Rachel has been bugging me and bugging me to blog. So I guess I ought to write up a little something.

The last 3 weekends have been pretty exciting here; I will describe them chronologically.

First was the Boseong Half Marathon. Shortly after my last half marathon was when I broke my skull. Therefor I was not able to keep up with the training the way I needed to. This spring I have been training as hard as I could when I found the time and it all paid off at this race. My time was only 5 minutes behind my last race time. This is exciting because this is the fist race I have ran in “invisible shoes” running sandals. For the most part it was pretty good although I ended up getting pretty numb and tingly on the balls of my feet.

The next weekend was my black belt test. I really didn’t want to write about it because I do not yet have the results. However, I guess I’m not allowed to wait forever. For the test I had to first perform 3 poomse (forms) chosen at random. Then I had to break a block, a re-breakable plastic block designed for this purpose. I had to use a “karate-chop” on the block.  Next was getting suited up in protective gear and demonstrating yup chagi,  ap chagi, and dolyo chagi (side kick, front kick, and roundhouse kick). Finally we had to spar for one minute with another black belt candidate. The sparring thankfully was body only, no head hits. After that we went home. I was really surprised by how crowded the gym was; seven hundred children tested for their poom belt (black and red, for people under 16) and about 40 adults tested for black and varying degrees of black.

Here is a LINK TO FIGHT VIDEO.!!!!!

Finally this last weekend was my co-teachers wedding. WOW! They do weddings differently here. First of all we show up at 11:30 AM and stand around waiting for the noon wedding. We turn in our wedding gift (the traditional Korean envelope of cash (really that’s what they ALL do )) and get 2 meal tickets for lunch. The wedding was the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen by a very long stretch. The groom entered to the Rocky  song, the couple entered under crossed swords, there were moving lights, flowers lowered from the ceiling, no bridal party just assistants that worked for the wedding hall. Frankly I cannot begin to describe it, hopefully pictures will help. After the wedding there was a quick buffet lunch of amazing foods and then we were rushed out at about 1:30 PM so more weddings would be had. Overall it was a VERY different wedding experience than I am used to but to each his own.

That’s pretty much all that has been going on.

-Nathan