It's all new...: So there's good news and bad news...

This weekend was one of the longest weekends ever. I got pretty much zero rest and did a billion things. The most important of which was of course...my Hapkido tournament. Now for the good news: I am currently a gold medalist in Hapkido... wait, wait, don't get too excited. The bad news: I am a gold medalist only because there was no one else in my weight and belt to fight. But of course, they can't just give you a medal for showing up and being the only one. So I had to fight...........a BLACK BELT. Are you effing kidding me??? I'm sitting there, waiting to get called up and I'm looking around and I see no one else that has a belt below black. So I'm there putting on padding and I see that the only other girl in padding is this crazy looking black belt. This chick was rock diesel and she kicked hard as hell. Let's just put it bluntly: I got my ass wooped. She seriously just went off on me. Now, don't get me wrong. I didn't just sit there and take it. I kicked her back, I blocked as much as I could and I avoided her taking me down twice. Nonetheless, I got my ass kicked. So if I got my gold medal for taking a beating like a man, well then, I earned it. Realistically, I'm only a white belt. I've been doing this for 3 months and I went up against a girl that was bigger, stronger, and had been doing this for upwards of 2-3 years (which is the minimum time it takes for a black belt), so there was no way I was going to win unless she just stood there. But I tried as best I could and that's all I could do. And no, I will not be posting that video in order to avoid my humiliation.

Practicing before the tournament (I think the look of consternation of my face is pretty funny... I'm very angry at the pad, lol).

This is a big group shot of all the people from Hapkido.

The Hapkido tournament was all day (we left Daegu at 6AM and got back at 11PM) on Sunday. And Susa and I had barely slept as it was. Previously that weekend we had gone out for drinks with Luke and Megan (2 of the teachers and my school) and some people that they've met here on Friday night. But that was after me doing two hours of Hapkido and teaching 9 classes that day, so I was already exhausted. Then, on Saturday Susa and I woke up pretty early and headed out to Seomun Market. I wanted to show her all the weird stuff they have.

Case in point: The octopus is HUGE. Use the lady in the background for a size comparison.

I got some really nice (bootleg) Roberto Cavalli sunglasses for W20,000 :-) and some delicious and very cheap strawberries.

This is the strawberry salesguy. He was funny!

Susa bought some of the very weird stuff including a dried chicken (that she ended up having to leave here since we realized there's the whole bird flu issue and she'd probably get arrested) and this really large weaved tube thing (that we thought might look cool as a decoration). The tube thing got a lot of attention, though, people kept looking at us, laughing and motioning their hands like an empty hug. We, of course, had no idea what the hell they were doing until finally one man told us that the thing is called a Bamboo Wife. Apparently, people sleep with this thing... Mulayo (I don't know). But all I know is that all the Koreans thought it was hilarious that we were walking around with it. After Seomun Market we headed downtown. Mind you, while I was at school teaching during the week Susa spent her time going downtown everyday to go shopping. She is heading back with sooo much stuff that it's crazy. We shopped a little bit more (at my cheap-everything-for-W2,000- store) and found some cute stuff and then we went to exchange a dress Susa had bought during the week.

Susa sitting in the big pile of clothes at the cheap store.

That night we went back downtown with Liz and Mi Kyong to hit up the Noraebang. Yup, we reveled in most Korean's favorite pastime. Singing crappy kareoke at the top of our lungs. It was funny as hell and we had a good time.

Susa belting one out at the Noraebang.

But by the end of the night I was freaking out about my Hapkido tournament the next morning (and in hindsight, I had good reason to).

Then on Monday morning we woke up again at 6AM to take the KTX into Seoul, to then go straight to the airport. We got to the airport at a decent hour and went to check in her bags, only to go through the biggest mission ever. When Susa came into Korea she had two 50-lb bags and a carry-on, but at the counter they were telling her she could only take back 30 kg (that's approximately 66lbs). WTF? They wanted her to pay an overage and they said she couldn't carry on the bamboo wife thing. Yea, right!! I guess the people at the counter are used to the mentality of people just doing as they're told (as is common in Korea) but they apparently had never dealt with two pissed off Cubans. In the end, they didn't charge her anything. But from there things only got worse. Susa's flight into Shanghai, where she would connect to Atlanta, was very delayed. It's all over the news that there was a massive earthquake (7.8) in China and it caused a bunch of stuff to be affected. So she got to Shanghai too late to make it to her next flight, so on my train back to Daegu I got the most frantic call from Susana telling me that she's stuck in Shanghai for the night. MY GOD!!! What a mission. Luckily, the people ended up getting her a hotel and she was able to get a flight for the next day at the same time.