Amanda Takes Off...

Taekwondo tonight was unusual. I got there early and studied some of my Sogang vocabulary words. When Master came in, I put the cards away and sat down. While we were warming up, Master saw them and started flipping through them, testing me on my words, testing his own English. Meanwhile, there were less than ten people in class for the first hour because the high schoolers have some exam tomorrow.

First, there was 23 minutes of running around the studio, listening to the mixed-music CD Master always plays when we run around the studio. One of the songs is Sir Mix-A-Lot's "I Love Big Butts" and as we were running around in circles, I decided that it was most amusing that we were listening to a song with a line begging a woman to keep her big butt when in fact, we seem to be trying our hardest in class to make our butts as small as possible. So I just started laughing. Master asked what was so funny and I said in Korean, "I love fat this [hitting myself]." He was laughing and I was laughing and making a fool out of myself. Sometimes you just have to make a fool out of yourself when you're learning a new language.

After break many of the teenage boys including Cocky Guy, Blue, Studious, Brave, and Tired Guy showed up. We did the presses against the wall and I felt muscles in my hips I haven't ever felt. If we do them against tomorrow, I may die. Then we split into two groups to do target work. Master used to throw me with the kids for whatever reason, but I think he realized that I fit better with the guys because of my height; recently, to my delight, he's been putting me with them.

Master left briefly, and Cocky was fitting his nickname to a T so I told him he was crazy in Korean. He disagreed and when he finally turned around to kick, I twirled my fingers near my ears, which made all the other guys laugh. This then turned into a big Cocky and Amanda Teasing Each Other contest until he was getting so annoying (by never kicking) that I finally put together some awkward sentence, "Stop talking!" Late Boy then yelled across the room, "Amanda, Korean, '닥쳐.'" In other words, "shut up." A fairly rude form of it, too. So I looked at Cocky and said, "닥쳐!" He dropped his jaw and ran after Late Boy and we finally got back to target practice.

Master came back in and we all lined up. He asked why we were laughing and Cocky Guy started telling him the story. In September Master retold a story concerning me in front of me, but I couldn't help him tell the story except to nod and say, "Yes, yes." This time I sputtered out, in Korean, "Cocky Guy, talking talking talking. Kiyap [imitating him]! Me, 'Stop talking!' Late Boy, '닥쳐!' Cocky Guy, 'I'm sorry I'm rude, I'm sorry. Oh, Amanda...' Cocky Guy is funny but talks, talks, talks. I am Cocky Guy [imitating him in the mirror]." ALL of the teen boys were laughing and adding to the story, Master was laughing but told Late Boy not to use the rude form of shut up, and Cocky turned to me and said, "Amanda! Amanda! Awwww. You like me, yes?"

When I was in Costa Rica, I got into an argument with a cheating taxi driver and thought, "Oh! I've reached a milestone of fluency." Tonight barely any of my diatribe of Korean was correct, but I felt like I'd reached some milestone to even sputter that much speech out in front of the whole class, and to tease Cocky Guy so much in line for target practice.