Unleashing My Power

This week was my first full week of Taekwondo lessons and it was awesome! Our teacher is a fifth degree black belt and is unbelievably talented. He often laughs at our class and finds us all very amusing, like most Koreans do. I knew we were in over our heads on the first day during warm up. Our teacher first had us do jumping jacks, which was manageable. Then he asked us to do three different kinds of toe touch jumps! First we had to jump and swing our feet directly in front of us and touch our toes in mid-air. Then we had to jump and do a split mid-air and touch our toes. Lastly, We had to do a back bend in mid-air and touch our toes by reaching behind us. Needless to say almost our entire class failed and this and were all just flailing about. We need to do the jumps at the beginning of every class though so hopefully we will improve.

During another class, after we learned how to punch correctly, we were broken into groups and each group received a candle. It was then our job to extinguish the flame with the wind generated by our punches. So one by one we approached the flame and measured the distance of our arm and then began punching towards the candle. Everyone in my group was able to extinguish the flame. It was awesome!

Trying to extinguish the flame

On Friday night a large group of us went out to B&B again to celebrate three birthdays that fell during the week. B&B was a lot of fun again but 노래방 (noraebang) was even more fun! Noraebang means song room and is karaoke. Karaoke is huge in Korea and there are places everywhere. After B&B three friends and I walked to noraebang and had a blast. You receive your own room, a few snacks and some complimentary beer and are able to just sing until your heart's content. It's great! 

 My friends singing karaoke.

My friend Maggie and I singing karaoke.

Today we have a free day and some friends and I are headed into Cheongju (not to be confused with Chongju). It is an hour bus ride away and is considered a neat suburb even though it is the size of Detroit. South Korea is extremely dense so its concept of rural, suburban and urban is slightly skewed. We are only going for a few hours in the afternoon because everyone has a Korean quiz tomorrow and we have lesson plans that are due Tuesday. The Korean quiz is very important too because if we do not receive a 70 on the 10 question quiz we have to go to study hours Sunday through Thursday from 7-9!