much more organized now, with games, arts, music, and sports activities planned for each visit. The look on the kids' faces when we come is priceless, and when you see just how much love they need your heart can't help but melt.

Coming up, I've definately got some stuff to look forward to. The last week in March I will be on vacation in Vietnam!! Then it will be back to work, nose to the grindstone until the beginning of June, when I leave for a summer at home!

I love and miss everyone so much!