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In more ways than one. First, I apologize to all my Loyal Readers for not posting in such a long time. I suppose it’s partly my fault for being so lazy, but the main reason is that I’ve been fighting a ferocious cold for about a week and a half now. I haven’t really felt like doing much of anything except staying in bed. There were a few days that I thought about canceling my classes, but I got through them OK. Most of the other teachers and quite a few of the students have also had the same malady, so my misery had its company.
The last few days, though, I’ve been feeling much better, and just in time, too. We’re at the mid-semester break, with a whole week off–no more classes until April 25th. Very nice. I did manage to get out last Sunday morning and snap off a few photos of the spring blossoms around campus, so I’ll get some of those posted ASAP. Hopefully, then, I’ll be adding entries to the blog at a better rate than I have in the past few weeks. Stay tuned.
Well, I survived the kids’ classes, which finished last Friday, and now, just in time, we’re getting a nice 5-day holiday in celebration of the Chinese New Year, called Seollal (pronounced suh-lahl) in Korea. The holiday itself is only three days, but this year it happens to fall on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday; thus, we get a really long weekend, so to speak. The New Year (based on the lunisolar calendar) is celebrated in China, of course, but is also a major holiday in Korea, Vietnam and a few other countries.
Also just in time is some much nicer weather, with temperatures sneaking into the 40s F. today and creeping up to 50 by the beginning of next week. Finally, I can go jogging outside, which I did in bright sunshine today. I hadn’t jogged in quite a while, due mainly to teaching most of the day, but also due to the cold, windy weather we had been experiencing for most of January. Hopefully (but doubtfully), it’ll stay this way until spring gets here. More later.
What with all the teaching hours I’ve been doing, I don’t really have time to go to my dorm apartment and eat lunch. I’m off from noon until 2 p.m., but I use most of that time to do lesson plans. Still, because I eat only a small breakfast every day, I’m pretty hungry by lunch time. Luckily, one of the school cafeterias is just a short walk from my office, so I go there for a quick bite.
Like many institution eateries, the food isn’t all that great. It is, however, cheap (3,000 Korean won) and it’s pretty healthy. These 4 weeks of kids’ classes is about the only time I eat Korean food regularly. I’m glad it’s healthy, ‘cuz I’m not getting much exercise, except for on the weekends. Here’s a typical lunch.
From the top left, it’s tofu (or a variation thereof), the ubiquitous National Dish, kimchi (which is usually spicy fermented cabbage), a pasta of some kind, also spicy (I think it’s a rice-based pasta and very chewy), soup or broth, and rice. Not deliciously inviting, but, really, not all that bad, either. And, like I mentioned, healthy. Hasn’t stopped the weight from going up, though. Gotta get some regular exercise. One more week of kids’ classes to go, then back to the treadmill or outdoors, if the weather isn’t too cold or windy.
I mentioned in a previous post that I was feeling a bit under the weather, but whatever the minor ailment was, it has passed. I didn’t do anything special, so I feel lucky that I didn’t get an early season cold. However, I was looking around for non-medicinal cold remedies, just in case. (I hate taking medicine, like pills, cough syrups and the like.)
One treatment that I’ve tried before with mixed results is using Korean citron “marmalade” and using it in hot water with a generous tablespoon of honey. It may not always work, but it sure tastes delicious and is quite soothing on cold winter days.
A not-so-appetizing treatment I found on ezinearticles.com consists of this:
Pour a little warm water into a dish and add a level teaspoon of your sodium bicarbonate. Stir it well and then immerse your nose and surrounding parts of your face into it. Slowly breathe the water up your nose until it reaches the point where it begins to overflow into your mouth. Then expel it and rinse your mouth out.
Be careful not to add more than a teaspoonful to the water, and that the dish is of a size that enables you to fit your face into. If the mixture is too strong it will sting your nose for a while. A little trial and error will tell you how warm the water should be, which is warm enough but not hot.
Do this three times a day, and it should see off even the heaviest of colds well ahead of time.
No doubt. It’ll probably cure hiccups, snoring, and leprosy, too.
From a website entitled grandpapencil.net comes this one:
Place your hat on the table and drink well from a large bottle of whisky until you see two hats.
Get into bed and stay there.
He also lists some Texas Cold Remedies that involve cow dung and weasel skins. Take a gander if you dare.
And how about cough drops. From associatedcontent.com comes this: Most interesting about the evolution of cough drops was the fact that by the 19th century drugs were added to the candies. Among the first such drugs were opiates such as morphine and heroin . It might not have fixed what ailed them, but users of the candy were probably so buzzed high they didn’t care. The cough drop manufacturers eventually turned to slightly less narcotized ingredients such as codeine, the staple of most cough medicine today.
Have you got an unusual cold remedy? Leave a comment to let everyone know what kind of winter cure you use.
On another “cold” note, the temperatures in Montana are getting cold early, it seems. Great Falls has a forecast of -5 F. (about -20 C.) for Monday. Have fun, global warming deniers. (Even though Dr. Jeff Masters on his Weather Underground blog points out that the year to date is the warmest on record.)  More later.
I woke up real early this morning, like, at 3:30, and looked out my window to see a beautiful, clear sky, the first time I’ve been able to see the morning stars in what seems like weeks. Some of the recent evenings have been mostly clear, but we’ve had mainly overcast morning skies for quite a while. This morning, there was a beautiful, waning crescent moon rising in the east, preceded by Capella, Aldebaran and the Pleiades.
Of course, just because it was clear doesn’t mean it wasn’t humid. Again, like it’s been every morning for the last month, the humidity was over 90% (95 today, according to the KMA website). Jogging is a real chore when there’s that much moisture in the air. It’s stamina-sapping, and by the time I’m finished, I’m drenched. Anyone who sees me jogging back to my apartment might think that I’ve been for an early morning swim. I managed to get in 67 minutes today, but my pace was oh, so sloowwwww. One positive aspect of losing all that water is that when I weigh myself after jogging, it looks like I’ve shed a couple of kilos!
Now, I’m going to watch the opening game of a 4-game set between the Yanks and the Red Sox. Yeah, I re-subscribed to MLB-TV in order to watch the teams struggle through the dog days of August and head down the stretch in September. The Red Sox have been devastated by injuries all season and are 6 1/2 games behind the Yanks. Hopefully, the New York squad can win 3 of 4 or even sweep the series; that would pretty much leave the Sox dead in the water as far as getting a spot in the playoffs.
Excuse me now while I go chug another liter of water. More later.
Lest anyone think I’ve fallen off the face of the earth, I’m still kickin’. I returned from Thailand last weekend, and Language Center classes for the public-at-large began on Monday. I’m teaching 4 classes a day until children’s classes start in a few more weeks, when I’ll have one additional afternoon class. Right now I have classes from 9-12 and 7-8 in the evening. Thus, I’m off from noon until around 6, when I go to the office to prep for the next day’s classes. I also go in around 7:30 or 8 in the morning for more prep work.
I’ve been starting up my jogging program early in the morning–I mean EARLY; I go to the soccer field around 5:30 a.m. and jog for about an hour, then back to the apartment for breakfast and a shower, then up to the office. Around noon, I go to the gym weight room a few days a week for more punishment (well, at least I will be going–I just started yesterday and Thursday, and, geez, am I sore today). I finish the weights about 1 o’clock, then it’s time for lunch and . . . ummmm . . . time for . . . errrr . . . being lazy. Nap time, reading, watching TV, playing OOTP Baseball on the computer. Whatever. But, I haven’t been working on the blog. I’ve corrected that today. I’ve also been processing the photos today that I took on vacation, so I’ll be posting some of those soon. (Fingers crossed  ) Anyway, stay tuned for more later.
I haven’t been out and about lately on my bicycle on Saturdays because I’ve been doing some long runs in the morning, (well, long runs for me, anyway–see my post of last Saturday), so sacrificing my legs for the morning run kind of cancels out any trips over the ubiquitous steep hills of Yeosu later in the day.  I don’t know which I prefer doing more–jogging for an hour-and-a-half or riding my bicycle all over the place. Anyway, I HAVE done some rides on Sunday, so here are a few photos from some of those trips.
First up is a visit to the west side of the Yeosu peninsula. This is about 5 miles from the university, and it looks like a beautiful area to take a motorbike ride some weekend. The road snakes its way up and down the coast, but it’s far too distant too enjoy on a bicycle (not to mention steep.) Unfortunately, my motorbike has a flat tire right now, but I hope to spend some more time in this area later in the summer.
Yeosu is famous (or infamous, depending on your economic or environmental leanings) for it’s gargantuan petro-chemical industrial area on the north coast of the peninsula. Taking the bus out of town, heading toward Seoul, this area is spectacular at night, with all of the lighting and steam and what-not. That’s not necessarily a good thing, of course, but it would make for some great photo ops. I hope to get out there some summer evening (not all that far on the bicycle) and get some shots. Here’s a couple of daytime photos of a VERY small part of the area; believe me, it’s huge.
Korea’s “bullet” train, the KTX, is being extended to Yeosu in time for the 2012 Expo. Right now, the journey to Seoul by bus takes about 5 hours, but the KTX line should cut the trip time in half. Here’s a look at how the construction’s going so far (not too far from the petro-chem area).
I’ve got a few more shots of my bicycle trips out and about in Yeosu, so I’ll post more of them later.
Well, nothing earth-shattering, really. But, I finally achieved my long-time goal of jogging for an hour-and-a-half, non-stop–91 minutes, to be exact. That works out to about 8 3/4 miles, 35 times around the soccer field not far from my dorm apartment. If you compute my average speed, you’ll find I’m not that fast, and the time is nothing compared to marathoners or those guys and gals who run those long endurance competitions of 50 or 100 miles. Still, not bad for an old guy.
As so often happens when I start my jog, I think about how far or how many minutes I want to go that day and then end up doing more that I had anticipated. This morning, I thought I’d go about 20 laps or perhaps a few more to get in an hour. I got to 20 and felt like doing 5 more. I didn’t feel bad after 25, and that’s when I began to think I could do the 90 minutes. It kinda just happened–nothing previously planned. I felt I could’ve gone another 5 minutes or so, but I gotta have something to shoot for next time. My next long-range goal is to go for 2 hours. Hopefully, I can do that sooner, rather than later.
As I mentioned previously, I canceled my MLB.TV subscription, and I was sent an email that stated that, indeed, my subscription had been canceled. I was still able to access games through a few days ago, so I thought that the end of my month must be around May 4th or 5th, since I subscribed on April 5th. Now, I hadn’t reckoned on the high-flying Yanks meeting the suddenly-hot Red Sox in a 3 game series starting today, so I thought, what the heck–maybe I’ll sign up for another month. But first, I thought I’d try to log on to the game, and, lo and behold, I’m still able to watch it. Right now, it’s the top of the 3rd in a scoreless battle. More later.
Finally, we’re getting some nice weather, with the temperature today in the mid-50s (12-13C) and expected to stay around there and/or close to 60 most of this week. Unfortunately, the forecast calls for rain Thursday and Friday. Still, the balmy days are arriving just when I have a week vacation. Very nice. I did a nice, long jog today in my running shorts and a t-shirt, the first time I’ve been able to do that since who knows when. It was great to soak up some sun, recharging my batteries, so to speak. I hope to get out and take a few rides on my new bicycle and take some photos. I also noticed some flower buds ready to open on some of the shrubbery, so signs of spring are fueling my impatience for the real deal to get here.
I was busy most of the weekend grading 143 essay papers. The university is offering a special class, which I taught last semester, for the incoming freshmen. It’s a 2-semester course with instruction for the all-important TOEIC exam (important in Korea, anyway), conversational English and tourism English that might be useful during the 2012 Expo here. To qualify for one of the 80 spots in the class, however, students had to write two picture description essays and two general essays (write about your best friend and write about your favorite school subject); I graded the latter portion. It took several hours, but I was paid nicely for the time spent. Now, no more school work until the start of the semester on March 2nd. More later.
No, I’m not riding a horse; I’m back in the saddle of a bicycle. One of the teachers’ contract is finished, and he’s chosen not to renew. Instead, he’s entering the Peace Corps in late spring or early summer. Less than a year ago he bought a Cannondale F7 mountain bike up in Seoul. It’s made by one of world’s great bicycle companies and it’s really a sweeeet ride. Here’s a picture of the model from the Cannondale website.
It gets mostly great reviews, including a bunch from this website. The guy paid around $700 for it, but he’s letting it go for around $300, a price a bit beyond what I wanted to pay, but too good of a deal to pass up. I can probably sell my motorbike, which I rarely use, to offset some or all of the price.
Walking around or taking the bus last summer and fall to various locations around Yeosu, I thought that it would be great to have a mountain bike, and I promised myself that I’d look into getting one this spring. I love bicycles, but I haven’t had one since I worked in Morocco. The Dominican Republic was just too unsafe to be out riding alone and after a year without one here, I realized how much I miss riding. Now, I can hardly wait for the weather to warm up. Yeah, it’s still chilly winter here, despite a few decent days a couple of weeks ago. Soon, though, (well, a few months) it’ll be spring and I’ll be out riding regularly.
The two extra classes I’m teaching finish this week. That means I’ll have more time to get into the gym beginning next Monday and start working out and running on the treadmill (too cold and windy to run outside). I’ve probably put on a few pounds since my last regular workouts at the beginning of December, so I’m anxious to get going again. I’m looking forward to being svelte. It also means I’ll be posting more often. Stay tuned for more later.
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