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Wooden Floors, Bruises, Soccer
07/21/06
Wooden Floors, Bruises, Soccer
I had tae kwon do last night.
To make a long story very short:
I got hit on the head with a soccer ball,
I fell on the wooden floors, but they're old and polished and it didn't hurt as much as I thought it would,
but I have a nice bruise on my knee today,
I scored the only goal in four games for my team (each game was sudden death) but it was a total accident, so it shouldn't've counted,
the other woman in class and I were each captains of teams with 4 children on them (lump me with the kids all you like, because most of the teenage boys are very cocky),
since I was a captain, my name was written on the white board in Korean and that was disorienting for a moment,
I sounded out a few kids' names from their belts and they in turn practiced their English with me,
the other woman in class, Pyeong Ju, walked me home and in doing so asked my age and made me realize I'm the oldest one in class.*
I have been meaning to take a picture of this "song room" right next to my apartment building for a while. It's the Julie Anna Noribang. See how the "ng" sound (shown with a circle ㅇ in Korean) is a heart? Yeah...that means it's a noribang I won't be setting foot in...
Today my Korean co-teacher and I stopped by a large park to take pictures of street signs. Some kids were playing "horse" and I got a picture of them. They started yelling, "Where are you from?" I got the picture, they got to show they knew English.
*As a side note, most of the people in my school are children and teenagers. I am, as far as I can tell, the oldest person in my class (27 Korean age, Pyeong Ju is 20). This is normal in Korea for a variety of reasons. I was warned by my Master and another friend (who taught in Korea for a year) that training here would be very different than back home. It's mostly for children and it's less serious here. Belts are handed out like candy. These are the things I was told.
I can see aspects of that here (soccer for half of class?) but I also like that the kids, who are shuttled from hogwan to hogwan after school, get some physical release and get to have fun. There are aspects that are more competitive than at my studio in the States like freesparring for points. And soccer! Other things seem to not be emphasized as much as back in the States. I trained with two different studios in the States and they were different from each other, as well.
Very often serious students in America are very upset when they get here and see "the state" of tae kwon do here. Ignoring that very romanticized fantasy (and aren't we so often upset when our fantasies don't jive with reality?), I am not such a serious student.
2 comments
When I get to my school, I take my shoes off, put them in a cupboard, and slip on slippers. Slippers that everyone else wears, too. (Part of my job is to train the kindy kids to take off their shoes and put on their slippers!) When visitors come to the school, they take of their shoes, stick them in the cupboard and slide into slippers. At non-Western style restaurants, you take off your shoes, too.
Most people use slippers as home, but I go barefoot (except in my shower, where I wear shoes because the entire bathroom is the shower and it's slippery!). I always make sure to wear socks when I visit someone's house because a lot of people don't dig bare feet and I'm not sure if they'll have slippers or not.
It takes some getting used to, taking your shoes off and putting them back on a half dozen times a day...
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