Home Is Where the Mountains Look Normal

This week I drove up to Logan for a good friend's wedding. It was the first time I'd been up there since Christmas, and as I drove down into the valley from the canyon I was struck, as I usually am, by the excitement of getting to see my friends and being somewhere familiar.

Only...it wasn't as familiar as last time, in some subtle way. As I was driving around in Logan, I finally realized that my baseline for "familiar" now is Salt Lake. The mountains in Logan are not unfamiliar, but I kept expecting to see the shapes of the mountains near my house in SLC when I looked up. That expectation is in such strong contrast to even just last year, when going to Logan felt like going home. Without me noticing, something has subtly shifted.

Half Marathon Update: Weeks 1 & 2

I wrote some big words in my last post, a little bit bigger than I was comfortable with - I wasn't sure I would stick with it. But I'm two weeks in and haven't given up yet (a feat in and of itself)! I've been posting updates on my Instagram, but it's private and not everyone has Instagram, so here's an update post.

This first picture is right before I started my first run, on Week 1 Day 1 of the Couch 2 5k program I'm doing to train. (If you're looking to start running, I highly recommend the program and the app both. The app is about $2 to purchase, but it's worth it. You can play and control your own music in the app while you run, and it prompts you each time you need to move from walking to running and back. The program really eases you into activity, so they really mean it when they say "couch to 5k".)

...and this picture is me after my first training run. I forgot to turn on my GPS, so I'm not sure what my distance or pace was, but I did about two miles alternating 1:30 walking / 1:00 running per Couch 2 5K's program. I was surprised about how great I felt afterward -- I'd convinced myself that I was horribly, horribly out of shape and I would die doing even a little bit of running. So maybe I'm only one "horribly" out of shape.

W1D2, from my running log: "Cold, thanks to the snowstorm we had yesterday (RIP all the pretty flowers). Got up at the unholy hour of six am to go to the gym with my roommate. We climbed a few routes (thanks to my thesis, I haven't been in almost a month and my hands and forearms are feeeeeeeeling it), did some bench presses, and rowed for ten minutes. And all this before 8:30 am! I'm feeling so virtuous. And sweaty." I remembered my GPS, so I can tell you I did 2.03 miles total (0.61 miles running at a 13:08 pace). 

W2D1: I skipped W1D3 because it fell on a Saturday and I was feeling lazy. 31 minutes total, 2.62 miles, 0.91 miles run at a 9:54 pace. Proud of myself for running farther faster, and for ending on an uphill. But I'm proudest of myself because even though I put it off until almost dark and I reeeeeeally didn't want to do it, I got changed and forced myself out the door anyway. It feels good to conquer bad habits!

W2D2: This was a tough run. I was tired and my body wasn't loving me. Still, I did 2.56 miles, running 0.89 miles at a 10:05 pace. I climbed, lifted, and rowed with my roommate at our gym before I ran. Getting up at six am stinks, but it feels great to be productive in the morning.

W2D3:  I skipped my run on Saturday (note to self: Saturday runs don't happen), so I ran that workout Monday morning. I did a little more than 2.37 miles (forgot GPS during first half of my warm up). Climbed with my roommate and nailed a couple of routes I couldn't do last week, lifted 15lbs (3 sets 8 reps), and rowed ten minutes. Pushed too hard at the beginning of my run, so the last running segment was murder. My app says I ran 0.97 miles at a 9:19 pace - much too fast! But I didn't stop running (...jogging) until my drill sergeant told me to, though I was tempted. (That drill sergeant is literal, by the way -- well, as literal as an app can be. The C25K app has a drill sergeant trainer option. I liked him best, so he barks at me every segment change.)

Which brings me to W3D1, this morning: 2.05 miles total. I think I went farther than that - I don't think my GPS kicked in until midway through my warm up. I paced myself too slow this workout (0.81 miles running at 11:03), I think, but after yesterday I was worried about running out of steam, especially during the longer running parts. Better tomorrow. Went climbing with my roommate, but we passed on the lifting and rowing today. And how glamorous is my post-workout look today? Yesterday and today were cold, down in the low 40s when I was running before 8:00am. I made the mistake yesterday of just running in a t-shirt and my arms froze, though I wasn't actually cold. So this morning I dug out my (too-small) long-sleeved running top, and my arms were toasty like the rest of me. 

I'm also tracking what and how much I eat with My Fitness Pal. It's a sobering realization to see how much you can eat without realizing how much you're eating. Snacking is the hardest part -- I do pretty well at meals, but I'm an emotional eater, and it's hard to break that habit. I have to say, without my sister doing this right along with me, I'm pretty sure I would have given up after the first mildly difficult run I had, which would have been about three runs in. But the fact that she's doing everything I'm doing, and doing it with two babies in tow, makes me suck it up and get out there. This experience is teaching me that 85% of what's holding me back from being who I want to be is my own fears and bad habits. I'm in control of those things -- they're things I can confront and overcome. It's not easy, no, but I can do it if I make up my mind. And pray a lot. If anyone wants to know, prayer is my secret weapon, because I know I'm not doing this alone.

Journey to 13.1

Just about to start my first training run for the half.

A few weeks ago, after I turned in the final draft of my thesis to my advisor, my visiting teachers took me to dinner to celebrate. Sitting around eating burritos in Freebird in Sugarhouse, they asked what was next. I jokingly said I was thinking of running a 5k by my birthday. Both of them said no way - that's so much time, you can totally run a half-marathon!

Record scratch.

A HALF-MARATHON?!? 13.1 whole MILES?!

Well, long story short, I'm registered to run a half-marathon the day before my 29th birthday. Because I'm notoriously un-self-motivated (as the sixty pounds I've gained since my mission can arrest to), I roped my little sister into doing it with me. She had her second baby a few weeks ago and was just cleared to start exercising again, so I thought she would be a) up for it, and b) at about the same fitness level. (Except she's probably more fit than I am, ha.) She agreed, like a crazy person, so now we have 20 weeks to go from total dweebs to rockin' 13.1-milers.

I'm not going to lie. This is terrifying. I'm not a big believer in myself. I stay far away from hard things, and when I can't avoid them, I procrastinate and whine about them (see my Facebook page or my Instagram for proof of this re my thesis #annmarievsgradschool). But the other morning, I was lying in bed at my sister's house, with my baby niece snuggled in my arms, breathing slowly and totally adorably as she took a morning nap. I, having been awoken by her early-morning serenade and unwilling quite as yet to get up and greet the day, invited her to come lie in bed with me. As she slept and dreamed next to me, I lay thinking about this terrifying prospect of running a half-marathon. It was such a wonderful, precious moment - Baby J is so confident and full of life, so sure that she can do anything. I didn't want to spoil that memory by chickening out of something that would be hard but worthwhile. I didn't want to look back in ten years and admit to her that I didn't believe in myself but that of course she can do anything. I want her to think I'm the coolest, most amazing auntie on the planet, and part of that means I'm going to have to keep up with her - and since she's just like her momma, she's a 3-volt machine running on 90 volts.

So here's to doing hard things. And believing in yourself, even if only for the sake of others.

Here's me on W1D1 (stealing my roomie's mirror): 188.6 pounds, hips 43", waist 37", upper arm 14", thigh 27"

It's been a long time

A tranquil river that winds its way through the Korean Folk Village in Suwon, South Korea

It has been quite awhile since I have posted to this space. Not because nothing has been happening, or because I had nothing to say...more because not blogging about anything was a way to avoid articulating things I didn't want to confront. 2014 was a year I am glad to put behind me. I was looking forward to things being different in 2015, but alas, thus far things are continuing in very much the same vein.

An apartment building in San Francisco, California, near Chinatown

It wasn't that I experienced terrible tragedies in 2014 -- on the contrary, I had some amazing opportunities and experiences last year. It was that everything seemed to be piling on top of me all at once: school, my personal life (such as it is...), my home life, important decisions to be made, fears about my future, constant challenges and fears in my immediate family circle, significant financial worries, continual car problems, depression about my current struggles and challenges, etc. It was a constant barrage of small- to medium-sized things that slowly piled higher and higher and higher.

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California

I did some amazing things last year, though -- I visited California (San Francisco and Los Angeles) for the first time, I got to visit Seoul again for the first time in four years, my family moved across the United States to live the same state as me and I got to spend the holidays with them, I met amazing people, I learned a lot about myself and my Heavenly Father, I experienced in a very real way being carried by grace through trials and challenges that I knew were too big for me, but not too big for Him. It was a very instructive year, but it wasn't a very fun one.

Brightly painted beams support a tiled roof on the walls of the outer court at Gyeongbok Palace (the former imperial residence) in the middle of Seoul, South Korea

This is my last semester of graduate school (for now, anyway -- who knows, I may be crazy enough to go back to school and do it again sometime down the road), thank goodness. But that means two sources of stress coming to bear on me at the same time: 1) the aforementioned thesis, and 2) being finished with school means now there's a big fat question mark on every day after 9 May 2015.

North Korean guards on duty at the border of North and South Korea, Panmunjom, in the DMZ

Right now, the main source of my stress, anxiety, depression, fear, sense of inadequacy, and trepidation is my Master's thesis. (That doesn't mean that the second isn't also making its presence felt, however.) My thesis is about the first half of the first volume of Kim Il Sung's collected Works, which is supposed to contain speeches, etc that he gave from the summer of 1930 until the end of 1943. (The last half of the volume covers just a few months in 1945, following the end of World War II when the Japanese, who had been occupying Korea for the last 35 years, were defeated and Korea was "liberated".) Kim Il Sung would have been just barely 18 in the summer of 1930, and the events as they are narrated in this portion of the Works don't match up with the history most historians and Korean scholars accept. That being said, what the Works claims Kim Il Sung said was most likely fabricated out of whole cloth -- the topic of my thesis is exploring why that portion of the Works was written the way it was.

A South Korean soldier guards the door that leads to North Korea in a conference room that straddles the border -- he and I are both standing on ground that is technically in North Korea

I was due to turn in my finished draft to my committee this last week, but when I met with my advisor to give her a (very) rough first draft two weeks ago, she was concerned that I would need more time. I didn't want to move my date back because 1) if I did, I would no longer be able to graduate in May (but I could still walk in the graduation ceremony), and 2) I was afraid that with too much extra time I would just procrastinate everything until one and a half weeks before the new due date anyway. But to make a long story short, she (and the other members of my committee) won the battle and I'm now defending at the end of April, and due to turn in my draft to my advisor the Monday after spring break (~sob~ for my spring break turning into thesis-writing time...).

On the street in Sinchon-dong, Seoul, South Korea, an area popular with college students

It's a discouraging turn of events, but it does give me the opportunity to practice confronting my fears and sense of inadequacy and not procrastinate. I'm trying to look at it from that point of view and not be depressed about this stress continuing through the next two months of my life instead of being over in three short weeks. That will teach me to put things off...

The aforementioned Gyeongbok Palace at sunset

Autumn

A few weeks ago, some friends and I made an evening trip up Emigration Canyon to soak in the autumn colors. Here's a few pictures from our excursions. My photography is untrained and uninformed, so the pictures that do turn out well are basically happy accidents. The picture above is one of my favorites from the trip - I love the composition and the plants in the foreground and the shape of the clouds above the mountains and the glow in the sky and the lake in the middle.

Autumn is my favorite season

And we're having such a good one this year.

Pictures from the Beach

I'm in Korea now -- yay! ~cough~ but also I miss my mom ~cough~ -- but the first part of the week I was in Los Angeles visiting my lovely friend Julia. Monday afternoon we hied ourselves to the beach (Topanga State Beach, to be precise). The idea sounded relaxing and romantic (in the "idealized view of reality" way, not the other one)...but the execution left a little bit to be desired. Julia informs me it's almost always cold there, but thanks to the heat wave and the relentless Santa Anna winds, it was actually quite comfortably warm. The only problem was that those same winds were blowing so hard they were picking up the sand and hurtling it at us. It hurt! It also made reading very difficult. But we still had fun nonetheless! Here are some pictures from our adventures.

This father and son were so adorable! The little boy looooved chasing the gulls, so the dad picked him up and ran around helping him "fly" with the birds. It was the most beautiful thing we saw all day!

This was not a gust that blew the towel out like that. Basically, it was that windy almost constantly the whole time we were there.

The amazing Julia balanced this small rock on the larger one, and it actually stayed that way for awhile! The wind eventually blew it off, and we couldn't manage to get it to stay again, but at least I got this shot for proof!

San Fran! (and the end of the semester)

This last week I spent traveling to and exploring the Bay Area. It's the first time I've ever been to California, actually (unless you count the approximately 45 minutes I was in LAX before getting on a plane to Korea once). I don't think I would choose to live here, but it's a wonderful place to visit! I came to see a friend graduate from Berkeley Law (which she did, this last Saturday), but I spent a few days exploring and sight-seeing before her graduation.

But first! A quick summary of the end of the Spring 2014 semester, aka the worst two weeks of my entire life (and it was my own fault). The last week in particular was pretty terrible -- maybe even more terrible than the last week of the Fall 2013 semester, and that one ended with a 30+-hour drive home to Tennessee after only about 15 hours of sleep the whole week. I am so relieved the semester is over! My longest paper was due Monday (April 28) afternoon, but was just less than halfway finished by Saturday night. I started working on it at about 12:30am Sunday morning and it was finished about eleven hours later -- or rather, it was done enough to turn in so I could get started on my other responsibilities. Tuesday I wrote my last paper, for my Research Methods class, and Wednesday I turned it in, met with two of my professors to discuss my other papers, and then spent the afternoon frantically packing up all my things so I could move them into a storage unit. Luckily, my cousin came to help me out. It took the two of us about four hours to finish packing up everything and get it into the storage unit. Unfortunately, in the rush I managed to forget the one thing I have to have to go to Korea -- my passport! Thankfully, I remembered (whilst almost having a heart attack), I was able to make a quick pitstop to pick it up at my storage unit on my way out of SLC the following Monday (May 5). That night (April 30), after dropping everything off at the unit, I drove up to Layton and spent the night at my cousin and his wife's new house, and spent most of May 1 with them having a great time! I'm so grateful to be friends with my cousins, because you have to see them anyway, so you might as well enjoy it, right?

The evening of May 1 I drove up to Logan to my grandma's house and stayed there for a few days. While I was there I got to hang out with my friends and I even got to see my little brother graduate from college! I also "got" to help him move his stuff out of his apartment and clean it, but hey, I love him and he paid for the movie we went to afterward (The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - awesome!).

Monday morning, bright and early, Mr. Farmer came and got me and we started driving west. We got on I-80 and basically drove until it dead-ended into the ocean. We stopped in Reno for the night on the way, where the place we were staying was hosting a bunch of bowlers. It turns out that's because the National Bowling Stadium is right across the street (and was visible from my room window). We didn't stay there long, though; we packed up and left by 9am the next morning and made it to the Bay Area by lunchtime. On our way to where we were staying that night (on an old Navy base that's now been taken over by NASA), we drove past Facebook's headquarters. Their sign doesn't have their name all big on it, just the "like" symbol and the address.

While we were staying on Moffett Field, we saw the skeleton of an old airship hanger that must have been at least twenty stories high, if not thirty, and the door were massive! They moved on what were essentially railroad tracks, they were so big. (I have pictures of most of these things I'm talking about on my Instagram.) We spent that evening and the next morning exploring Palo Alto, which is about twenty miles south of San Fran and were a lot of rich people live, it seems. That afternoon we picked up Mr. Farmer's nephew, Jim, at the San Fran airport and checked into our hotel in downtown San Fran. The view was great! It's just as hilly as all the movies make it out to be, too. And windy! I think the weather's been amazing, but there are a lot of people walking around with coats and scarves on still, which confuses me, but apparently they think it's cold.

The next day, Thursday, we got up early and went to explore the pier area, specifically Pier 39 (which is basically a massive tourist attraction). We saw the seals that live on the docks, ate some yummy bread from Boudin (they even make bread in the shape of animals!), and took a lot of pictures. Then around noon we hopped onto a ferry boat and headed out to Alcatraz in the middle of the bay! It was the only thing Jim insisted on doing, and I was skeptical, but it was really interesting. It was also very, very sobering. Not that I've ever wanted to commit a crime, but now I really, really don't want to. Alcatraz the island was actually not that bad -- windy, but gardens have been carefully planted and tended (as they were during the time it was a prison island), and you can't beat the view from the island. And the prison wasn't exactly dank and dark like dungeons in old movies -- but it would be damp with all the fog SF gets and I'm sure it would have been cold with all the wind whistling around and the entire structure being made out of concrete and steel. They have a really great audio tour of the cell-house that has some commentary by actual former prisoners and guards and they talk about what it was like and some of their experiences. It was definitely much more compelling because of that; otherwise it would have been a slightly chilly concrete room with a lot of empty cells. Hearing the men talk about it made it much easier to imagine what living in those cells would have been like. So all you kids, stay in school and don't do drugs and obey your parents! Trust me, you don't want to end up in prison.

Thursday evening we stopped to see the Golden Gate bridge on our way to meet up with Mr. Farmer's daughter and her boyfriend (who was also graduating from Berkeley Law). We had dinner at Chevy's and had some yummy ice cream for dessert. By the time we got back to the hotel we were exhausted, but it was a fun day. Friday we met her in Berkeley (we took the BART (that's the name of the subway! Bay Area Rapid Transit, BART for short) and she showed us around the law school and the Berkeley campus and some of the area around the school and the downtown. We ate lunch at a pizza place downtown called Jupiter, which was wonderful! Then we came back to San Fran and I left Mr. F and Jim and went shoe shopping (they wouldn't have enjoyed it) and spent some time in my room until we ventured out into Chinatown for dinner. We ate at a great Chinese restaurant, House of Nanking, which unfortunately was not a dive but actually pretty clean and well-kept (dives are my favorite, and usually have the best food, but this place was still really good, if not as atmospheric).

Saturday was Chris's graduation! It started at 9am, so we left our hotel at 6:30am to make sure we weren't late (we were more than an hour early). As far as graduations go this one wasn't too bad, but there were so many people! After the reception, we all went our separate ways and I tried to find a Korean restaurant in the area Daddy told me about. I wasn't able to find it, but I did find another Korean place that looked almost exactly like it had been transported intact straight from Korea to Berkeley. I had some yummy bibimbap there and did a little more exploring before I headed back into San Fran, where I did a little shopping (but I couldn't really buy anything because I only have my carryon) before going back to spend a little time in my room. Then I had a fun adventure! Someone must have tripped the fire alarm (accidentally or not), because I was happily updating my Instagram with pictures of my adventures when it went off about 9pm~ish. At first I thought it was an accident or a joke, but all of us pounded down the stairways to the pavement outside nonetheless. Two honest-to-goodness fire trucks came racing up the street, sirens blazing and lights twirling, and some real, live firemen went into our building and checked everything out. Thankfully, there was no fire, but it did make last night the most interesting and exciting Saturday night I've had in a long, long time!

Which brings me to yesterday. Ever since the semester ended, I haven't been able to sleep past 7:30am, and coming out to an earlier time zone has made it worse! I wake up rarin' to go between 6 and 6:30 and can't get back to sleep, and this morning was no exception. So I got up and packed up all my stuff, then walked about 1.5 miles to the nearest church building for church. It was a lovely service and the people made me feel so welcome!

Right now I'm in the LA area enjoying hanging out with my darling Julia! So I'm going to go do that now. ^_^ Thursday morning, bright and early (7am!) I'll fly off into the sunrise, headed for Korea. My friend Sooyeon will pick me up at the airport Friday night (Korea-time) and I'll stay with her for a bit and also try to visit as many of my Korean friends as possible before my classes start on 3 June.