Amanda Takes Off...

I was having a Bad Korea Day (in only small part because I can't buy groceries here without the Slightly Creepy Guy making comments about the nutrition of what I'm buying, and I just want to smack him with my Diet Coke) but then I went to tae kwon do and it was all better.

It was a small class tonight, only twelve of us really participating. Master said we were going to play soccer (축구, chukku).

Oddest soccer game I've ever seen.

We broke into teams of four and Master gave each team three rebreakable bricks and a ball. All of us set the bricks up to form a little bridge. We set up our bridges/houses/whatever (2 vertical bricks and one horizontal across them) in the shape of a large triangle in the room. And then we were off. The goal was to knock down as many of the other teams' bridges as possible. We all ended up shifting right twice, so there could be no arguments about one side of the room being tilted or anything.

So we had up to twelve people running around the room, trying to protect their three bricks while knocking down six other bricks, with three balls flying about. One of the balls must have had something weighted in it, because it was going sideways and felt funny to kick. (Once the game was on, it didn't matter which ball you were kicking, so long as you were running around and kicking.)

I was on Powerful's team. At one point I leaned over to him and said, in bad Korean, "An chukku, sagiggun chukku." (Not soccer, devil/thief/cheater soccer.) He burst out laughing and nodded.

We played this for about 30 mins and then the winning team got to sit down. The other teams had to do 50 and 80 squats, depending on their standing.

We did not do squats. Thank you, Powerful, for your kicks!

After the break, Master taught me the first four steps of my new form (which is really only two steps done on each side). Jungshim, jungshim, jungshim. This new tiger stance—which is like my hated back stance in overdrive—with kicks that end exactly where they start, blocks on the non-intuitive side of my body... I am prepared to wrestle with this poomse. At one point I grinned and said, "Kukkiwon, good thing, il wol, i wol." He just laughed and said in Korean, "October, November, December, practice balance! January, February, Kukkiwon. Balance, good!"

During the start of class we were practicing our sitting splits (normal) and then our standing/sitting splits (not legs against the wall, but trying to touch the ground using gravity to help). I thought I was going to get away without having Master push down on me or anything until he walked by and swiped my right foot with his own. My right leg slid out another two inches and whoa, I felt it. I didn't pull the muscle, but I certainly felt it. I really do need to practice stretching into the splits on my own daily. I'm no where near straight yet.

Due to a very strange conversation with Master, I learned the words for money (돈), flatfooted (평발), assistance/support/aid/supplement (보조), pronation (손발의), and dialect/accent (사투리). Crybaby Girl and Ghost asked me what a word meant, and after going back and forth a bit, I finally understood that they wanted to know what "sweat" was in English (땀 in Korean). I was so confused at first, now I know how they feel with my questions sometimes...

Master quote of the day: "You run 21 kilometers? Why?"