Amanda Takes Off...

I have had a low-level of motivation towards learning Korean. I have wanted to learn, but I haven't been consistently practicing. Michael said we should get together once a week to practice my Level 1 books and I agreed because it would keep me honest. And accountable. We've done two lessons so far and right away the phrases have come in handy. Makes me wish I'd started three months ago.

In any case! This weekend I found my "keep this thought in the front of your mind when you don't want to study" motivation. And I got a picture to go with the thought!

That's it.

I want that.

Thursday night we did not, in fact, play soccer in class. I finished learning my new poomse and Master's brother's studio joined ours for some practice before Saturday's tournament. A group of boys from that studio did some sort of tae kwon do to music. They call it taekwonrobics.

When I realized what song they were playing, I started laughing. It's Goin' Down by Yung Joc featuring Nitti, was a favorite of my students back home. (Warning: that song is explicit!) In fact, the singer is from Atlanta.

Last spring this song was the song that was played at field day. Over and over. Without lyrics. And over again. (Listen to just the music and you'll understand why I thought mosquitoes were attacking.) The kids would do this motorcycle movement that can be seen clearly at 1:40, 2:40 and 3:40 in the video.

So Thursday night, about six months after my students taught me how to "dance" to this song, I was sitting in a studio in South Korea watching a group of kids do tae kwon do to the song. And both six months ago and Thursday night, I was the only white person around.

It struck me as terribly funny. After their performance, Master asked me if I liked the music. I said, in perfect Korean, "American students like music." I didn't use "my" or "this" but I was still pretty proud of my perfect sentence, complete with markers and everything.

Friday night I managed to get both Masters to understand why I found it so funny. It took a while, but I learned the word for singer (노래하는 사람) in the process. I didn't want them to think that I was laughing at them.

Friday night there was another practice session. There was also a man I'd never seen there before. While we were sitting on the floor I asked the boy next to me, whom I don't speak with much, who the guy was. (I learned how to ask that with my first class with Michael.) He said the words in Korean but that didn't help, so he turned to the guy next to him, who didn't know how to explain it either. Eventually eight guys or so were trying to explain "후배." Eventually Powerful was elected speaker and he told me that it meant "school brother." I asked if he was a friend, and they boys said no, school brother. (Can you see why I love this studio? Any one of these guys could have just said, "I don't know" and turned back to watching what was going on. Instead, they asked each other until they came up with something. Very gracious.)

After class Master formally introduced us and I discovered that the boys had mis-described the word. It means "a man's junior." The guy was Master's junior in university by two years. I found the fact that the boys called him a "university brother" interesting, especially in light of my adopting Ghost post. (As a side note, it seems that I was perfectly fine in calling Ghost my little brother, because now he calls himself that and each time I use it, he grins.)

Yesterday was the tournament and it was great. An organized chaos that made me feel right at home. A lot of hurry-up and waiting and always something to see. It was fun to talk to the kids from both studios, too. I also got to study my Korean and as usual, I learned some new words from my studiomates and Master.

As for being The Foreign Girl, there was no pointing, excepting from some kids from another studio when we first got there. A young girl (maybe 10 Korean age?), a friend or sister of someone from Brother's Studio, was there watching. She walked past me and said, "Hello!" I said, "Hello!" back to her and she said, "Oh!" and scurried away. The grandparents sitting behind me started laughing and I did, too. It was as if she thought I was one of Madame Tussauds' sculptures until I opened my mouth.

I said to Master, "Four hundred, five hundred people. One foreigner." He disagreed until he looked around. We both laughed.

It feels good to chat with my studiomates in Korean, however limited. It makes me feel even more like a part of the studio. When we got there, Master told the high school boys to keep me with them, in short, not to forget about me. I don't think he needed to worry, they always watch out for me.

And I enjoyed watching them at the tournament. Those are my studiomates. And so we come back to the beginning of my post. I want that. I want on-the-spot coaching, chastising, encouragement and sparring gear yanking. OK, so Master might not yank on my gear owing to the fact that I'm a woman, though he did push my splits farther... Master does an amazing job with me, he takes his time with me to make sure things are understood—and my digi-dictionary is wonderful—but I need to learn the language to get such fluid, rapid coaching.

I went to the photo store and had that photo printed in both 8 by 10 and 2 by 3 inch sizes. I put the 8 by 10 up in my apartment and I'll be putting the smaller photo somewhere helpful, too. Maybe in my vocabulary notebook, maybe just in my wallet. I know it sounds silly, but that is my motivation.

Getting chastised and yelled at is motivating? Yes. When I get there, I will consider myself to have a level of fluency. And so it goes on The List.