Breaking Boards!

After numerous attempts to make our afternoon teacher have a little more fun on Tuesday, Travis and I decided we were just going to pull out all the stops today. During class, we tried to have as much fun as possible. The TV in the middle of the board is a touch screen and is connected to the computer. Our teacher was trying to do things on the computer with the student and Travis decided he would mess with him by touching all of over the TV screen. Our teacher couldn't figure out why the mouse kept going the opposite way he wanted it to. All the students laughed because they could see what Travis was doing. I tried so hard to keep a straight face.

Then when we got to the powerpoint, the teacher asked Travis to sit at the computer and click through it. Travis clicked through it super quickly and then said "ok done! My turn!" and stood up. Let's just say our teacher didn't find that very funny. When he was asking the kids questions to earn points for their team, I stood in the back. I raised my hand for everything, acting like they anxious kid jumping up and down wanting the teacher to pick them soooooo badly. I think the teacher gave me the dirtiest look I've ever gotten. I know that he wants to be serious about his job but you can't be that serious with 2nd graders! They need to be jumping around having fun or else they get distracted and won't care what you have to say!!

After school, Travis and I met up with Zack at his host family's house. We had plans for the 6 of us to take a Taekwondo lesson. From the way it was described to us, it would be us 6 with one teacher in a private lesson. When we arrived at the location, we realized we were WAY wrong. Sitting in front of us were about 30 black belt students. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.

They had us change into traditional gear. We sat down on the side of the room and watched the Dobong Champions do a routine choreographed to "Shake that A**" ... yes the American song with cuss words and all. It was super cute though! They were soooooooooo good!!! We then watched the older boys do a few warm up exercises.

Then the Master walked out with a few boards. After watching the older boys break some stuff, Schuyler thought he would jump in to hold the board. He then wanted to break it himself. Zack and I were sitting there thinking "this has bad news written all over it." The Master surprised Schuyler by having one student sit on the shoulders of another and hold the board up really high. I can honestly say I thought Schuyler was either A) going to hurt himself or B) kick one of the boys. However, he successfully broke the board with ease. We each then took turns breaking boards. The boys did kick and they had us girls punch through them. YES! I punched through a board! YES! I kept the board I broke... and YES! I have it on video and is posted on my flickr!

We watched the older boys do some sparring and then they taught us how to do some traditional kicks. We had to stand up and do kicks with our partners just like they did in their warm-up routine. The Master then had the champions show us their Pumse routine. It looked very complicated and all I kept thinking was "there is no way I would be able to memorize that!!!" But of course! They had the girls come over and pick one of us to be their partner. They showed us the first basic steps. Thinking we were only learning how to do it was a bad idea as well. Zack's oldest host sister called us together and informed us that we had 5 minutes to memorize it because the
Master would be testing. We quickly tried to learn it and hoped for the best. By giving us a few breaks and embarrassing us in front of the class, we passed with his approval. (yes, I posted a video of our test too)

I will definitely admit I have a new found respect for those that take up these kinds of things. My mental capacity was just not there to concentrate as hard as these students do!

When you watch the videos, keep in mind we are all always laughing because the younger students were laughing so hard at us that we couldn't keep straight faces. I think they were just laughing that we were even attempting it (or it could be because we were completely messing it up)!!


Skating again with the new students tomorrow... way excited! Goodnight!!!


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