Not Too Bad

I ran the NYRR's annual Al Gordon Snowflake 5k in Prospect Park today. It was a beautiful clear morning, but a little bit cold at around 27° at the start. I did better than I thought I would, finishing in 22:18 with an average pace of 7:11 per mile. I had the advantage of having run the park many times, and knowing the hills is really the key to running a good road race. Overall, I placed 528 out of 3987 which is not too bad; a more fair ranking would be to say that I placed 97th out of 387 men in my age group. Placing inside the top 25% of my age/gender group is not too bad considering that 5 years ago I couldn't run a mile period!

Kunjip

We went to Kunjip for dinner last night. The food there is extraordinary, these pictures don't do it justice. Aside from the obligatory kimchee, we had a seafood bibimbop, a scallion pancake, and the most delicious Korean BBQ beef ribs. I don't know what they marinate these in but it's fantastic! We highly recommend this place if you don't mind waiting for a table.

K-town

Mobile Blogging from here.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Rough

Why do I always sit in the front row in class? The range of individual skill levels in my Mandarin 4 class is pretty extreme. There are several people who have lived and/or worked in China, and a few who studied at the college level in the past. There are also a few people who should probably consider starting over with Mandarin 1. I think I'm somewhere in the middle and I guess I should have sat somewhere in the middle. The teacher turned to me first every time she wanted someone to give examples of grammatical structures or to spontaneously make up sentences or stories in Chinese. She speaks at full conversational speed and I feel like I'm only comprehending about 40% of what she says. I can tell she's going to be the toughest instructor I've had yet.

Nam's got it rough too. Her class has only got 5 students and all of them have at least a little background in either Korean or some East-Asian language, which she does not. On day one of her beginner-level class she was singled out for being the only one who was not able to read the Korean alphabet. She's working really hard at home to catch up, and I'm inspired by her determination. 

She's got two classes per week, and tonight's one of them. I'll be meeting up with her in K-town for dinner afterwards, maybe Korean BBQ...... I'll take pics and post.

Few and Far Between

I've had little time for blogging recently as you may have noticed by the absence of posts for the last (almost) two weeks. We were in Florida for a few days which was nice although the weather wasn't particularly warm. Nam began her Korean language classes tonight; she's actually there right now and I'm waiting to hear how it went. I'm really psyched for her to learn the food terminology. Korean food is fantastic, but I'm lost when I go into the more authentic joints on 32nd St. in K-town.

I start Mandarin Chinese IV at NYU tomorrow and so I've been reviewing all of my previous lessons for the last few days. I'm also entered to run in the Al Gordon Snowflake 5k which will be run on the 21st in Prospect Park this year. I'm really happy that the roadrunners decided to have something other than the grand-prix 1/2 marathon in Brooklyn this year. The course has some serious hills and I'm way out of shape, so I'm just shooting for something around 24 minutes, 23 would be awesome but I think that's not too realistic. 

Nam booked herself in a production of Miss Saigon in Salt Lake City for most of April & May. I hear that Park City often stays open until the middle of April, so I'll be out there for a while as well if I'm not booked.