Sports! I can't live without 'em

Hello, it's me again! I don't know about you, but when we get ready to move, one of the first things I worry about is what the sports will be like.  So in this post I am going to talk about my three favorite sports here on Yongsan.

Soccer
If you love soccer, Seoul is definitely not a bad place to come. When I first got here, I was disappointed that the post soccer season was so short--only one fall season that lasts a little over a month. Luckily, I found KORAM FC. KORAM is an all-year-round Korean American Football Club on post. I know what you're thinking: What! I thought you were talking about soccer! Pretty much everywhere except the United States, though, they call soccer "football" and  football "American football." Who knew I would come to Seoul and become a football player!  I was glad to join the team, and have been playing for almost two years! KORAM is coached by a professional Korean soccer player/coach. He has coached many professional players and he was one himself! Sometimes it is a little hard to understand him (he speaks almost no English), but lots of kids on the team speak English and Korean and help translate so it all works out.  Thanks to KORAM, my soccer skills have improved a lot.  And my parents appreciate that it's not too expensive.  Since it's a nonprofit club, we just have to raise enough to pay the coach's salary, so it's just $60 a month.  Definitely a win-win!

Another team that I play on is through the Yongsan CYSS post soccer program (yes, I play on two soccer teams but post soccer season is short). It doesn't teach as many skills and has volunteer coaches, but they play a lot of games. So it works out perfect with one team teaching skills but not as many games and the other team plays lots of games but not as many skills.
I have been playing soccer for 8 years (since I was three), and I am getting pretty good.

Ping-Pong

Another sport I play is ping-pong (and yes ping-pong is a sport; they play it in the Olympics!). For those of you who don't know, ping-pong is kind of like miniature tennis. I got into ping-pong thanks to my dad and the Koreans.  My dad paraglides a lot here in Korea and sometimes we go with him.  I'll write a whole other post about Yongin (one of my favorite places here in Korea), but one awesome thing is that the paragliding school there has a great ping-pong table.  My dad taught me how to play after I saw some Koreans playing there. Let me tell you, Koreans take ping-pong very seriously. Now I love to play, especially against my dad. I usually lose because he is still better than me (and 20 years older), but sometimes I can beat him. Besides Yongin, there are two places to play on post: Commiskeys and the Teen Center. Commiskeys is a free rec-center on post. They have ping-pong tables (a bunch!), air hockey, pool, and fusbal.  My dad and I play ping-pong there sometimes. The Teen Center is another free place I play ping-pong. It is a cool after-school hangout for middle school kids and high schoolers (it's just across the street from the middle school). 

Four Square

Basic four-square court at Seoul American Middle School

At my middle school, we don't have 

a playground. Instead there is just a huge courtyard with basketball hoops, a beat-up volley ball net, and . . . four-square courts! A four square square looks like a big square divided into four sections. Every day after we eat, some of us come play four square.  One day I was walking to school with my friend, and I found a soft, purple ball on the ground about the size of a baseball. That was the beginning of mini-four-square (sometimes called ping-pong square because if you're good enough at it, you try to just get the ball as low as you can over the other person's line). Mini-four-square is like normal four square, but in mini-four square, we just use a smaller ball.

mini-four-square ball

So those are my favorite sports here in Seoul.  If you are more interested in football or basketball or baseball or wrestling, there are options for those as well through CYS and the schools.  And if sports aren't your thing, there are lots of after-school clubs and SKIES activities to choose from (but I'll save those for another post).  Anyway, you're in Seoul, one of the biggest cities in the world!  You don't have to worry about being bored here.