2 masters, 9 kids, and 1 american

dear diary–
to matter how much i try to keep up it seems like i'm constanstly falling behind lately. the sad thing is i'm not sure what i'm doing with my time. yes i do…a whole lot of nothing. i have a new goal. by wednesday, may 4, i'm going to be up-to-date. currrent and fresh. thats the only way to be. i know all of you are dying to hear about it. i can picture you all now sitting on the edge of your seats with anticipation. questions running through your head: did i run out crying? did i understand anything? did i knock a child on his ass? well i've got some answers for you. yes it was day one of the my new taekwondo class with master hur. all weekend i was kind of nervous about starting this class. i guess there are something in life you never outgrow and my shyness will be one of them. the first thing i noticed once in class was that the children were younger and smaller than i thought. i could have sworn they told me 13 year olds, these kids looked about 10. and i find like gulliver standing there. one of my fears did come true. that i'm not as good as i thought. apparently there's a bunch of things i haven't been taught yet. and there are some movements that i learned that they do differently. basically i kind of feel like i'm going to be relearning alot. on a postive note, since they don't have purple belts i'm now officially a red belt. that was easy. master hur also isn't teaching my class. he has another master who teaches. he mainly walks around the class and observes how we are doing. if we are doing something wrong he corrects us. of course tonight i felt like i was doing everything wrong. they both stopped the class a couple of times to help me out. nothing like having 9 pairs of eyes staring at you. "hey look at stupid". its amazing how there are so many minor moves i was taught differently. its going to be a challenge to reteach myself. both masters kept telling be "two hands" "two hands". overall the class went pretty well. that is until jump rope time. I SUCK AT JUMPROPE. and no matter how many times the master kept trying to tell me to relax i wasn't getting it. at one point the master was talking to master hur about me and my poor jump rope skills. i could tell they were laughing. hey i would be too. during the whole class the students are counting and yelling things that i have no idea. it looks like its going to be a sink and swim style in my learning korean. master hur did make me stand in front of class. not sure what he told the students but its definitely weird having something said about you and you have no clue what. afterward i bowed and the other students bowed back. master hur also told me i needed to change my uniform. thats fine with me. after class he called me into his office. this is it i thought. he probably thinks i'm a helpless case. i could tell he was a bit nervous because of the language barrier. basically it came down to i will be attending 4 days a week. on wednesday he plays games with the students. he also gave me 10,000 won discount. as we were talking i tried to explain about how i was taught some things differently. not really sure if he understood. i got a lot of "yeah. yeah." master hur did tell me that my kicking forms were pour but to believe in him and i would be better. he then should me some pictures of his father's students, he's also a taekwondo instructor, in russia and pointed out how many are masters now. i felt pretty good. at least he has some faith in me. hopefully i won't let me down. i'm actually kind of excited about the whole thing.

the cutest thing that happened today:
the one girl in my taekwondo class gave me some candy afterwards. i have a friend afterall.

a few weekends ago i went into insadong to do some shopping. while i was trying to find my way there i stumbled upon tapgol park. here are some pictures from the park and my journey down the streets of insadong. it just so happened that there was a children's art festival that day. there was lots of cool art to see. i wanted to buy some prints from this photographer but i didn't. i'm not really sure why except that nothing said "buy me" and i was too tired to look through all the stacks. hopefully there will be a next time.

be well…

snaps from tapgol park/insadong…
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