Is This the Week?

Yesterday, I woke up early to go running. I had an 8 mile run planned - the amount of distance that is typically called for during the "taper" phase of marathon training when you have one week to go before the race. I ran essentially the same route that I ran when I hatched this back in September to to run a race in Korea. I thought a lot about Ian and the time that has passed, the anticipation, the anxiety, the long runs, the Korean lessons. I thought about Dana and the feelings she's had about waiting and about Ben and Cami and how they will be traveling back to Korea.

So I ran the 8 miler in anticipation of the Nov. 18th SportsSeoul Marathon. I'm officially signed up now. My Korean teacher Sil and her mother helped make it happen. As I mentioned in a previous post, the marathon website is in Korean so Sil helped me go through the registration, but I did not see a charge on my credit card. Meanwhile, Sil had e-mailed and called the registration office. They told her the credit card did not go through, but she arranged to have her mother who is living in Korea do a bank transfer of the entry fee and I could simply give her the money. So I gave her the money and she took care of the transfer. She has been so kind and helpful - a trait most Koreans seem to possess. Plus, she's been very patient as I attempt to learn Korean.

So now that I'm registered, that's one obstacle down and one major one still to overcome. We just need that phone call. My theory is that calls come on Tues - Thurs, usually in the morning. So, if we get the call by Wednesday of this week, we can probably make it to Korea in time for the race. I'm hopeful the call will come this week, but I've been doing comparative math and that leads me to believe the call may not come until Nov. 20th. I counted the number of business days it took for the Birds to receive their call from the time the visa was approved to arrive at that date. I'm not very excited about that idea because that would mean travel during Thanksgiving week. But we'll travel whenever we can so we can get Ian. Since we have no way of checking on the status, we have to leave it in God's hands while we learn patience.