Juggling, Koreans, and Handball

Last night I went to the Beijing juggling club. What's a China experience without going to a juggling club? And now that the days are down to single digits until I fly back to the States, I have to do all the China-y things I can.

(A basic 10-club feed with a guy from Italy and America.)

That includes continue my part-time job teaching Koreans English in China. My curriculum consists of Harry Potter for one hour, then grammar help/story time for the next hour. Do you want to improve your English, too? That'll be $29.00 for the day.

My Koreans have taught me really cool things about their culture: in Korea, newborns count as being one year old, so I'd be 21 there. In Korea, their thumb is called the "father" finger, followed by the "mother," "son," "daughter," and "baby" fingers. And Koreans don't play. They just work.

And now to briefly discuss handball. Tomorrow will be my second adventure to the Olympics. This time I'll be seeing an event almost unknown in America: handball. I thought I knew what it was, since Dan and I play racquetball, but I was wrong. This sport, best I can tell, is like ultimate frisbee with a ball instead. If you're younger than 30, that description probably didn't help, and I recommend going to NBC's handball page and reading the rules or watching some video. Unfortunately, NBC figured out that I'm not in America and won't let me watch any of its coverage.

Finally, I wanted to say that you asked a good question, Jaclyn. I don't have the distribution of Olympic tickets quite figured out. The cheapest ones are really cheap ($4 US). On the other hand, a lot of the ticket sales happened during work hours, so if you're a wage earner dependent on those hours for food, it's unlikely you'll go stand in line, especially if you're risking a stampede. Large blocks of tickets were given (or bought, or somehow ended up in the hands of) large, rich companies, but that's to be expected. If worse comes to worse, you can always find a ticket to attend handball!