Hey everyone! Sorry for the extremely long break (relatively speaking) between this entry and the last. Several things caught up with me, including actually swimming in a meet, deprivation from Netflix, and an extreme craving for ice cream. Before I go any further, I want to thank everyone one last time for being so supportive of this blog and of me on this trip in general (while these things aren’t mutually exclusive, I really hope you didn’t read every entry thinking “Emma’s pretty funny but wow do I hope she swims slow/gets kidnapped by the Korean mob/loses all of her belongings in the Seoul airport”). I’ve really enjoyed writing this blog and honestly, I might even miss it a little bit when I return to my usual routine in which I alternate between getting my butt kicked in the water by my coach and getting roasted in the sun while standing on deck and coaching myself.
So, a lot of things have happened since I last wrote! I’m currently sitting in the San Francisco airport after having traveled 10 hours from Seoul, preceded by a four hour bus ride. I’m going to try to reflect accurately on the past three days, but judging by how much the world is still spinning, the Tylenol PM I took before the last flight hasn’t fully worn off yet so I cannot be held responsible for any glaring grammatical errors of factual inaccuracies in my writing today. Also, fair warning, this entry is going to be heavy on the emotions and light on the humor, so if you chose to stop reading now I won’t blame you (and honestly won’t ever know because I have no idea who does and does not look at this blog page).
So, what have I been doing the past few days?
I swam. And, since I’ve really been embracing the whole unfiltered honesty thing these past few days, I’m going to say straight up that it didn’t go the way I wanted at all. That is to say, I swam poorly. I had a decent swim in prelims and then a horrible swim in semis. Am I happy about it? Of course not. Am I going t sit here and mope? No. I almost didn’t write about my swim at all, but to pretend it didn’t happen would be just as detrimental to my future swims as crying my eyes out for the rest of the summer. Bad swims happen, to everyone, and usually at the worst possible time. Even if you do everything in your power to prepare, stuff goes wrong. I once had a coach say that champions are defined by how they act when they fall short, not how they act when they succeed. It’s easy to be gracious and friendly and cheer for your teammates when you’re swimming our of your mind, but its so easy to slip into an apathetic funk after a bad swim and use a mediocre performance to justify it. Here is one of the most valuable things I’ve learned about swimming: 90% of being a good teammate and a good competitor stems from how you carry yourself out of the pool. So, after my bad swim, I tried to put some things in perspective: I still got to represent my country at an international level, something not that many people get to do. I had the chance to get to know and cheer for a bunch of fun and amazing people I would never have met otherwise. I got to meet some of the most respected coaches in swimming today (and even made some of them laugh, so IN YOUR FACE boy from my sixth grade class who told me I wasn’t funny). I ended up having a good time anyway, and weirdly enough I’m more motivated to train now than I was prior to the meet.
NOW, in a less serious vein, a couple of us decided on the last night that we needed to try the Korean McDonalds. Since we got back from finals at about 10:00 PM and had to be back for a team meeting at 11, we decided to take a taxi in order to speed up the process. A very nice Korean women helped us flag down said taxi, obviously realizing that we were essentially a bunch of starving savages that would eat HER if we weren’t assisted on our quest to ingest deep fried carbs IMMIDIATELY. I’m not sure what she told the driver, but the ride ended up taking WAY longer than we expected. For a while, I was legitimately concerned we were being taken to North Korea. Luckily, this wasn’t the case, and we eventually arrived at a large, two story McDonalds which was the most beautiful sight I had even seen at that point. Upon arrival, we started screaming “OH MY GOD!” extremely loudly and excitedly, which seemed to amuse our taxi driver quite a bit. We embodied the fast-food obsessed American stereotype to a T, and I feel zero guilt about it. We rushed inside and took in the comforting smell of deep frying oil and rewarmed frozen beef, a truly American aroma. The language barrier was in our way again, but that was okay because (seeing as we are an extremely clever and crafty group of young women) we communicated our orders to the cashier by lifting up a poster and pointing to the pictures of the food we wanted. My order consisted of (ratings and descriptions included):
- Chicken nuggets- 7/10, a classic, hard to screw up. Slightly juicier than their American counterpart yet, due to the fact that they are less deeply fried, they lacked the satisfying crunch on the other shell. They would have been improved with ketchup, but seeing as I was only given chili paste and garlic butter (LOL NO) I can’t speak to what effects my favorite condiment would have had on these morsels of reconstructed poultry.
- Fries- 8/10, while they may have been less fried than the American version, they still had that Macdonald’s fry taste that convinced me at a young age that I would never receive a superior fry through a drive through window (Burger King lovers, nobody likes you, get out). They were so good and I was so desperate that I ate them without ketchup, and if you know me at all you know that I consider ketchup a necessary addition to any meal.
- CHOCOLATE OREO MCFLURRY- 11/10, does my use of caps lock not indicate an overwhelming enthusiasm for this culinary marvel?! Why has the US, home of Hardees hot dog burger and the ever-questionable Long John Silvers NEVER incorporated these into their domestic Macdonald’s menu? This was the best thing I ever tasted. Enough said.
While our return journey was somewhat smoother (and significantly shorter- funny how that happened) that the way out, we ran into a problem upon arriving at the gates of the village: we weren’t allowed to bring outside food into the village. We were exhausted and starving and just wanted to shove food in our faces, so Emma, Tina and I (we had lost the other taxi of friends at this point- it was every man for themselves in Gwangju that night) plopped down on the sidewalk and proceeded to inhale our meals with reckless abandon. Various Koreans stopped to watch and snap photos of us, as if we were a mildly interesting zoo exhibit, or a car crash.
All of the coaches and the captains said something relevant at the team meeting, but in the interest of not boring you guys to death I’m just going to summarize the main things I took away from this experience and then say my goodbyes because sadly, it would appear that “sarcastic commentator on a blog” is not a viable or lucrative job to pursue next spring when I graduate.
THINGS I LEARNED IN KOREA:
1) Preconceived notions of people are crap. The swimming world is small, and we all hear rumors about each other. If you are one of those people who claims they don’t gossip, I claim that you don’t exist. Did I come into this meet with opinions of people I had formed based off things I’d heard about them without actually meeting them? Absolutely. And while not all of them were positive, all of them turned out to be wrong. Everyone, mens team and coaches included, was really friendly and fun. Despite my fears that I would be a socially awkward freak and eat every meal alone, I made a lot of friends.
2) It is possible to have amazing swims in horrible conditions. We were basically camping in the apartments, walking five miles a day, and trying to pull together satisfying meals in a dining hall that offered an option called “young leaves”, yet people still managed to swim really really fast. This applies mostly to me, because I’m a superstitious weirdo, but I feel like its so easy to fall into the trap of “if everything isn’t perfect at a meet, I’m not going to swim fast”, and that really isn’t true. After watching some of the stuff people did, I feel inspired in a completely non-cheesy way, despite the cheesiness of that sentence.
3) When going to a foreign country, expect the unexpected and be ready for some culture shocks. Things that barely exist in Korea: TRASH CANS. There are no trash cans on the street (or really anywhere) in Korea! They do have a pretty elaborate recycling system though, and I guess they expect you to clean up after yourself (How dare them). I didn’t realize until I didn’t have them how much I take trash cans for granted. I really never thought I would be giving trash cans this much thought, but here I am.
4) There really is more to life than swimming, and sometimes realizing this will make you love the sport even more. I swam pretty poorly on a trip that was based around swimming, yet I managed to have a great time and learn a lot in spite of this. I had a coach who used to say that “swimming is just what you do, it’s not who you are”, and I think I had really lost sight of this recently. I love swimming and I enjoy the sport, but athletic success isn’t what defined the experience for me, and in my opinion shouldn’t be what defines any experience for anyone. Gold medal winners and drug test failures who want to argue that point with me, wait a couple years and then when I (hopefully!) have a legal degree I will tear your argument to shreds and then act very smug and self-satisfied afterwards.
And now, as I finish this blog, I want to say thank you to all the people that helped me get to Korea in the first place: my family, my amazing friends and teammates, my long suffering coaches, and all of the USA Swimming staff members and coaches that made this trip possible. None of this would be possible without any of you, and I’m so incredibly grateful.
One more time, thank you all so much for reading! I hope y’all had as much fun reading it as I did writing it. If you ever meet me in person, feel free to tell me how witty and clever I am (kidding). I hope everyone has an awesome rest of the summer, in or out of the pool. Good luck to everyone, go USA and go Tar Heels!
So, a lot of things have happened since I last wrote! I’m currently sitting in the San Francisco airport after having traveled 10 hours from Seoul, preceded by a four hour bus ride. I’m going to try to reflect accurately on the past three days, but judging by how much the world is still spinning, the Tylenol PM I took before the last flight hasn’t fully worn off yet so I cannot be held responsible for any glaring grammatical errors of factual inaccuracies in my writing today. Also, fair warning, this entry is going to be heavy on the emotions and light on the humor, so if you chose to stop reading now I won’t blame you (and honestly won’t ever know because I have no idea who does and does not look at this blog page).
So, what have I been doing the past few days?
I swam. And, since I’ve really been embracing the whole unfiltered honesty thing these past few days, I’m going to say straight up that it didn’t go the way I wanted at all. That is to say, I swam poorly. I had a decent swim in prelims and then a horrible swim in semis. Am I happy about it? Of course not. Am I going t sit here and mope? No. I almost didn’t write about my swim at all, but to pretend it didn’t happen would be just as detrimental to my future swims as crying my eyes out for the rest of the summer. Bad swims happen, to everyone, and usually at the worst possible time. Even if you do everything in your power to prepare, stuff goes wrong. I once had a coach say that champions are defined by how they act when they fall short, not how they act when they succeed. It’s easy to be gracious and friendly and cheer for your teammates when you’re swimming our of your mind, but its so easy to slip into an apathetic funk after a bad swim and use a mediocre performance to justify it. Here is one of the most valuable things I’ve learned about swimming: 90% of being a good teammate and a good competitor stems from how you carry yourself out of the pool. So, after my bad swim, I tried to put some things in perspective: I still got to represent my country at an international level, something not that many people get to do. I had the chance to get to know and cheer for a bunch of fun and amazing people I would never have met otherwise. I got to meet some of the most respected coaches in swimming today (and even made some of them laugh, so IN YOUR FACE boy from my sixth grade class who told me I wasn’t funny). I ended up having a good time anyway, and weirdly enough I’m more motivated to train now than I was prior to the meet.
NOW, in a less serious vein, a couple of us decided on the last night that we needed to try the Korean McDonalds. Since we got back from finals at about 10:00 PM and had to be back for a team meeting at 11, we decided to take a taxi in order to speed up the process. A very nice Korean women helped us flag down said taxi, obviously realizing that we were essentially a bunch of starving savages that would eat HER if we weren’t assisted on our quest to ingest deep fried carbs IMMIDIATELY. I’m not sure what she told the driver, but the ride ended up taking WAY longer than we expected. For a while, I was legitimately concerned we were being taken to North Korea. Luckily, this wasn’t the case, and we eventually arrived at a large, two story McDonalds which was the most beautiful sight I had even seen at that point. Upon arrival, we started screaming “OH MY GOD!” extremely loudly and excitedly, which seemed to amuse our taxi driver quite a bit. We embodied the fast-food obsessed American stereotype to a T, and I feel zero guilt about it. We rushed inside and took in the comforting smell of deep frying oil and rewarmed frozen beef, a truly American aroma. The language barrier was in our way again, but that was okay because (seeing as we are an extremely clever and crafty group of young women) we communicated our orders to the cashier by lifting up a poster and pointing to the pictures of the food we wanted. My order consisted of (ratings and descriptions included):
- Chicken nuggets- 7/10, a classic, hard to screw up. Slightly juicier than their American counterpart yet, due to the fact that they are less deeply fried, they lacked the satisfying crunch on the other shell. They would have been improved with ketchup, but seeing as I was only given chili paste and garlic butter (LOL NO) I can’t speak to what effects my favorite condiment would have had on these morsels of reconstructed poultry.
- Fries- 8/10, while they may have been less fried than the American version, they still had that Macdonald’s fry taste that convinced me at a young age that I would never receive a superior fry through a drive through window (Burger King lovers, nobody likes you, get out). They were so good and I was so desperate that I ate them without ketchup, and if you know me at all you know that I consider ketchup a necessary addition to any meal.
- CHOCOLATE OREO MCFLURRY- 11/10, does my use of caps lock not indicate an overwhelming enthusiasm for this culinary marvel?! Why has the US, home of Hardees hot dog burger and the ever-questionable Long John Silvers NEVER incorporated these into their domestic Macdonald’s menu? This was the best thing I ever tasted. Enough said.
While our return journey was somewhat smoother (and significantly shorter- funny how that happened) that the way out, we ran into a problem upon arriving at the gates of the village: we weren’t allowed to bring outside food into the village. We were exhausted and starving and just wanted to shove food in our faces, so Emma, Tina and I (we had lost the other taxi of friends at this point- it was every man for themselves in Gwangju that night) plopped down on the sidewalk and proceeded to inhale our meals with reckless abandon. Various Koreans stopped to watch and snap photos of us, as if we were a mildly interesting zoo exhibit, or a car crash.
All of the coaches and the captains said something relevant at the team meeting, but in the interest of not boring you guys to death I’m just going to summarize the main things I took away from this experience and then say my goodbyes because sadly, it would appear that “sarcastic commentator on a blog” is not a viable or lucrative job to pursue next spring when I graduate.
THINGS I LEARNED IN KOREA:
1) Preconceived notions of people are crap. The swimming world is small, and we all hear rumors about each other. If you are one of those people who claims they don’t gossip, I claim that you don’t exist. Did I come into this meet with opinions of people I had formed based off things I’d heard about them without actually meeting them? Absolutely. And while not all of them were positive, all of them turned out to be wrong. Everyone, mens team and coaches included, was really friendly and fun. Despite my fears that I would be a socially awkward freak and eat every meal alone, I made a lot of friends.
2) It is possible to have amazing swims in horrible conditions. We were basically camping in the apartments, walking five miles a day, and trying to pull together satisfying meals in a dining hall that offered an option called “young leaves”, yet people still managed to swim really really fast. This applies mostly to me, because I’m a superstitious weirdo, but I feel like its so easy to fall into the trap of “if everything isn’t perfect at a meet, I’m not going to swim fast”, and that really isn’t true. After watching some of the stuff people did, I feel inspired in a completely non-cheesy way, despite the cheesiness of that sentence.
3) When going to a foreign country, expect the unexpected and be ready for some culture shocks. Things that barely exist in Korea: TRASH CANS. There are no trash cans on the street (or really anywhere) in Korea! They do have a pretty elaborate recycling system though, and I guess they expect you to clean up after yourself (How dare them). I didn’t realize until I didn’t have them how much I take trash cans for granted. I really never thought I would be giving trash cans this much thought, but here I am.
4) There really is more to life than swimming, and sometimes realizing this will make you love the sport even more. I swam pretty poorly on a trip that was based around swimming, yet I managed to have a great time and learn a lot in spite of this. I had a coach who used to say that “swimming is just what you do, it’s not who you are”, and I think I had really lost sight of this recently. I love swimming and I enjoy the sport, but athletic success isn’t what defined the experience for me, and in my opinion shouldn’t be what defines any experience for anyone. Gold medal winners and drug test failures who want to argue that point with me, wait a couple years and then when I (hopefully!) have a legal degree I will tear your argument to shreds and then act very smug and self-satisfied afterwards.
And now, as I finish this blog, I want to say thank you to all the people that helped me get to Korea in the first place: my family, my amazing friends and teammates, my long suffering coaches, and all of the USA Swimming staff members and coaches that made this trip possible. None of this would be possible without any of you, and I’m so incredibly grateful.
One more time, thank you all so much for reading! I hope y’all had as much fun reading it as I did writing it. If you ever meet me in person, feel free to tell me how witty and clever I am (kidding). I hope everyone has an awesome rest of the summer, in or out of the pool. Good luck to everyone, go USA and go Tar Heels!