Tourism of Varying Momentum

In a break from our regular weekend plans of sitting in our apartment in our pajamas for most of the weekend, Kristen and I have escaped from Dongtan for a brief stay in Busan. Busan is a breathtaking coastal city, and we spent most of today taking in as much of it as we possibly could. We started to day at ligtning speed, but as the day raced by, we found ourselves stopping more often. While we may not have seen as much as we could have, the extra pauses were certainly worthwhile.

We left our wonderful B&B early(ish) in the morning, to begin one of two bus tours that we would end up doing during the day. This first tour allowed us glimpses of a host of places, including a world-famous fish market (which we skipped), a scenic seaside overlook (which we skipped) and a pebble beach (which we stopped at only long enough to take numerous photos and probe once again how bad I am at skipping pebbles on water).

The first attraction at which we spent a significant portion of time was a place called BIFF square. To my dismay, it was not named after the infamous antagonist from the Back to the Future series. It is so named because it is the venue of the Busan International Film Festival. In my heart, however, it was still named after the most prominent member of the Tannen family. BIFF square is a sprawling mass of street market, vending everything from snacks to fashion to CCTV cameras. We spent a number of hours alternating between browsing the stalls calmly and walking in a brisk panic trying to regain our bearings. The time raced by, and soon we had to bid BIFF adieu, or risk not having enough time to complete the second tour for the day.

Despite our attempt to be timeous, we did not have time to complete the second tour, managing to stop only to walk around a UN Memorial for soldiers who died in the Korean War, which was humbling and beautiful. Following this, we decided to simply stop at the nearby sand beach. We were meeting some friends (who happened to choose this weekend to visit Busan as well) nearby, so it made sense. And it was also a good excuse to lie on the beach and do nothing but listen to music and forget about the rest of the world.

Once we had soaked in the last of the afternoon sun, we met our friends at the nearby train station. We enjoyed a meal at a superb vegan restaurant, then headed out to our main activit for the evening – the lantern festival at Samgwongsa temple. The festival honours Buddha’s birthday, which is just over a week from today. And what a festival it was.

The temple grounds were a wash of various pastel colours, lit by several thousand lanterns. The majority were simple lanterns, but there were a surprising number of large lanterns, depicting warriors, the Chinese zodiac, and an elephant,  amongst other things. We were all struck by how much care and effort had gone into transforming the temple grounds from a solemn place of worship into a space of celebration worthy of the occasion.

It was a magical evening for the most part. However, time once again slipped through the hourglass at an unbelievable rate, and it was soon time to leave the wonder of the temple behind, to return to our remarkably sweet host at the B&B, who had to wait up for us to let us in.

Today was a blur of activity. From gazing at spectacles on the bus tour to experiencing them deeply at the temple, we absorbed as much of Busan as we could possibly handle. Tomorrow may be a more relaxed day, with only a temple visit and lazing on the beach on the schedule, but it will hopefully be filled with as much wonder and affecting experience as today was.

Horcruxes of Happiness

To say that I was a little glum when I wrote my last post would probably be an understatement. Kris and I were both feeling very despondent from the work environment, and had been messed around by the public transportation system to top it off. So, that got me thinking about my happiness horcruxes. For those unfamiliar to the Harry Potter universe, a horcrux is an object used by the big baddie to keep a part of himself alive, even if he would otherwise be dead. So, in essence, a happiness horcrux provides happiness simply by existing in the space where I spend my time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first resides in the bedroom of our apartment. It may look like nothing more than a balloon with a cat face inked onto it. It may have seen better days – it is rather deflated now, and I was afraid to even touch it out of fear of it deflating more. But it is the memory behind this small piece of inflated plastic that provides the magic. After we taught our last class of our first week at our school, all of the foreign teachers gathered in the teachers’ room. Every day, we are required to stay 30 minutes after our last class, to ‘prep for the next day’s lessons’. A lot of the time since then, we have, but not on that day. On that first Friday, we spent that entire time in a circle of chairs, simply bopping this very balloon up, and down, and up, and down. Few words were spoken, because we were concentrating, entranced by the slow rise and fall of the balloon. Nevertheless, we were all smiling almost the entire time. It was a wonderful bonding moment for us. We all felt like our particular group of teachers was something special. And we have been since. That simple memory of unadulterated joy and wonder at a small object bouncing around a room never ceases to put a smile on my face.

My second major happiness horcrux spends its life on my desk at work. Sadly, I did not remember to photograph it for purposes of this post. Like the balloon, it is simple in nature. It is a small flower cut from red paper, with the words ‘I love you’ written on it. Of course, it is from my darling Kristen. It was a leftover from a science experiment that she did with her class one morning, and I found it on my desk soon after. I have kept it in sight there ever since, and it gives me a little boost every time I sit down at my desk and look at it.

The third major pocket of happiness in my day is my current desktop background on my laptop.

This is the Ultimate Disc team that Kristen and I play in every weekend – Bune. The picture was taken on our first weekend as a team. It was absolutely belting with rain for most of the day, but we played with everything we had, and had tremendous fun in the process, as we always do with Ultimate. There was definitely something special about that day. We may not have played like international all-stars, but we all did whatever we could and drew as much enjoyment from every moment as we could. That is what will remain in my mind whenever I look at the (slightly pixelated) version on my laptop screen. That is what I draw that second or third or fourth wind from when I am feeling as deflated as the cat balloon during a hard day at work.

The fourth happiness horcrux is one that I use far too rarely: contact with family and friends. A kind word from my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins or whoever is willing to take time out of their busy lives to check up on us means more than we can ever express. Be it a Skype call, an email, or something as simple as a Facebook message or comment, they all help Kristen and I keep in touch with the emotional world we left behind. And every one gives us unprecedented joy. I know that my friends and family form a large part of the readership of this blog at this point. So, I just wanted to say thank you. And never stop keeping in touch!

My most important happiness horcrux, I have left for last. This one has remained with me for several years, despite my best efforts. I treasure this more than I do my own life or happiness. My final happiness horcrux is:

My girlfriend Kristen. There is nothing or no-one else in the world from which I draw more happiness, joy, strength, love, or any other positive feeling I could possibly list. She is my rock. Despite the moderately crazy look on her face, she keeps me grounded. She distracts or encourages me when things aren’t going my way. And, for reasons unknown to me, she loves me. Without her, I most certainly would not be in Korea. She did all of the administrative work, for which I will forever be grateful. Without her, I would not be the man I am today. I have never felt more able to be me, and not some false version of myself that I feel is necessary to navigate life. I love her with everything that I am, and I hope that we never part.

From seemingly insignificant objects to the love of my life, I draw happiness from many things. While there are most certainly other occurrences and happenings that give me joy, the ones above are those that I draw the most from, on the most regular basis. They keep me sane, happy, and on track. And while some may deflate, get thrown out, or replaced, others will remain, to guard against sadness and (more socially hindering levels of) insanity. For all of these happiness horcruxes, I am grateful. I hope you all find the things in your life that keep you happy, and hold on to them. You may not need them every day, but when you do, they will save you.

Despondency and Wasted Time

This week was supposed to be a short week, and it was – with a public holiday on Tuesday and a mini field trip on Thursday, we had far less classroom time than we would normally have. And yet, this week left both Kristen and myself feeling profoundly despondent with our time in Korea. While Kristen was limited to simply questioning the age and institution that she was teaching in, I once more questioned whether teaching as a career path is for me. All in all, we both left this week with doubts clawing at our brains like starved harpies, and this weekend did little to quell them, particularly with an unrelatedly frustrating experience at the train station today.

One thing that we can both agree on is that the hagwon model of teaching is largely broken, and in need of drastic reworking. Our school is not by any means a bad company – we are taken care of and the conditions are great – but it feels like it is simply that – a company. This is particularly evident in the elementary aspect of our teaching – children are faced with books that are often completely mismatched to them. The content and/or vocabulary is rarely perfectly matched for their level. It ranges from being profoundly too easy to frustratingly difficult for the children. As a result, they often find themselves bored by the easy work, or too frustrated to concentrate by the hard work. One gets the sense that children provide bums on seats, money in tills. The school tries its best to provide a nurturing environment for the children, but it is crippled by the misguided hagwon system. Children should be given time to be children, not sent to school for more than half of their waking life when they are 8 years old.

Kristen is also questioning whether kindergarten is an appropriate age group for her to teach. While she often enjoys fulfilling sessions with her older elementary school students, she feels like little more than a babysitter for most of her morning. She often is left with only two students by the end of the day, as mothers come to pick up their children before their education is finished. It is also not because of acclimatization to school – in the first few weeks, the children remained until the end of the day every day, no matter how many tantrums they threw. It seems like the parents want their children out of their hair for the morning, but come to pick them up when it is convenient for them. I have not had as much of this, but I find it puzzling – if a parent wants to send their child to school to learn English, they need to accept that it is a process, and if one removes a child from the environment where they are learning during the process, it is likely to be less effective. While I still believe that children should be children and be allowed to run around and play, if parents choose to try to educate them at such a young age, they need to stick with the program, however broken the hagwon system may be.

While Kristen may be questioning the hagwon system and the age that she would like to teach, my introspections run deeper. I have never been entirely sure what I would like to do with my life, as I have said in previous posts, and this year is yet to be any different. This week seems to be particularly bad. Even though it was an easier week, I found myself questioning my methods and worthiness as a teacher a great deal in the past few days. I debated whether a tape recording playing in the room while the children simply went about their business would provide a better English education than my fumbling attempts at helping my children acquire another language. If the year keeps up like this, I am not certain whether I will be trying for the same profession this time next year. But I am still keeping an open mind. No matter how wasted I feel my qualifications (however meagre they are in reality) may be, I do still find glimmers of hope when my students learn a phrase, or I prepare a lesson that they clearly enjoy. Maybe that will be enough.

All of this gloomy attitude was not helped today, when we attempted to pick up a 3-day pass for the train system for our coming weekend away to Busan (the beach town where we initially desired to be placed). We traveled an hour by bus to Suwon station, the location of the closest major rail station. We stood in a brisk line, and then stood hopefully before a well-meaning Korean teller, who asked us for our reference number. We had booked the pass online, but we had not received a reference number via email. Slightly frazzled, we attempted to re-book our pass. We filled out the online form, and were granted a reference number on the website, which we kept open. As an added measure, we wrote the number down, just in case our phone died. We stood in line once again. We came before another equally well-meaning teller, who took a look at the number. She winced slightly. She tried to speak to us in Korean, but it washed over us like strawberry-scented ink – it sounded lovely, but still completely stained our hopes of getting the pass today. Just in case it was not clear, she placed her arms in a big X and spoke some more apologetic Korean. Defeated, we walked slowly back to the bus stop for another hour of wasted travel.

Nevertheless, we will trudge through work tomorrow. We will do so because we are contractually-obligated to do so. We will do so because it’s only five days until Kristen’s birthday and our weekend holiday. We will do so because sometimes we actually feel like we are making a difference. Mostly, however, we will do it because regardless of how broken the system is, how wasted we may feel, or how much we don’t want to, we will do so because somewhere, there is a little home with our name on it, and each day we push through gets us one day closer to it.

Deductions From Happiness

In my previous post ‘Running Costs’, I asserted that Kris and I would not reduce our amount that we would put aside for our overall goal – a deposit on a decent house. Sadly, while doing the monthly budget yesterday, we came to a quick realization: if we didn’t reduce the amount we set aside this month, we simply would not have enough money for food. So, with a heavy heart and a more-than-slightly-childish sulky moment, we reduced our allocated amount for this month. We will have the means to make it up next month, luckily, but it was still disheartening to go against something that we had committed to doing in the second month of payment here.

Why did we have to do this? One word: deductions. While our salary may be stated at a certain amount, that is before a number of automatic deductions are performed on this amount. These include various taxes, life insurance, pension, rent, water, electricity, Internet costs, and a small number of other perfectly reasonable items to have come off of our paycheck.

What made this month particularly bad for us, however, is that the taxes that were placed on this month’s bill were not done last month. It’s almost as if the Korean banking institution does not want to start taxing you until they know that you are going to remain in the country. So, when our first paycheck arrived, we were told that there were some charges that were not applied to that paycheck, but which would be paid for in our next paycheck. We nodded, smiled, and got back to reveling in our first significant paycheck in months. A month passed, and those words came painfully true, crippling the small buffer between being able to get by on half of a salary and having to compromise one’s ideals.

It is these deductions that we did not factor into our calculations before we came to Korea. We expected to be paid a certain wage, chip in a little bit for rent and some necessities, and then have the rest to feed ourselves and shove under the metaphorical pillow for later. In essence, we thought we could get away with putting half of our gross salary aside every month in relative comfort. What we really should have considered would be what the difference between a gross and a net salary would be, and taken this into account.

However, we came with a plan, and we will still let nothing stop us from achieving our goal. It may be harder than we had previously expected, but it is far from impossible. Little changes in our lifestyle will help alleviate some financial pressure without taking too much happiness from us. Only having one snack per evening. Not going to the exorbitantly expensive movie-houses for a while. Not buying unnecessary trinkets. All of these little steps will make a big difference, and will one day help us make our first steps into our wonderful house.

The Joyous Chaos of Field Trip #2

Get on a bus. Get driven around the city. Try to keep the kids on the bus relatively well-behaved. Get driven to a slightly seedier-looking part of the city. Have the bus driver get out of the bus to attempt to find his bearings. Have him find his bearings. Get driven a short distance from the point of being lost. Arrive. Herd the children out of the bus. Take a look at the place. Wonder what could possibly be in store. These are the steps that got me to the small astroturf where the kindergarten children had their field trip today. And those were the least ridiculous steps of the coming hours.

After the children ate their regulation enormous snack provided by their parents, they were herded into two predetermined teams by the teachers. Half of the school was to be the green team, and the other half was to be the yellow team. There were equal amounts of children from each class (or as close as possible with odd-numbered classes like mine), and the teams seemed relatively evenly-matched by most metrics of assessing how children could be better than other children. Us teachers were also split between the two teams. What competition lay ahead of the yellow and green teams was, as yet, unknown. At the side of the field lay an assortment of props, seemingly suitable for a prep school dramatic production – outfits of indeterminate nature, small plastic balls (the kind you would find in a ball pit), plastic crates, a large piece of material, and three ropes with tyres in the middle. Other than the fact that we would probably engage in tug-of-war at some point, I was clueless as to the nature of the activities. I was mostly worried about what the ridiculous outfits were for.

The next few hours were spent in a haze of confusion and fun. The owners and operators of the activities spoke little to no English, so the foreign teachers that could not speak Korean (myself included) often had to frantically ask our Korean counterparts what was going on in the coming activity. Everything from the suspected tug-of-war to constructing the tallest tower from the plastic crates to blowing up balloons and stuffing them into a clown costume with a solitary victim teacher inside of it had to be gleaned from momentary explanations, or simply learned by watching the rest of the group. There was music playing, the children and/or the teachers were attempting to complete some sort of task more rapidly than the other children and/or teachers, and everyone had a smile on their soon-to-be-sunburned faces. Little else mattered when everyone was clearly enjoying themselves, having a morning outside of the classroom, bonding over simple, enjoyable games.

When everyone said goodbye to our energetic hosts, we did so with exhaustion and a slight hint of sadness. All of the running around and general mania of the morning clearly had taken the energy from most – children walked with droopy eyes, teachers ambled lazily. But we all did so with a lightness in our hearts – the morning had been a welcome break from the classroom for all. There were certainly moments that would be happy highlights of class discussion for a long while to come. Most importantly, for one morning, the kindergarten kids got to enjoy being kids, without having to worry about learning something. Sure, they need to learn how to communicate in another language – that’s what their parents pay us for. But this cannot come at the cost of their childhood. On most days, we treat them like little adults. Today, they were little kids, and they loved every moment of it.

Running Costs

Yesterday was the day on which we received our second paycheck in Korea. While our first few weeks had been paid for by money that we brought over with us, our first paycheck was able to get us through the last month. While we were able to take one trip and enjoy good food, we had to spend our money wisely. This was a good exercise in budgeting, but I had hoped that the coming month would be a little easier to get through. Alas, this is not to be the case.

There are two main reasons for this – our saving goals and our holiday to Japan in July. Both of these have taken up significant portions of our income.

Before we came to Korea, we calculated that if we put half of our salary away each month, we will be able to afford a deposit on a decent house upon our return to South Africa. We have committed to doing this, and regardless of our other expenses, nothing will deter us. Putting down a deposit is arguably the biggest reason that we came to Korea.

Nevertheless, it does make things significantly tighter – whereas someone coming to Korea for a year away, with no goals in mind, could live a fairly lavish life on a teacher’s salary, we make sacrifices for our future. And it surprisigly makes me quite proud that we can do so.

However, this is make even harder by our decision to go to Japan for a week over our July school holiday. We have booked all of the flights and accommodation, and need to pay back the kind person that allowed us to use their account to do so. But again, it will be worth the sacrifice in the end. I’d rather have an unforgettable experience in another country than a few more boxes of snacks.

If it sounds like I am very confused about all of this, it’s because I am. I was surprised by how many deductions there were on our payslips. I am happy that we will still be to live comfortably. I am disappointed that we will not be able to afford some of the things we would like. I am impressed at how disciplined we have been.

More than anything, I am relieved that I can plan our financial comings and goings from the comfort of our bed. We are revelling in our first long weekend since we have been here – it makes such an emotional difference to not have small humans emotionally draining you for one day. We cannot wait to enjoy the rest of it!

Big Brother is Watching

When I was in school, there was little to monitor classroom behaviour (be it that of the students or of the teacher), other than oral accounts of what happened in the classroom setting. In South Korea, this is not the case. Shortly before Kris and I arrived, there was a major scandal where a teacher was caught on camera physically abusing a child. The teacher apparently gave a child a full-force punch that sent the learner flying a short distance. This naturally caused outcry throughout the country, and in a few weeks, every school in the country installed CCTV surveillance systems in all of their classrooms. Our school is no exception.

While the school claims that the CCTV system is designed to protect the children from abuses like the one that caught the imagination of the country, it has numerous other purposes. In our case, it helped to clear Kris of the allegations of child abuse that were laid against her. Kris has also used it to try and determine who has been stealing stamps out of her drawer. I will likely use it for the trivial task of assessing the true ownership of a particularly nice pencil.

However, a notable result of the installation of widespread CCTV is a very powerful panopticon effect in the hearts of the teachers. Jeremy Bentham first designed the panopticon prison structure centuries ago, with the aim of having greater psychological control over prisoners. The panopticon prison complex was built around one central guard tower, that could see into every single cell from a wide window, which the prisoners could not see into because of its height. This led to the prisoners not knowing when they were being actively watched by the guards, but always living in fear of breaking the rules, just in case the guard happened to be looking into their cell at the moment they committed the forbidden act.

The CCTV system has a similar effect on the teachers. It is very easy for someone to watch a class on the CCTV footage – all they need do is go to the CCTV room and sit down. Thus, it is possible for someone to be watching any particular class at any point throughout the school day, and the teachers know this. While I would certainly not do something as drastic as hitting a child, I am constantly thinking about what someone would do if they were watching my lessons take place. Could I be delivering this activity better? Should I have better posture? Should I try suppress my personal tics so that I do not get questioned about them later?

Even if our CCTV system was nothing more than a TV with all of the classes playing at once, it would still have a drastic effect on the teachers. The fact that it can also record data for later retrieval makes it a formidable tool for the school. For now, the system has only been used to help us. However, I am still wary of what else it could be used for in the future. I’m certainly not going to get fired for picking my nose more than the government-approved amount of times. I am constantly vigilant, constantly trying to improve myself. More importantly, I am constantly conscious of what I am doing. All because of a silly piece of plastic and glass staring out at me from the corner of the room. Staring unflinchingly.

In Our Heads

Last night, we had the first of (hopefully) many meetings of our pen-and-paper role-playing group. For those unfamiliar to the concept, it involves two main parties – the Game Master and the poor, unwitting peons he subjects to his game. As you can tell, I am currently the Game Master (or GM for short) for our particular campaign. The GM devises a series of challenges for the other players to face. They do so by creating characters (each with a unique style of play and ability set) of a predetermined power level. As they overcome the various encounters put before them, the characters may level up and become more powerful. For now, our party is level 1. Despite the characters’ abilities not being very flashy or powerful, a great deal of fun was had by all.

I would call myself a relatively seasoned role-player, with a number of campaigns under my belt back home. However, this is my first campaign as GM, and it is a remarkably different experience. Whilst as a player, I wondered what lay behind the next dark, shadowy corner; what horror or inconveniently-placed and more-inconveniently-undetected trap lay in wait to spell our downfall. As a GM, I spent most of the time wondering how my players could next attempt to derail my campaign, and how to make sure they stayed on the desired path, or as close to it as I could possibly get.

For example, after they win their first encounter, my party met their first significant story character: a charming, homely halfling (think hobbit) lady who runs a shop in the local village. I had expected them to engage in polite conversation about compensation for their help. Instead, they attempted to rob her. From this point on, I became aware how wide the realm of possibilities for the campaign truly was. The players might decide to go on a complete tangent to the main story, exploring a dense wood slightly to the left of the metaphorical shiny castle gleaming with “LOOT HERE” signs I would like them to enter. And I thoroughly enjoy that possibility.

The most interesting happenings occurred when players used their abilities in ways I did not predict. One of my major combat encounters was made a great deal easier when one of the enemies was charmed to simply howl at the moon for the duration of the fight, despite his best friend being given an uncomfortable amount of projectiles shot in his direction. This forced me to think on my feet a number of times, resulting in impromptu, wonderfully spontaneous story development.

I cannot wait to see how the party will deal with what I will have for them in our next sessions. The creative escape of telling a tale of another world with nothing more than a few pieces of paper, pencils, and some bizarrely-shaped dice makes for a fabulous break for the routine of the work week, and engages all of our brains in ways that trying to keep children in their seats doesn’t quite do. They will give us all something to look forward to – a brief flight of fancy at the end of a hard week, slaying magical beasts of varying danger and absurdity. A great addition to our routine, and another way to preserve healthy levels of insanity.

Frustration in the Eyes of a Crying Child

This week has been a fairly good week so far. There are a number of reasons for this: the new Avengers movie comes out tomorrow, for which I am extremely excited; we were informed that next week will be a four-day work week, as there is a public holiday next Friday; and Kris and I managed to get our lazy selves out of bed this morning to throw a disc with one of our friends. However, today I faced a nasty version of one of the most dreaded things in teaching – a crying child.

Sure, I have had crying children in my class before – teaching children as young as 5, it is inevitable that they will cry for the most meaningless things, and I generally have a good grip on such situations. The child that cried has cried many times before – she is a very sensitive young girl, and can be set off with the slightest provocation. However, she hadn’t let loose the wet, wimpering dogs of emotional distress in my class like she did today. She simply sat there, inconsolable, wailing. I tried being calm, talking soothingly to her at eye level. I tried moving on with an activity, hoping that she would forget what she was crying about and join in on the task. I tried all that I knew to do. Nothing worked. She eventually had to be removed from the class by my teaching assistant.

In the moments where I was crouched next to her desk, looking in her water-filled eyes, I saw something that I had not expected. Sure, there was emotional pain (for reasons I could not ascertain). And there were genuine tears. But there was also frustration. It felt as if she wanted to tell me what was wrong, but couldn’t. Maybe she didn’t know how to express it in English. Maybe she couldn’t muster the emotional strength. Maybe she was just being oversensitive and she knew it.

It wasn’t only her frustration I saw, it was also my own. For the first time, I was genuinely stumped by a classroom situation. I had no idea why she was crying, or how to make it stop. I didn’t want to call for my assistant to help, because that felt like waving the white flag of failure as an educator. While I felt very sorry for the poor girl, she sat like a bawling bastion to my inadequacy, and it felt awful.

While I know that one crying kid doesn’t make you a bad teacher, in that moment, I simply wanted to pick her up and shake some sense into her. I wanted to tell her that there was no reason to be crying, that she should be stronger. But she’s just a kid. She’ll get there. So I didn’t – I let her go with my assistant, to whom she opened up and returned to the class later, more calm and ready to learn. While I may not have known what to do today, I now know that sometimes the child just needs to go out, and come back when they’re ready. Sometimes, it’s not my job to make everyone feel happy – someone else is better at it. And I must just put my pride and frustration aside and accept that.

Ultimate Frisbee: The Cult of Layouts and Discs

Today, Kris and I played our first game of Ultimate Frisbee in Korea. For those who do not know what Ultimate is, it is a unique combination of netball and American football, all played with your humble, plastic Frisbee disc. The aim of the game is to catch the disc in your opponents’ end zone to score points (as in American football), and do so more times than your opponent. The first team to a predetermined number of points wins. What makes it harder is that you cannot run with the disc, and must remain stationary after a few steps to slow down (as in netball). What results is a frenzy of running, creative throws, diving, screaming, and laughing. There is truly no game like Ultimate. And a new dimension is added when it is played in heavy rain.

When we left the train station after our hour-and-a-half-long trip to the field itself and saw the storm clouds in the air, we were a little disappointed – we had hoped for a sunny, bright day for our first experience of Ultimate in Korea. Instead, the moment we could see the field, it began to rain. Luckily, we had thought ahead and brought our rain jackets with us. We had arrived early, so we stood on the sideline, cheering on the other teams in our league, who had been scheduled with earlier games. When we arrived, there was only one person from our team already at the field, which we hoped would change, because playing with too few people is never fun. The running to having a good time ratio goes very out of whack when there aren’t enough legs on the field.

Luckily, our teammates gradually arrived. They were a cheerful, energetic mix of foreigners and Korean locals. We had just enough time to do a warm-up lap of the field before the match before ours ended, and we took to the field. What followed was about an hour of scrappy, muddy, wet Ultimate. Both teams dropped discs because it was too slippery. Both teams were wary of running out of fear of slipping on the muddy ground. Most importantly, though, both teams had a great time. By the end of the game, we were all wet to the bone with smiles on our faces.

That is what we found in Ultimate that is unlike any sport we had played before – the sense of community with every member of the league. In other sports, the teams are generally separated, not talking to each other. In Ultimate, we stand next to each other, cheering on the good plays of the game, whichever team they come from. There is always a good-spirited chat after the game. Some tournaments are even organized as thinly-veiled excuses to drink with other Ultimate players.

Ultimate is more than a sport. Some would call it a cult, and they wouldn’t be far wrong. People who play Ultimate generally do so once and then leave, or are hooked for life. They generally come to their first practice or game having been convinced/seduced/dragged by a fanatical player. When you get together with Ultimate people, a large portion of what they talk about will be which brand of disc to buy, which way to run in a given situation, or how to defend more skilfully. It is a cult. And one that I am happy to be part of, and I look forward to meeting regularly with my fellow cultists in Korea.