Tae kwon do (태권도)

I'm unsure if I've mentioned this before (except for the brief blurb above about things to do in Pyeongchang), but I'm currently taking tae kwon do with one of the best masters in Korea. We call him Kwanjangnim, which means he's the head of a Kwan, or specific discipline within the martial art as a whole. It's a fairly high honor, but he likes Fulbright quite a bit. He even gave us our uniforms for free and is only charging $100 for a month's lessons. He hopes to make Taekwondo fun for us so that we will want to continue with it during our year stay. This essentially means that he's going easy on us.

Going easy or not, Taekwondo remains difficult for me. The first obstacle is my lack of flexibility. Taekwondo is a Martial Art that focuses mainly on kicking, and I am having trouble getting my stout dwarf running legs to bend in directions other than directly ahead of me. (For the curious, I believe there are four popular martial arts in the United States. As far as I know, here is what their concentrations are. Taekwondo, kicking; Karate, punching; Kung Fu, misdirection (using an opponents strength against him or her); Judo, throwing.)

Another obstacle is my sweat, which makes the floor beneath me rather slick (we practice barefoot), and thus keeping my balance during drills and sparing becomes a bit of a problem especially during the more "enthusiastic" kicks. The wetness also has given me rather large blisters, especially on my left foot. I recently went to the local department store (Emart) to purchase some bandages, and I hope I can get most of my open blisters to heal before next week Thursday (8/2/2007) when we will test for our Yellow Belts.

The Yellow Belt examination will include our knowledge of and facility with Relaxed, Walking, Long, and Riding Horse stance, as well as our transitions between these; high, body, and low punch; front, straight, roundhouse (not the Chuck Norris kick, if you were wondering; apparently that's a misnomer), and perhaps side kick, though most of us are not up to that yet. We have to know the commands for these in Korean, as there will be no translation. Should be fun!

Last night (Friday, 7/26), Kwanjangnim invited our student translator, our two black belts, and couple others of us out to dinner. He took us to his school where we saw some children who were training. Most are already black belts, and those that aren't already know their black belt forms, but are not allowed to wear a full black belt until they reach sixteen, which I guess is the age they can actually compete in full out tournaments. Essentially, I would not want to fight any of them, although they will be visiting/humiliating us next Tuesday.

Dinner was awesome. He paid, as he is supposed to in the social hierarchy. The meal was a little awkward as we are not yet used to the conventions of this hierarchy. An easy thing was always pouring for those who are higher rank than you. A harder thing was not letting that person see you drink. You have to physically turn your body away. He took us to the best dokgalbi place in Chuncheon (the aforementioned best dokgalbi in the world)--1.5 Dokgalbi.

TKD