Trying Desperately to Catch up, Part 2

Bleg. I'm not making nearly enough progress in catching up as I would like. Having a home computer would really help with that. But a week after I dropped it off and no word. I guess I did understand him when he said it would be a month. Go me and my Korean! Still doesn't make up for the fact that I have no PC. To fill the massive void left by the PC, I've taken to watching way, way too much TV. So much for actually being productive. The World Cup is going on currently and that's wonderful, despite the first round of games being terribly uninteresting for the most part. I'll have to devote some serious time to that in the future, but for the time being, I really, really, really need to get this story back to the present.

Way, way, way back on May 5, the Koreans celebrated "Children's Day", which obviously is a completely unnecessary holiday since, according to parents (mine included), every freakin' day of the year is a holiday for kids. I tend to agree, although not many kids in the world could use a break from work and school more than the Koreans. But really, its a holiday that I get off from work, so proceed Korea. This year's holiday fell on a Wednesday, thereby shooting any chance of a long weekend, but nonetheless our little group got out and about to enjoy themselves. The group, through some friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, latched itself onto a big gathering of white people at the Han River Park. The plan was for the 15 or so us to rent bikes and roll around for a while, stopping to rough up kids for the lunch money and other gang-ish activities. Don't get much more terrifying than 15 young white people running (well...biking) amok through a park filled with children. Mothers, lock up your sons and daughters. Our own little subgroup proceeded more slowly then the others and were quickly left behind. Which was okay as we got to witness somebody wiping out over the handlebars of their bike...sans helmet. They were okay, amazingly, but the whole thing was just so damn horrifying yet compelling. Ohhh and if you were wondering if Koreans ride bikes like they drive cars, grocery carts, and themeselves on sidewalks....they do. Many a near accident when riders ahead of us would stop for no reason in the pathway or when pedestrians would abruptly walk in front of us, forcing us off the path and towards certain doom. In retrospect, going to a major kiddy hangout spot on a holiday dedicated to kids having fun probably was a poor choice if we were looking for minimal crowds, peace and quiet, etc.

After an hour, the entire group reconvened for intense relaxing and snacking in the grass. That's kind of my specialty, so naturally I rocked it. Sadly, everyone had to go home to prep for school the next day, so most of the group broke up, but our little posse headed downtown for some faux-Mexican. And margaritas. With bellies filled again, most of the crew headed home, while Jenna and I wandered around the stream. Here we saw something that actually shocked us. And given the amount of bat shit crazy stuff we've seen over here, that is saying something. Along the stream, which, mind you, is in the center of Seoul and has hundreds, if no thousands of visitors every day, we saw a young boy peeing in the bushes with his mother watching/coaching him on. Yup, pants around his ankles and going to town on the vegetation. If this stream in the middle of the woods, no big deal. No bathroom around, I get it. I do it all the time. However, we happen to be in the middle of a town of 15 million people. There is bound to be a toilet somewhere nearby. Really all you have to do is walk up the 10 or 12 steps to road level, then cross the street and find a coffee shop. Hell, the hardest part would be choosing which coffee shop's bathroom to use, as there are several hundred in a few block radius. In the end, after the shock wore off, I have nothing but respect for the little guy. Since the sidewalk is quite narrow from side to side, we literally walked inched behind him. No flinching, no freaking out, no nothing with all those strangers walking by. And for not whirling around and peeing on my shoes, I salute you young man. Keep fighting.

That weekend I did one thing and one thing only: capoeira. The capoeira workshops was finally here, and the Contra Mestre had flown in from Australia just for the weekend, so everything else was off. And I mean everything. I was terribly curious to see how it would turn out for several reasons: 1) I've never seen another group's mestre, so I had no idea how they would measure up or what they would be like to train with and 2) As any observer can see, the group here in Korea is very weak in several key areas of capoeira and we wondered if the mestre would throw a fit about that. Generally speaking, the group here is good at floreio (acrobatics) and thats it. Music, takedowns, ground game, maculele, flow, etc? Not so good. The music is the biggest one, as most of our (referring to the foreign members) teachers from home stress that music is the absolute most important thing.

As for the actual workshop, it went south quickly. The mestre immediately focused on ground game combinations and movements and our output was terribly lacking, in his eyes. So he stopped the drill, lectured us about he was gonna have to go back to the basics with us, and then he did. The korean students struggled the most, as they had major difficulties with the instruction. As the mestre is a Brazilian who has lived in Australia for the past 6 years, he speaks zero Korean, making it hard for the students who are pretty weak at English to follow along. They are so used to being able to understand every single word the instructor says and then ask questions that they understandably don't pay as much attention to the actual demonstration as they probably should. On the flip side, the non-Korean speaking members of the group generally ignore the English/Konglish/Korean instructions of a normal class, as it tends to just muddle and confuse things, and instead focus solely on the physical demonstration of the movements.

The other major point of focus for the workshops? Music. Ouch, 0 for 2. And it got kind of ugly from there. When we moved to the music section, rather than just jump into the songs and go, we were forced to spend considerable time on making sure everybody could play the instruments at all. Part of the way through I felt like we were wasting the mestre's time and he probably felt the same way.

Contra-Mestre Nei was a cool bastard though. Even with all the disappointment and sadness in his eyes. For starters, he is a short, short man, maybe 5'7" or so, but built. He probably weighs the same as me. Couldn't push him off his center of gravity no matter what. Very sociable guy too. Hell, I was never afraid he would randomly kick me for fucking up, which is a nice change of pace from previous mestres. Although, he never had any speeches about leaving your mom at the bus stop, which is a huge letdown. Overall, cool guy, great teacher.

The weirdest moment was after the final class ended and we were all heading out for dinner as a group. Generally, the mestre, because he is the mestre, gets to decide where we go to eat and everybody else has to suck it up. That's just how it is. Koreans clearly understand this principle as they do it for their grandparents, bosses, parents, hell anybody older than them. Just shut up and do exactly what the senior says. The idea is ingrained in their cultural consciousness. I hate it so so much but that's because I have problems respecting or following authority figures. The American in me, I guess. So it stands to reason that when the contra-mestre wanted to go to the Brazilian BBQ restaurant, we would fucking go, no questions. Hell, I was 130% in as Brazilian BBQ is delicious and not at all Korean food, so double win. The Korean students started whining about the price, saying they don't have the money. After contemplating having the group break up (Koreans to cheapy fried chicken place, contra-mestre and foreign folk to Brazilian), the contra-mestre decided, in the interest of keeping the group together, to just eat at the lousy fried chicken place. So yeah, we had the big group dinner at a KFC, basically. The really asinine thing? The bill per person at the fried chicken place was only 7 or 8 bucks less than the all you can eat Brazilian BBQ. WTF. I really don't think the guys are so poor they can't afford 8 dollars for a better meal. Although, they did shoot down the only other attempt to go for Brazilian after a previous demo, so perhaps they are just terrified of or unable to eat any food that doesn't feature white rice and kimchi. If that's so, the world might be a scary and difficult place for you guys.

Complaints aside, the workshop was good. We got to try new movements (YEAH!), train under a different instructor (YEAH!) and actually practice music in class (DOUBLE YEAH!!!). All in all, a very good, but tiring weekend.

Photos: sorry, none

Videos: Bike Trip of the Han












OMG I FINALLY FIGURED OUT HOW TO IMBED VIDEO. GO ME!!