Amanda Takes Off...

Today Master teased me—in a friendly way—in class about misspelling "안녕하세요" as "아령하세요" when I text messaged him. I protested, spitting out "hana, dul," while mimicking text messaging on a handphone. The problem is that I needed two "ㄴ" characters in a row but in two different syllables. I pressed the button too quickly, so it turned into the next letter "ㄹ" and I didn't realize it.

Right away he understood and nodded and laughed. Ghost turned to me and said, "Handphone text Korean? WOW! Good, Amanda! Good job!"

Then Master said that his brother had said he'd worked with me and that I was doing well. I laughed and nodded and smiled and Master said that he had asked his brother to focus on me specifically.

Oh, 감사합니다, Master.

I got smacked hard in the head with a target from across the room. Studious kicked it hard enough that the kid holding it lost control and it really went quite far. They all gasped and started yelling out apologies, I said, "No, no, OK" and looked to see who it was. Studious bowed at me, I bowed back and said in English, "Good job!"

The word I learned today was waist: 허리. It's soccer day, where I usually learn at least three words from Ghost, but the night was shortened so the boys could prepare the studio for the belt tests tomorrow.

Tonight's class was much better than last night's class. We did a lot of target practice. Monday, Master stuck with me until I finally started turning my supporting foot while doing front kicks and roundhouse kicks. (This is either different than what I was taught before or this is the first time that I've been forced to do it correctly.)

All of a sudden it clicked: you get a heck of a lot more power out of the kick when you twist the ball of your foot.

So I was enjoying target practice tonight.

We freesparred three times. I freesparred Tired and two guys from Brother's studio. I felt awful during the third sparring session because it was supposed to be no contact. Once we ran into each other and I slammed into his thigh. Another time I was doing a hatch kick and he moved forward at the same time to kick me and I hit him on the shoulder—hard. I apologized in Korean, pointed to myself and said, "Stop." He nodded and agreed.

Neither of us were wearing our glasses, which I'm sure didn't help, and the room was packed with at least 20 people sparring, but I still felt terrible.

At the end of class, most people left. Those of us who stayed did push-ups, sit-ups and other random exercises. We did 100 push-ups (40, then 2 sets of 30 with some other work in between). That, combined with the more than 300 punches we did yesterday, is just about killing my shoulders.

When he dismissed us, Brother Master approached me and complimented me on sticking around after class and doing all of the work, even though I was one of the last ones to finish my sets.

I, in turn, asked him for some help with my poomse. I am really glad that I did, because I learned how to do a more powerful sweeping face block and I finally figured out how to move both hands for a palm body block. Both Masters were telling me, "천천히, 빨리. 같이." In other words, "Slowly, quickly. Together." I know the meaning of each word and I kept watching what they were doing, but I just wasn't understanding how to put it together.

At one point he put me in the basic horse riding stance and just had me practice the palm body block. I finally understood what was going on. I did ten palm blocks for each side, finally getting my hand in the right place and my uniform to snap. Tired, Studious, and Powerful, the only boys left in the studio, clapped for me.

I thanked Brother Master several times and was informed that he wouldn't be there tomorrow; Master will be back.

I'm glad I stayed and asked for some extra help from him. I went into class today thinking, "I can learn something from him, and today I will." And I did.

Also, he taught me 힘 (power). A useful word.

I realized my new jeans were biasing and tried to return them to the Giordano store near me yesterday. They wouldn't take them. When Master found out, he was so upset he wanted to return them for me. ("They are lying! They wouldn't do this if you were Korean!") I didn't have them with me, so he got the new woman, English name Heidi, to help me out today. And lo and behold, they exchanged them after a lot of face saving.

It is SO nice to have a Korean friend in the area. I thanked her, she told me not to worry about it.

A related cool thing that happened: I didn't have Heidi's phone number, so I texted Master in bad Korean. At least he understood me, because he texted back in...Korean. I recognized four of his seven Korean words and could figure out two by context.

Master's away at some training for the next few days, so his brother's studio joined our studio and we all practiced together. It was going fine until we started working on poomse. Brother Master was criticizing every single thing I was doing. This included telling me I was doing things wrong before he'd even seen me do them.

I was frustrated because I trained with two other Masters—Grandmasters, in fact—before I started training with his brother. And sometimes a senior black belt would lead the class. One guy, James, was super strict in a way that my last Master, who was quite strict, never was. Thus, I know that each person has a different style. I understand the importance of being flexible and adjusting to different styles, but he wasn't picking on anyone else and I just wanted to yell, "Go talk to X about his bouncing habit, you're only here for three days, dude!"

I had to remind myself that when I met him before, when I was first looking at studios, he was very nice, and he's been very kind every time I've seen him since. I'm sure he was trying to help me improve, but I was having a hard time keeping my spirits up. Even when he finally told me I was doing good, I just sort of stared at him. That, I know, was the wrong reaction on my part. I'll try harder tomorrow. And Thursday.

Then, to top it off, Studious threw open the lock-rarely-works door on me when I was changing. This has happened with just about every single person in the studio at least once, and I've done it myself by accident, so it wasn't really a big deal and I didn't really care, but it was sort of the icing on a not-as-great-as-I'd-hoped-it'd-be class. Poor guy, he was hiding in a big group, trying really hard not to look at me when I came out. I wanted to tell him it was fine, but I knew that would've made things worse.

(One small kid who'd never seen me before once opened up the door on me. I was entirely in my dobok and getting out my belt. He apologized and then stayed there and just stared at me. I nodded and pulled the door closed. The boys teased him for the rest of class.)

From The List:

Live abroad for at least 12 weeks.

Check.

"It's like 'pay' with the 'y' and 'a' switched and an 'e' at the end. So really it's not like 'pay' at all." That's Michael describing the word 폐문 (a permanently closed door). He then explained the word 폐교 (a permanently closed school).

This weekend was exhaustingly fantastic. Yesterday I met a friend at COEX mall. I was hoping to get a decent haircut and find some jeans, not expecting either to be very successful.

Salon Uno gave me a fantastic, fast haircut for only 20,000 won. I'm trying to grow my hair out a bit and the woman understood immediately what I wanted. I got her card; I will be back.

Then my friend said, "Well, let's start looking for jeans. We'll probably have to go into several places."

We started our journey at Giordano, home of the ads with the two incredibly hot guys, 비 and 장동건.

And score! I bought two long-sleeved shirts in olive and grey, as well as a great pair of jeans that I love. Had I looked at the price tag before I tried them on, I never would've found out how great they are. I spent more than I've ever spent on jeans and it was worth it. I want to wear them, sleep in them, work in them, play in them, and never, ever, ever take them off.

Today Michael and I went to 만리포 (Mallipo) beach together. I got to drive for the first time in three months and the beach was fantastically empty since it's "not summer." We got there around low tide time; the tide was quite low, as you can see in this photo.

Freakishly, the beach resort area featured a Statue of Liberty and a teepee. The teepee housed public squatter toilets.

Michael brought a picnic feast for my birthday, along with a cake with 천사 (angels) on it.

The high tide had left several tide lines, including this one, starring some crab bits. A baby crab body was nearby as well.

We stayed long enough that the tide came in again. Shortly after taking this photo, I started seeing the 날치 (flying fish, bait is 낚시) of the West Sea. They really do look like the Mario Brothers' flying fish. They leap out of the water, glide, and then flop straight down into the water again. Very strange.

And here's me, on my 26th birthday, in my new jeans.

In other news, I've started watching Korean music videos, leading to bopping my head to some Taiwanese trio's obnoxiously catchy little song Super Star. Of course, I can't understand anything other than the chorus (and one of the videos includes a scary teddy bear throughout it) but the song still gets stuck in my head.