le cœur ouvert à l’inconnu
first day of practice!! or it would be, if i were in boston right now, i guess. =/ even though i’m not, everyone else’s excitement has been so contagious that i can’t help but get excited myself. so where am i that’s so great that i’m missing out on all the fun? back home having fun with all my old friends and family? someplace nice and sunny? (although jihye tells me anywhere is nice and sunny compared to boston this week) perhaps somewhere abroad, seeing new sights and meeting interesting people? alas. no, no, and no.
instead, i’m out in the suburbs of the beautiful state of minnesota, doing software work for a company that compiles legal resources for lawyers and attourneys. the apartment i’m living in is unfurnished (this means there’s no bed, chairs, desks, microwave, or anything else vaguely resembling furniture), but my roomate and i are still doing all right. we have this setup where we took a couple crates he had, and stuck a shelf (came straight out of the closet) on top, making a rudimentary table. i’m not gonna lie, it’s pretty sweet. imagine one of those boards that’s set up horizontally so that someone can break it with their head. yeah. it’s like that.
getting around here isn’t that easy either, because like a lot of suburbs, things are spread out, but it’s okay because everyone has a car. everyone except us, that is. my roomate went to wal-mart and got himself a bike for $65. that’s a pretty decent price for a bike, but i figured i could do better, so i went on craigslist, and if everything works out, i’m going to be buying a boys’ mountain bike for $15. we’ll see if that still holds true after i see the bike in real life, but right now my attitude is, hey, as long as it will roll for three months, that’s good enough for me.
the biggest (no, literally the biggest) attraction here in minnesota is the mall of america, one of the biggest malls in america. it’s so big that in the middle they have a full blown theme park, complete with roller coasters and rides, which recently got rebranded as “nickelodeon universe.” it’s actually the largest indoor amusement park in the country, too. as if that weren’t enough, there’s also the aquarium downstairs with over 450 kinds of sharks, which, incidentally, is the world’s largest underwater aquarium. go figure. does that even leave any room for the stores? why actually, yes it does! in fact, most of the more popular chains have several stores located in different parts of the mall. it’s pretty ridonkulous, if you really think about it.
well that’s all the news i have from minnesota. someone update us on how the practices are going! i miss everyone! hope your summers are going well!
-mark
17 Jun 2008 mark
minnesota sounds a bit like… the perfect place to live. a gigantic mall with a mini-disneyland built-in? damn.
and of course, that’s all you need.
hey mark, we’ll miss you at practice too. you should just… not get a bike and just run everywhere as your way to stay active for the summer =)
that’s being said by someone who just got a bike because next house is simply too far from everything…
-omar
omg Mark, I can’t believe you guys have a board and crates for a shelf…haha, that is pretty funny. Not sure how it works in the suburbs, but back when I used to live in Cambridge near Harvard Square, if you wait patiently and long enough, someone will throw out a piece of furniture and you can scavenge! When my parents immigrated, that was pretty much how we got 80 if not 100% of our furniture…and it’s surprising what people throw out because most of the things we got (except for the burnt mattress with huge hole in it that we had to patch up with a rice bag =\) were not bad. Scratched up or whatnot, but decent quality. Hopefully, you can do better and end up with a nice cozy place by the end of the summer. Not sure how close you are to other houses, but yard sales are pretty awesome too. I totally miss them…
Whoa!!! You have to take pictures of this Mall of america! I’m not such a great fan of amusement parks, but having one in the middle of a mall complex is still pretty dang awesome ^__^
practice is good. we just started Monday, as you know, and it was pretty funny because almost no one renewed their membership card beforehand. So, 5 min before practice, there is literally a line 30 people long at the front desk — fully half must have been TKD, lol. Me included, of course. And the new president. And the old president. And everyone else in between ^__^ Ranbel and Steph took their red belt tests — and broke their boards beautifully, of course. For first practice, we worked on a lot of back kicks. It was definitely pretty sweet, especially since as Master Chuang said, we don’t really have time during the season to devote to perfecting it. I really really like the switch back kick (you switch, than do the back kick for the side you are now on)…it’s really pretty smooth. I’m bad at it, but it feels natural and more powerful because you have the momentum going for you into the kick right after you switch.
I second Omar about not getting the bike and just running to work. Or even better, just kick all the way to work…through the fields of whatever vegetable/grass grain you all have their in Minnesota. Corn? I don’t know.
Yesterday night, we watched a Korean movie. Pretty heavy (it’s about a serial killer), but very very very good. Gave me the creeps — and Christine was afraid to walk home
But, I’ll let someone else talk about that…
Bye bye Mark! We miss you a lot!
Mary
mary’s comments could be blog entries themselves…
*mi* not sure how to take that…
By the way Omar, I’m stupid and forgot my password, and the site won’t let me reset (it goes to a web page that says “key doesn’t exist”) — can you fix this?
i know this comment is a bit late but ah, to live the life of a student, where dorms come *furnished*. what luxury! but to live and work on crate tables, that’s the true pleasure of life. i hope you are also sleeping on a mattress (or at least a cot) on the floor.
if you end up keeping your bike, and bringing it back, i would love to do some work on it. though it’s probably better to just sell it on craigslist again. but you can make a craigslist bike go a long way…say, three years in college, and still ride it after you return to boston after working in san diego for a year.