All the leaves are brown, And the sky is grey

I posted recently about how fall had been so far... complaining about the cold.

And then last Saturday the temperature climbed to 23, it was beautiful and sunny, and George and I spent the day on the beach. Pretty amazing weather for November 7th!

Just when I decided to give fall a chance, things took a turn for the worse. It's been rainy, windy and grey all week. I haven't seen sunshine since Saturday and it's starting to get to me. Also, with this nasty weather, it's been dark pretty soon after 5pm. That coupled with the rain and wind has really hurt my running schedule this past week.

Not good, since I have another 10km race on Sunday! Hopefully the training leading up to this week was enough to get me decently prepared. George and I finally braved the weather for a run last night, and aside from a bit of drizzle at the end of it, managed just fine. I'm hoping to beat my time from last month. I think the fact that I won't have been suffering from a cold for 3 weeks leading up to this race will definitely help. I also think that adding George to my training regime will also have done amazing things for my speed ... he's just so much faster than me! What better motivation is there than getting beat by someone who hasn't done physical activity in almost a year!?
I'll be posting race results and experiences on Sunday or Monday.

Also this week in Korea, yesterday was university entrance exam day for all 3rd year high school students (kind of like SATs). The whole country rallies around these students. All businesses and schools begin their day at least one hour later to minimize traffic. For 20 minutes during the listening portion of the exam, no flights are allowed over the country.
Crazy, right? Talk about putting extra pressure on these kids by magnifying the importance of this exam to ridiculous levels ... shutting down the airspace - really!?
My co teacher didn't tell me about this day so I arrived at school at the regular time and was the only one here (aside from the security guard, lunch lady and a few kids) until about 9:40. The extra hour of sleep would have been nice...
Here's an article further explaining the tests ... very interesting:
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/NEWKHSITE/data/html_dir/2009/11/13/200911130047.asp

Overall things are going well here, minus the weather. Christmas decorations are making their way into Starbucks and some of the major department stores ... I am excited to see them/ sad that I won't be home for Christmas. I will however be on a beach somewhere in Southeast Asia, so it's not all bad!

Miss everyone at home xoxo