Alive and Kickin'

We've just finished another month of classes (3 down, 9 left) and another 3-day weekend. We've been busy, too, so it's time for an update.

Jon ran in a 10k race on Sunday - first race in years! - with some of our coworkers. Did marvelously. Ran it in under 40 minutes - can you believe it? The field was capped at an enormous 10,000 runners, walkers and joggers, from kids about 10 years old and upwards. The field had a small majority of men, according to the race results page, outnumbering women by 500. Jon, of course, ranked in the top two percent, only one second behind the man in 60th place. He ran it so fast that I missed his finish entirely and have no pictures to show. Will keep searching online for professional photos that I can post instead.

He had taken the place of Richard King, our coworker, neighbour and furniture hunter extraordinaire, who didn't know he'd been signed up for the race until he received his race package - race tee, timing chip, etc. Jon and I had missed the signup because we had expected to be out of the country during a 5-day holiday (this is the one that was shortened after the fire - construction on the blasted 7th floor continues). So Jon was able to take Richard's place and I went along for the ride. The 7am Sunday ride.

To view captions of this slideshow, hover your mouse over the bottom of the image and then click the word bubble at the bottom left of its window.

The race took place outside of the city, at a rowing club without enough parking (but of course). We arrived at the less than ten minutes before the race began, drove past the noisy, crowded starting line and away, away into the depths of the club to find a parking spot. Jon and the the other racers from the School got a nice warmup jogging to the start line and they sqeezed into the side of the throng of red-shirted racers only 30 seconds or so before the race began. Close call!

Trying to take a picture of Jon during the race, I jogged to the first curve of the course about 400m from the starting line. Weighed down by one gym bag on each shoulder, a jacket and water bottle in one hand and the camera and its case in the other, I was too slow to beat Jon or any other teacher to it. I must have spent about 15 minutes standing at the curb, watching all the runners (I wouldn't call all of them athletes, especially after the first few hundred competitors had passed), absolutely mesmerized by all the red Adidas shirts that had been included in the race package. Snapping out of it, I moved to the finish line to catch them at their best/worst ... and ran into the same problem. I must have seen over 5,000 finishers cross the line ... eyes peeled, darting from one racer to the next ... I must have blinked - slowly. Actually, I missed everyone from The School, so I must have had my eyes closed or lost in a daydream.

The School provided all with a nutritious post-race meal: deep-fried Chinese food and beer. At 10am. A glorious finish and home for a rest!

We finished the day the same way we had started it: near the water. The day of the race was also the day of Seoul's International Fireworks Festival, which is held on the Hangang (Also known as the Han river; 'gang' is Korean for 'river'). Actually an international fireworks competition, this Festival offered 30-minute-long explosive perfomances to the hundreds of thousands of spectators crowded on blankets and newspaper at the river's edge. Throngs of people swarmed the path from subway station to park, stopping traffic and taking over roadways. But the crowds didn't start there: as soon as we'd gotten on the subway we realized that it was going to be incredibly busy. I imagine it was similar to Tokyo's subway traffic: Ali, care to comment?

Once we arrived at the park, the crowds weren't much better. Chris, a coworker from Detroit, led our way through the crowds while the fireworks boomed.

Even though the subway was a sardine tin of spectators, most families, it seemed, had come early and prepared. Blankets, cardboard and newspaper had been spread on the ground creating a semblance of personal space in the crowd of over 100,000. It made no difference. Latecomers like us wove their way between the patches, migrating towards the best view of the fireworks, the edge of the river. It was worth the extra wait to get there.

(What was NOT worth it: the two hour walk away from the park in search of a way home! They had closed the subway station for safety reasons, the buses jam-packed and taxis all taken. Ah, if only I'd listened to my students, who warned me about the difficult trip home and who had mentioned that it was likely the reason they wouldn't attend the festival.)