The Pearse Family in Korea: Busy times in Korea

This year I have taken on the responsibility of coaching Varsity Girls Tennis. I was approached to coach and after thinking about it decided it would be a fun and challenging thing to do. It is a big time commitment for myself and our whole family as I travel once or twice a week for games and then a trip to Beijing for Asia competitions in October.
After tryouts in the second week of school, we have been training every day and last Friday and Saturday traveled to Seoul to SFS and then to Suwon to our sister school GSIS, for our first 2 matches. We had a tough first matches at SFS and all of the girls struggled to win games. We had fun though, learned a lot and ate together in Seoul, then traveled to Suwon (about 45 mins from Seoul) to stay overnight at GSIS. After a late night, we rose early to take on our sister school and won 4 matches to 1 on Saturday morning. I arrived back in Daejeon at about 3:30 Saturday afternoon, very tired, but pleased with the progress of the girls. When we play 'double headers' like this on a Friday and Saturday with both games in Seoul, we often stay overnight. We were lucky not to have to sleep on the gym floor this time, but to have dorm rooms and real beds to sleep in.

Here are the TCIS Tennis lady dragons... lined up and ready to play at GSIS. Note the tennis courts are on the roof!

This week it is another busy week with a tennis game on one of the American bases on Wednesday afternoon near Seoul(travel of 2.5 hours both ways...so a late night).
On Thursday Peter and I are heading to Shanghai in China for a conference for 4 days. Jack and Molly are not traveling with us and we have some friends who will be looking after them for that time. We are feeling a bit nervous about this, but we are looking forward to the conference on PE and technology. We are really looking forward to hearing from an Australian based PE teacher who is doing some great things to integrate technology into his courses. We feel really lucky to be able to do this.
Next week is Chuseok- a week's holiday for us. It is like a Korean version of the American Thanksgiving. It is one of the very few holidays that Korea has. People travel to spend the time exclusively with their families, eating traditional Korean foods and treats. All of the businesses in Korea close down for 3 days and it becomes very much like a ghost town. Beware though, the shopping an travelling on either side of these holiday days are total chaos!
We are traveling to Busan to try to catch the last of the hot weather and spend some time at the beach. It has been hot and humid here this summer and Chuseok normally signals the break in weather to some cooler and dryer days. The Autumn weather is really the best all year, so we are certainly looking forward to this.
Finally- here are some pictures from the World Athletics Championships in Daegu last weekend. We were right on the finish line and next to the interview area for the athletes, so we were SUPER close to the action!

Men's decathlon hurdles

Australian girl in the Pole vault sailing over in qualifying

Cuban men's favourite in 110m hurdles- he was DQ in the final for blocking from his lane.

Funky hurdle cars to do the picking up after the races.

Aussie girl in the heats of the 1500m

Men's 400m start

South African amputee before the start of the men's 400m

He came second in his heat

"Dance time" on the big screen- they spot random people in the crowd on camera who then dance for our amusement- this was one of our friends who was picked.