I joined a dojang my second week here in Seogwipo. There's an English teacher here from last year who let us (me and another new ETA in Seogwipo, Ashley) tag along. We started our second week here in Seogwipo, about 4 weeks ago. So far, it's been a fun, time-consuming, humiliating, frustrating, and entertaining experience.
Time-consuming: TKD is definitely time-consuming. I go everyday, leaving the apartment at 6pm and coming back around 8pm. That's about 2hrs of my day that's inflexible. One drawback. But...Fun: Taekwondo is definitely fun; we're hanging out with kids for 2hrs everyday. On top of that, we sometime skip the TKD and justplay games (like dodgeball, piggy-back rock-paper-scissor relays, etc).
Humiliating: Because I (1) am the worst and oldest there, (2) I don't understand what's foinf on half the time. This ties in with frustrating.
Entertaining: Because I usually don't know what's going on. I either try to piece together the kids limited English and actions (entertaining) or make-up my own explanation (also entertaining). This is also a theme of daily life in Korea.
Cute: This TKD dojang has its own mascot, Kim Wong Gang. She 5yrs old, shows up to TKD everyday, and is adorable. She seems to be there just for the master, the instructor, and the students to play around with her. Super cute.
The first day, rIght after I walked out of the changing room, I heard "TEE-CHA!". There was black-belt TKD-star Yu-Gin, one of my middle school students. Her English is pretty much non-existent since she goes to TKD instead of English Academy. We're friends all the same. Ashley and I are in what I would call the rag-tag class. The group of students before us, Yu-Gin's class, is the black-belt competition group (about 10-14yrs old). Our group is a collection of about 8 junior high and high school boys, 2 college students, and us silly American girls. The black belts sometimes stay and join our class for a little extra physical training.
Humiliating: Because I (1) am the worst and oldest there, (2) I don't understand what's foinf on half the time. This ties in with frustrating.
Entertaining: Because I usually don't know what's going on. I either try to piece together the kids limited English and actions (entertaining) or make-up my own explanation (also entertaining). This is also a theme of daily life in Korea.
Cute: This TKD dojang has its own mascot, Kim Wong Gang. She 5yrs old, shows up to TKD everyday, and is adorable. She seems to be there just for the master, the instructor, and the students to play around with her. Super cute.
The first day, rIght after I walked out of the changing room, I heard "TEE-CHA!". There was black-belt TKD-star Yu-Gin, one of my middle school students. Her English is pretty much non-existent since she goes to TKD instead of English Academy. We're friends all the same. Ashley and I are in what I would call the rag-tag class. The group of students before us, Yu-Gin's class, is the black-belt competition group (about 10-14yrs old). Our group is a collection of about 8 junior high and high school boys, 2 college students, and us silly American girls. The black belts sometimes stay and join our class for a little extra physical training.
I pretty bad at learning Korean names. Erin's to the left of me and Yu-Gin on the right. Otherwise, all I can say is there's 'Batman' in the Batman shirt, 'Chopstick boy' (not pictured, tall and skinny), 'I'm watching you boy' (blue front center), 'Number 4' behind Batman), 'Small Eyes/Dodgeball Crazy' (next to Batman), etc. But, apparently, Western names are hard too! The master nicknamed me Lee Hyori (click!).
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