by Khaled on May 10, 2012
It’s been five months, and we finally got some color on our walls. I sit writing this post surrounded by Anna’s glorious photography, artfully arranged on large sheets of colored paper, taped to the walls. We have a desk, we threw out one of the ratty couches that came with the apartment, and we’ve scavenged a nice wood side table and some coffee tables we improvised into a bookshelf. We just bought a water filter. I’d say this tiny little apartment is starting to feel like home.
It’s amazing what a little bit of investment will do for your feelings of belonging to a place. Something as simple as reorganizing the space to accomodate your own living patterns is an expression that you care about your own comfort, and you want your environment to reflect that. I never realized how tense I was about the walls, how unwelcoming they were, until Anna finally put some color on them. [Hooked? Read On!…]
by Khaled on March 15, 2012
Fifteen needles! Fifteen. In my feet, my hands, my belly, and two in my ear! Without warning, the doctor had leaned over to my head and, before I could protest, quickly tapped two needles into my earlobe.
Now, I lay on the heated bed as perfectly still as I could. I couldn’t breathe very deeply because the motion stretched the muscles in my belly, which had five needles in them.
All in the name of curing insomnia.
You may not believe that acupuncture works. I wasn’t really sure myself. I’d only had it performed in the American modern medical style, which involved one or two needles at most, inserted very carefully into a muscle and then attached to an electrostim pack. The idea was to direct an electrical current to a muscle more precisely than with a pad. That had been done as part of muscle therapy treatment.
My experience in Korea was totally different. [Hooked? Read On!…]
by Khaled on March 12, 2012
I had pretty much given up around the 20km mark. My left arch had been cramping since I passed 10km and my feet felt like the road was molten asphalt. I was still moving my feet, but it was more of a shuffle as I gingerly placed each step carefully to avoid even the tiniest jolt to my worn out suspension. I glared resentfully at every pair of cushy, padded, motion-controlled sneakers that cruised by me, their owners floating on a soft cloud of running technology.
I had wondered if running a marathon in my ‘barefoot’ Merrell Trailgloves was a good idea, but it turned out to be much worse than I had imagined.
This was only my second marathon. The first one I had run in racing flats, and I didn’t think there would be too much difference, but it turns out half an inch of foam was the difference between crippling pain and a challenging run.
I had also had a running partner the first time. My dad and I had jogged steadily around the streets of Philly, chatting and sharing observations about the city. Here, in South Korea, I was running alone.
I talked myself into putting one foot in front of the other. Somehow, I made it through the twenties and starting chipping away at kilometer 30, then 31, then 32. Each one seemed longer than the one before. With every…single…step my body wanted to stand still. “Please let me walk, just two steps. I’ll do anything!” it begged me. Still I ran. [Hooked? Read On!…]
