Amanda Takes Off...

"Amanda, you drink?"

Master asked me this, with a big grin on his face, after trying to do some balance work with me for five minutes. My laughter didn't make balancing any easier. I said, in Korean, "No, but I'd like a beer." (Master taught me "beer" on Saturday.)

"Amanda, you drink?" just about sums up tae kwon do class tonight. I was just plain off.

The belt test was the worst I've ever had. Master asked me to restart the form once because he wanted me to slow down. I restarted once because I completely screwed up a block. I did the form once, then he asked me to do it again with longer stances. I did it and he had me do my kicks. Those mostly went fine. He passed me, but really, I would have understood if he had said we'd redo it next week.

(I have had bad tests in the past, and at the time I thought I shouldn't've passed those either. I know that if we had the language for it, Master would argue that I've worked hard, that he knows I was having an off day, that the fact that I finished the test with a good form shows perseverance, which is one of tae kwon do's tenets. I feel like I wasn't practicing self-control and indomitable spirit. But I will trust and respect Master.)

I wanted to go home after that, and contemplated doing so during break. Then Master called me over with my dictionary and while he was looking up a word I apologized for the test in Korean. He said, "no worry, no worry" and showed me the word 긴장 (strain, tension, be on edge) and said it was me.

We had a dictionary-conversation back and forth about why I was tense and upset. At one point I started saying, "I don't like it, I don't like it, I don't like it" over something. The boys on the bench were cracking up, "Good Korean, Amanda!" I told Master that I really like tae kwon do and the studio.

Master told me that starting Monday we'll have a new woman in class, a white belt who's studying English Lit at the university. That should be interesting, I'm looking forward to meeting her.

I stayed for soccer and I'm glad I did. I was put in charge of some of the younger boys, like usual. When we played soccer they made me do the first kick at one point. At another, I ended up getting the ball between my calves and jumped all the way across the studio with it yelling, "Tokki! Tokki!" (Rabbit! Rabbit!) I didn't score a goal, unfortunately. The older boys on the bench were laughing and the younger kids on my team were yelling, "Yay, Amanda!" In retrospect, I should've fallen into the goal with the ball between my calves.

Then the boys taught me how to say 사기꾼 (devil, imposter, cheat, crook) and told me to yell it at Late Boy. While Ghost and Powerful acted out scenes from The Exorcist, I said, "Late Boy is a devil!" in Korean. He yelled back in English, "I'm not devil! I'm not devil!" Master was laughing, the older boys were correcting my pronunciation, and I was having a good time. Then Ghost and Powerful taught me how to say "to be crazy" (미쳤다). So we called Late Boy crazy for a while.

One of the smallest kids, a really shy sweetie, asked me when my birthday was (Master had told them) and triple checked. He also asked about my brother and I got to use also-learned-on-Saturday-from-Master-vocab to say "firefighter." I thought it was sweet of him to ask about me and my brother.

Although the test was awful, the class was great.

미쳤다. It's a good word.