Amanda Takes Off...

I feel better.

Tonight in class, Cocky spoke to me first. "Amanda! Hi!" He gave me a big wave and grin and I "hi'd" him back. While we were playing soccer, he was studying with my flashcards, and he made sure I knew it. So I think my social faux pas was forgiven. Thank goodness.

We played soccer all night; it was a blast. At one point half the boys from each of the teenage teams were on the floor, rolling around, falling, etc. Condensation built up on the glass and the soccer ball was leaving big circles on the window.

Master made me do the count during our jumping jacks. We do what I mentally call double jumping jacks to a count of four. I am not sure why he asked me to do the count; normally the highest black belt in the studio does that, but I can count to three. So I yelled, "Hana, dul, set," and they answered "HANA!" "Hana, dul, set," and "DUL!" up to thirty. By the time I'd counted to three thirty times, the words lost all meaning. They were just a collection of sounds.

I got hit on the side of the head with a soccer ball, hard. The kid who did it is pretty new (to me, he's a black belt) and right away he flopped on the floor and offered his apologies in a very formal bow, possibly a kuenjeol. This was beyond Hit Me in The Face's deep bows. This was body to the floor, head touching the fingers of the hand (clasped in a certain way) held on the floor bow, complete with some long sentence that I'm sure was an apology for smacking me in the side of the head with the ball.

And it was done in the middle of the game. The whole studio burst out laughing, including me.

I love these boys.

During the game, Master and I chatted. I found out that when the refs count for sparring tournaments here, they count starting with the thumb and moving to the pinky finger.

I also asked about that tallying system. As Kangmi mentioned in the comments, the symbol used is Chinese. 바를 정 is what it's called. He said it stands for 바르다, which means "straight, straightforward, right, rightful, right-minded, honest, just." The stroke order is shown below. You can imagine how confusing this was for me when I first got here. I quickly figured out to count the strokes, but I didn't look at the board often enough while playing to figure out the stroke order. From left to right, one to five points.

Master also told me that you can make tally marks vertically. In other words, four horizontal strokes stacked on top of each other, bundled up with one vertical line equals five. Just rotate the American tallying system.

Master also wrote down the Chinese characters for his name and told me what the two parts of his name mean. 한택 means "abundance; plenty; copious; wealthy" and also "gloss; luster; sheen." 형통하다 means "go well;turn out well;prove successful; be realized; be successful."

Eventually I want to know enough Korean to learn the 1800 or so Chinese characters still used here today. As of tonight, I can barely speak in the present tense, so learning the Chinese characters is not my primary concern right now. However, I will probably at start adding some of the ones on this short list of 75 words to my flashcard rotation.