Amanda Takes Off...

I got to class and Blue and a few boys that weren't there last night were there tonight. Blue's hair was HUGE. Think 80s hair band huge. It was puffy. He annyeonged me and I annyeonged him and said, "Big hair!"

"No, no, Amanda, style. Stylish."

"OK, but still...길다?"

"No, no, style."

Studious was cracking up, nearly rolling off of the bench he was sitting on. Blue dragged him off of the bench and sat on him. Studious just continued to laugh. A few minutes later, Master walked in, zoomed in on Blue and said something to him. That's when I figured out that it was a very, very new hairstyle and the guys had been giving him a hard time before I got there.

His hair looked better two hours later, after the sweat had tamed it a bit.

Speaking of hair, on the subway on the way home, four guys—probably upper middle or lower high school—rushed onto the subway and competed with each other for some of the seats. They all had moptop haircuts and they were silly (but polite to other customers) and I thought, "It's the Korean Beatles!"

Class was great tonight. I worked on my blocks and then worked on stances in front of the mirror. ("Amanda...거울. Window?" Window is one of the vocab words on my current Sogang lesson and I haven't memorized it yet. "Um, 아니요. Window is...층문?" "Ah, 창문," he corrected me. Well, I'll remember "window" now, and "mirror" as well!) Tomorrow I'll be working on blocks and stances together. Master is fine-tuning things for my test. We did a lot of kicking drills and I was immensely pleased that I understood from his speech what he wanted on every kick except for one. I couldn't tell you (in Korean) what we did, but I understood, and the understanding comes before the production.

Two somewhat funny things happened during the kicking drills. At once point I was trying to do a sliding forward roundhouse kick followed by a jumping alternating double roundhouse kick. After the first part of the kick I looked at him and rapidly said, "Am I supposed to put my foot down here?" He sort of shook his head in confusion and he and the boys laughed. "다시, 아만다." I haven't slipped up and spoken pure English that quickly in a while, so I laughed too. I demonstrated my question and got it answered.

The last kick we worked on was a back kick. But he wouldn't let us turn around and look at the target. I said, "왜? 왜 못보다?" I was trying to ask why we weren't allowed to see. He was trying to make sure we were kicking straight back, said that when we turned to look, we threw our legs out to the side. (True.) Then he took out a big plastic pole and held it so that we couldn't flail our legs out to one side.

During our break I found out some more details about the test. It's held at the place that the October tournament was held. It's only poomse (Pal Jang and a random one of Il through Chil Jang) and sparring. I'm not allowed to wear my glasses during sparring, so I asked Master if we could get some glassesless practice in. He said yes, we'd plan for that. I double-checked that there is no kicking test/demonstration and there's no striking (kyeokpa).

We didn't discuss exact times, but the testing is at 11, so I'm sure we'll meet earlier. He doesn't have a van and there are more than a dozen people testing. I'm not sure if he'll borrow a friend's van or if people will meet him at the testing place or what. In any case, I'm sure I'll meet him and he'll drive me since that's what's happened in the past.

The test is in front of a panel of Kukkiwon-approved judges, I don't know how many. I will keel over in surprise if I'm not the only foreigner there, and I won't be at all surprised if I'm one of the oldest there.

Little Cricket wished me luck in the comments section of yesterday's post. Perhaps I shouldn't put this in writing, but other than running through the forms more (and running through them in my head several times a day), and doing my best in class, I'm not really doing anything in particular physically to prepare for this.

I think more than anything physical, it's mental preparation. It's about my own nervousness about testing in Korea, in Korean. In the last two months I have learned more than 100 taekwondo specific vocabulary words. While there are still taekwondo terms I don't know, I'm studying them, and frankly, I think I understand the majority of the terms I'll hear considering it's only poomse and sparring. I trained at another studio for a month rather than slacking off, in addition to training at home, and that proved (to me) that I can understand different instructors. Although it sounds ridiculous, I'm listening to 애국가 (the Korean national anthem) on the subway because I know it will be part of the opening ceremony, and I'm trying to get familiar with it so it's one less thing to be nervous about (a silly thing, I know).

While I'm still worried that my registration won't go through for residency reasons, I've done everything I can. Today I gave Master copies of my passport to prove I've been here six months. If they don't approve it, I can't change it.

I feel like the preparation for this particular situation consciously started months ago and unconsciously started years ago.

Speaking of studying, I asked Master what 야 meant. I figured it meant "hey!" because of how he was using it, but wanted to make sure. He confirmed my suspicions and said, "But Amanda, not very nice Korean. Don't use a lot." I took out my Once Upon a Time in Korea reader and we looked at the first story together because the cat says, "쥐야!"

I clarified that some things in the story were banmal (low form) and some things were higher form (-sumnida). This got us talking about banmal. Master said that we could use banmal with each other man-to-man "friends, friendly." In banmal I said, "I don't know banmal." He smiled and I said I was starting to understand it, but that I still needed the -yo or -sumnida to identify verbs a lot of the time. He understood and then I said, "Kwanjangnim, Cyworld...you don't use periods." I made my eyes big, pretended to read a block of text, and said, "Whew!" He laughed and said he'd use periods for me more. Of course, I don't want him to write very formally or anything—it's good for me, and learning banmal is beneficial, too, but I have a hard time reading English when periods are missing! He's so good at adjusting his speech for me; I don't think he knows how much of his written communication I have to look up.

I've been studying the vocab for the first story in the reader. It's a lot of markers, verb endings, and prepositions and abstract ideas, so the vocab is very hard to memorize. At this point I'm trying to learn them from Korean to English, not worrying so much about the other way. I need to know how to read the story, not how to retell it with perfect grammar. I don't need to know how to create the verb forms for "~as soon as" or "~should" yet since I don't even know the future tense, but at least if I start reading and understanding that form now, it will be easier to use when I do learn it.

Finally, love...

During the break we used my digital dictionary to look up one word. Master held the dictionary out in front of him like you would a baby and sighed dramatically. He said in English, "I love you!"

After class Cocky did something or other that got him in trouble with Master. Master was pinning him against the bench and Cocky was yelling in English, "Help me! Please, someone help me! Save me!"

I looked at him, trapped to the bench, Master grinning, and said, "Oooh, perfect English! 잘하다!"

Master said, "Goodbye, Amanda. See you," and pressed harder into Cocky.

Cocky said, "아만다, 같이 집에 가요! I love you." Amanda, we'll go home together!

I said, "Awww, 나도 사랑해요! 봐요!" I love you, too! See you!

As I made my way down the stairs I heard Master counting backwards from ten and saw people rushing to get their shoes. I guess he was kicking them all out at once. I nearly yelled out, "Come home with me, Cocky!" I didn't.

It feels good to be back.