Another Week

Another week has come to and end, another week ahead. Last Sunday I taught a Parkour workshop again. I enjoyed the group of people that attended, from various countries. They members also learned the techniques with a fair amount of ease, and after only about 30 minutes they were able to do a basic run.




On Thursday night last week the senior students, for whom the current semester is their final one, organized a banquet in honour of the teachers. In Korea senior students host such a banquet to thank their lecturers for what they have done for them during their years at university. As a teacher I can only say that it is a much appreciated gesture. This was the first such a banquet I've attended, and was definitely the best one so far. We were taken to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Kangnam, which included an excellent buffet.

There are only two weeks of classes remaining at the university where I work, which means that we are very focussed on finish the material in time. Of course this means that I've started doing lots of grading in order to finish the assignments and class tests before the final exams start December 13.
Saturday night I met up with a dance instructor focussing on Jazz and contemporary dance. We had a very interesting conversation, mostly comparing the similarities between dance and the martial arts. I learned a lot.

Today (Sunday), I attended a Taekkyeon tournament (as a spectator). Although I have seen Taekkyeon tournaments online, todays one was the first time for me to see in person. Most of the events were group events, with five members per group. If a fighter wins his bout, he stays on to fight the next challenger from the opposing group. In one of the sets, a girl stepped up and won against all the members of the opposing team. She was quite good. Of course, I enjoyed the adults fights much better, as they used much more intriguing techniques. I took my video camera with and will put together a video once I have time.

The tournament ended around 7PM, it was supposed to end at 5PM. Starving by then two of my fellow Taekkyeon mates and I went to Itaewon for dinner. We had fabulous Thai food, including tongue smackingly good Thai deserts. While having dinner it started to snow.

By the time I headed home it was snowing quite hard. At first I was tempted to take a taxi from the subway station to my house so that I do not have to walk to far, but then I decided to rather take the bus and enjoy the fifteen minute walk in the snow to my apartment. Although I've experienced it now for a number of years, snow is still a novelty to me—I grew up in Africa, after all. That white blanket that covers everything is to me a beautiful spectacle year after year.

Today America and South Korea performed their joint naval exercises in the West Sea; the largest ever naval drills.I guess they were pretty intimidating as North Korea didn't react much. Then again, there is still a couple of days to go as the naval exercises are planned to continue till Wednesday.