Amanda Takes Off...

Sabumnim was the only teacher in class tonight, but everything went fairly well. We started by doing these killer leg exercises. We got into modified back bridges. Our chest was pointing to the sky, feet and hands flat on the ground, knees bent, making the knees and shoulders form 90 degree angles. We then lifted one knee slightly and kicked. We did 5 sets of 20 per leg (alternating sides), doing the last set exceedingly slowly. Those are rough; they feel great.

We played soccer. When I got to the circle, it looked like they were going to play 가위바위보, so I said, "가위바위보?" They said to only throw rock or scissors. I was confused. I threw rock and scissors. They nodded I said, "왜?" They started telling me what the English words were. No, no...

I made a rock, and said, "모두?" (Everyone?) They looked confused, so I made a rock with my right hand, scissors with my left hand, and started smashing myself. "바위, 바위, 바위!" They laughed and said, "OK, OK, this" and threw their hands palm-up or palm-down.

I had seen that palm-up vs palm-down thing before but I hadn't understood how it worked. It suddenly clicked.

"Oh! Oh! 편!" They nodded. Teams! We were choosing teams that way. (Call me stupid, but I never did team sports in the States and in gym class we used the "pick captains, they pick players one-by-one" method.) So we threw rock and scissors in stalemates until half of us threw rock and half threw scissors. I must say, I like how randomly teams are chosen here.* I was teamed with Guy Who Doesn't Know I'm a Movie Star, which forced him to acknowledge me.

I went after the ball against a guy who somehow tripped because I was there. I didn't kick him, I didn't block him, I have no idea why he tripped, but he was a good sport about it. Later he hit me in the face with the ball so my (red and black) glasses were all askew on my nose. I laughed, too.

Later I shot my foot out in front of him to get the ball, a good six inches from the mat, and he really did trip over me. We landed face-first on the ground but so gracefully that all of us laughed hard. That was my foul, so he got an extra shot. Thankfully nobody on my team was mad at me, probably because we were laughing so hard about it.

In other news, I made my next set of Sogang flashcards. These were primarily direction words. I knew 23% of the words on the first time through due to taekwondo. Very cool!

* And 가위바위보 is king. I've watched young couples play it at pizza places to decide on toppings. A few days ago I watched four businessmen play it in the streets to decide on a restaurant. In class today we were missing dice, so we played it for a board game (with four students the winner got four spaces, the loser got only 1 space). When I go back to America, everything is going to be "kawi, bawi, bo!"