Monday, March 10, 2008

5K's and 2-a-days



After vacation, I found out that I gained back a little bit of the weight that I lost. I also found out that I will be fighting in my first tournament on April 13th. The weight groups go as follows. 75-80 kg's (165-176lbs) and 80-85 kg's (176.1-187). When I was told that I weighed 84.5kg's...that is just about 185lbs. The 80-85 group is named "super heavyweight." Which is funny to think that I would be fighting in that group. The 75-80 group is just the heavy weights. Just like in wrestling, it's a better idea to wrestle at a lower weight if you can get there safely. My plan was, in the month of March all the way to April 13th, to go to two Hapkido classes and then go to the gym and run 5 km's. Mix that with assorted weights and you get one hell of a workout. Losing 10 pounds ain't nothing. Bad news. At the end of Feb I re-hurt my right leg. A couple of months before I left for Korea, at work, I was dancing and I essentially ripped my right hamstring. You can bet it was hurt by doing some funky bad-ass white boy move. But it took about 3 months to heal to the point where it wouldn't hurt anymore. For some time after the 3 months, while I would sit down too long, or be driving my knee would start to hurt. I can only imagine that problem was from my hamstring. Finally it got better. So doing some move in Hapkido I hurt it again. I was hoping that it would be better then next day or in a couple of days. It wasn't. The whole time it felt like crap all over again. Sitting down for more than 30 mins was painful and kicking anything was out of the question. I could barely practice let alone run. It took about a week for it to feel good enough to run again, so since last week I have been doing the 5 K's. I went to a sauna this weekend and that seemed to work wonders. I was actually able to work with my right leg a little today. Since last week I have dropped from 85kg's (185) to 82kg's (180). I WILL be at weight by the time April rolls around, I have no doubt about that. 5 more pounds is kid's shit.

The one good thing is that when my right leg was hurt, after 2 or 3 days I was able to work with my left leg. I was exclusively practicing with my left leg for over a week. I have to say, I am a lot better with my left leg than I was before I started this forced regiment. That is really good because most Koreans mainly use their right leg, and train in defense for a right legged kick. Hopefully I will be able to surprise them and knock 'em out. That would feel good, reallllly good:) I think next week i'll be at full strength again, and ready to get into sparing to properly train for my tournament. I was, and will be sparing with this 6' 1" monster Korean dude. Long freaking legs. For now, I just have to constantly remind myself to stay calm and take it easy. Hope all is well in America or wherever your from. It was 45-50 degrees the last couple of days. So literally and figuratively things are heating up on my side of the world. Later ya'll.

Back at it again


My school started up again last week. That would be monday the 3rd just in case if you happened to be thinking, "hmmm what was the date last week?" Glad I could be of service. Anyway, I'm still teaching the 5th and 6th grade classes. The semester is stacked like it was last semester except for my fridays. Every day I have 4 classes but on friday, what use to be the greatest day in the world, I now have 5 classes. So that is 4 before lunch and 1 after. It's not soo bad but oh well. It does mean that they can only give me 3 hours of extra classes to do instead of the possible 4 they could give me last year since I only have to work a max of 24 hrs a week in class time. They still make me sit at my desk for 4 hrs after my classes are finished. I'm suppose to be doing work, but I really, and still, don't have any. So what do I do? Well sometimes I read, sometimes I look stuff up, sometimes I bull shit with co-workers. But the rest of the time I play games or watch internet T.V. I use to try to hide it, the fact that I don't do anything...but now every single person in the whole school knows it so what's the point? I'm the resident foreigner, I DO WHAT I WANT! This is the same reason I have been riding my motorcycle around Korea without a license plate. If the cops pull me over i'll just speak English to them and they will get so frustrated that they will just tell me to leave. They are mostly little rich kids that are trying to dodge their military obligation. Their parents tell them to become cops and that takes the place of their service. It's so funny. You will see a platoon of police officers walking down the street two by two and any where from one pair to half of them will be holding hands. It's probably the funniest thing I have ever seen. How are you suppose to take them seriously? Although...with my luck i'll get the one cop who speaks fluent English. BUT WAIT! I'M PREPARED! I can just play stupid and say that the guy that sold me the bike told me that 125cc's and under don't need plates. OH GOD! A GENIUS I AM! Back to my school talk.

Last week started a new semester, so the 5th grade (that I hated to no end) are now my 6th graders, and the 4th graders from last year are my new 5th graders. I can't tell you how much I love the 5th graders. They are all so small and cute and soooo eager to learn. And if they aren't eager to learn they sure do a good job of faking it. Unfortunately I still hate my 6th graders. Even the first day of class for them they still do the old "talk while Jake is talking, he doesn't care" thing. Guess what, I CARE. I basically decided to tell them that if they behaved and listened and stayed quite they would have more fun, because I would be willing to make more interesting and fun lessons for them. Otherwise we could just work out of the book and it can be boring. I really hope they took that under consideration because my 6th grade co-teacher is sooo much better at English and we can make it so much more fun for them. I heard from other teachers at the end of last year that the 4th grade is so pleasant to work with, but I didn't want to get my hopes up. That description is right on. I just hope it lasts and they aren't behaving just because it's the first week. For this year I'm giving all of them English names. Side note: My co-teacher put Elf as one of the names on the list, for some reason the girls love it. When they ask me if they can have that name I try not to laugh. But it's always the cutest and smallest girl that asks so it's kinda fitting.....Back: one of the girls was trying to ask me how to say a name that was on the list so she looks at me, holds the paper up, and says to me in a Korean accent and under a cute little face, "teacher speak English." I started laughing. I always say that to them. This was the first time a student said it to me. I knew what she meant but I found it incredibly funny. After I gave them all names I told them we would work on pronunciation.

I now now longer let them call me Jay-Kuh (even though I have kinda grown fond of it. That rule might give out soon.) I told them to resist the urge to put a vowel sound on the end of everything they say. I began to tell them, "It's not Jay-kuh anymore, it's Jake. This is not English-e class anymore, it's English. This is not a desk-uh anymore it's a desk. Do you understand??" They all agreed. I then asked them, "so what is my name?" One 5th grade, was incredibly excited and yelled out "DESK!" He realized he said desk instead of Jake and immediately slammed his head down on the desk as everybody erupted in laughter. Basically, I love my 5th graders and I hate my 6th graders. I'm buying a BB gun and I am going to shoot everyone who talks. I'VE HAD ENOUGH and it's only the 2nd week of school. The funny thing is that I won't get in trouble for doing that...still might be a bad idea though.