A Member is A Member, no Distinction Necessary... Saturday, April 19

Headed over to Hulk's for some boxing and ab training with a couple of our Hulkies.  My focus of tonight's training was to really overdue it with the abs and arm work, hence the additional push-ups and hanging leg raises after my boxing.  I was aiming for 5 sets of 20 each, making it a clean 100 but doing the 80 was definitely pushing it considering.

Today's Training:

• 4 rounds of skipping 
• leg work in between rounds
• leg work: walking side sumo squats, forward/backward lunges, air squats
• 4 rounds of shadow boxing 
• air squats in between rounds
• 10 rounds of sandbag work 
• ab work in between rounds
• ab work: double-leg raises, bicycles, double-leg stretch, mountain climbers, plank
• (20 hanging-leg raises + 20 release push-ups) x 4 sets 
• 2 rounds of skipping

A couple of years back I had asked the ladies of Flipside Fitness to tell me what their motivation to get fit and stay fit was so that I could post their reason up on the wall of Hulk's once it got built.  Well, Hulk's has obviously been built and up on the wall all those reasons to get fit are posted.  They're there looking down at me and tonight I felt as if they were starring at me.  While I did my in between ab work, I got caught up reading them aloud to myself and wondering what ever became of such reasons and those who told them to me.  Did they stay focused on their health, do they even remember telling me their reason to get fit and do they even remember what their reason was.  Was it just an exercise they did with me or did they take it to heart?  I wondered, I often wonder about it actually.  I remember my reason, my reasons.  I had added two of my main reasons to get fit -- to shock people with my age and to inspire before I expire.  I think I have been successful in shocking people with my age but I question if I have really inspired [enter me being happy I have yet expired here so I do have some time].

I think who I've inspired and who I originally set out to inspire are definitely two different groups.  Originally, I wanted to inspire the foreign females of Cheonan and then it shifted to the expat community here once Hulk's opened.  I'm just not in the foreign public circle anymore.  Many of them know my name or at least know me as "that boxing girl" but most don't know me.  I'm heard of but not really seen.  It's very hard to get out there and meet new foreigners because I don't drink so Banana Bar and Dolce Bar are out, shooting pool bores the heck out of me just as much as it fills my lungs with smoke so attending pool night is out, the few foreign-populated restaurants are either too expensive, too out of my way and/or not on par with the food I care to fuel my body with.  I don't live in Sambu were so many others do, and I don't teach English or am a part of the Nazarene group like so many are.  I am definitely out of the loop.  I use to think that was a huge disadvantage for me and curiously looked for ways to meet foreigners.  So I joined a Sunday breakfast group, tried to befriend some people I don't wouldn't naturally be drawn to and often carried around my business card, hoping to pass by random expats.  What ended up happening though was I did really like the Sunday breakfast group but my interest in using it to meet people definitely fell sort in comparison to my interest in becoming friends with the host and hostess and learning new dishes.  Befriending fell flat on it's face because I became preoccupied with daydreaming while they were talking, wishing that I was back home naked and sipping coffee, so that's exactly what I do now instead.  And as for business cards in my pocket, I still carry them but they usually get handing out to random Koreans instead.  

The other day I saw two foreign guys working out at Dankook and I wanted to approach them, offer them a free membership to Hulk's, but I felt so odd just randomly going up to them.  It took me four laps around the lake to finally convince myself to do so but when I came up to where they were training, they had finished their weight training and jogged off.  I was on my 13th kilometre so I wasn't able to simply sprint and catch them.  

I've been in Korea now for 10 years, am on my tenth year right now actually, and there's definitely a shift in mentality that comes with being here so long.  I don't view life like most of the expats here, many of whom treat it as a commercial break in life, a middle point between finishing university and returning home to start a career or start life.  No respect to them in saying that, don't get me wrong, but things are different for me.   I'm not young and fresh out of university like many, nor do I plan to return home -- Korea is my home.  I've started my career, I am married and this is my life.  My life is in Korea and it doesn't have an expiry date.  I really have no intentions of returning to Canada except for visiting and even then I have no idea when that will be.   My family is now half Korean, half Polish/Canadian so Korea has taken on a much different and deeper meaning to me.  

I still do hope to inspire the foreigners of Cheonan but I am not solely concerned about them anymore because it's hard for me to connect with them when I feel so disconnected to them.  Moreover, I think in trying so hard to connect with them I've kind of disconnected myself from the very group of people who have really tried to help make Korea a home for me -- the Koreans.  My focus lately has been in the younger generation of Koreans, getting them thinking about exercise as a part of a healthy lifestyle and making it fun for them, and the younger female Koreans who once thought weight training and boxing were labelled "for boys only".  

I only have a few foreign females training at Hulk's and the irony of them is that I find they're perhaps more inspiring to me than I am to them.  I've got one hardcore female who constantly is killing herself at weight training and setting new goals, like taking on boxing and taking on training for her first half marathon.  I've got another fierce female who just blows my mind and humbles me with her stories of the full marathons she's killed and then there's a 50+ year old gal who kills it on the burpees and smiles throughout her entire training.  I vouch that these three females aren't foreigners or females for that matter, they're machines... hahaha.  I find much inspiration in them and though I initially wished I'd have more foreign females training alongside me, I'm quite happy with the quality of foreign females we have at Hulk's, after all quality overrides quantity in my eyes.  Hulk's may not have the busting-at-the-seems large foreign membership I originally anticipated but it most definitely has seen it's overdose of quality foriegners and I vouch that there will be more to follow.  I really don't care anymore about the foriegn vs Korean membership ratios and I think in putting aside my preoccupation with it I have really let go a lot of discouragement, disappointment, and distraction, and can now focus on just exactly what it is I should be.