A Karate Girl in a Taekwondo World

Very early in orientation, taekwondo became one of my fourth points. If you are not a fulbrighter in Korea, you may not know what I am talking about. A fourth point is a thing that you do to keep your life balanced. The other three points are professional, personal and self. But your 4th point is something that is something you do that balances the rest of your life out. I have seen many peoples points being very different. Some do exercise, some volunteer, some travel and one even person does swing dance. It can be anything. My biggest and most important one is Taekwondo.

As many people know, I have studied karate since the age of 12. I have earned my way to my 2nd-degree black belt. For those who don't know, karate, in its origin, is Japan. Therefore in many ways is in direct confliction with taekwondo, despite having similar roots. When I decided to apply for my Fulbright grant, one of the ways that I wanted to really interact with the community around me is by taking taekwondo lessons. I just didn't realize how hard it was going to be when I actually started lessons.

Don't get me wrong, I have had experience with taekwondo before. The past two presidents of Martial Arts Club in college were black belts in it. Therefore, going in, I knew there were going to be some initial conflicts with what I did purely by habit after 10 years, and what the master was trying to teach me. I just didn't realize quite how not ready I was. 

For one, taekwondo is very kick heavy and they rely a lot on kicking high and kicking fast, which I have difficulty doing since I lost a lot of my flexibility and my stamina during college. But that is not the problem; I can improve that in time. What gets me are the things that I have been doing a certain way for 10 years, and now I am being told to do things I have never been allowed to do before, like short stances or dropping my hands when I kick. 

This is still going to be something I stick with, however. I really want to, and it makes you a better martial artist to know multiple forms, even if one will be your main. I definitely think I will go back to Shotokan when I get back to the states, but for now, I a working on breaking my habits, improving my speed and flexibility, and working towards my black belt test in March. We'll see what happens. Wish me luck!

Jinju Lantern Festival

My first big adventure away from Hwacheon was the Jinju Lantern Festival. I spent over 6 hours on buses. It was not a very fun ride. It was long and tedious and may not have been worth the actual total time I spent in Jinju.

The festival is another story. When I first arrived, I walked about 30 minutes from the bus terminal to the cafe that the other fulbrighters were hanging out at. I was so happy to see some familiar faces, especially since I hadn't seen most of them since we left orientation. In the small group, it was nice, catching up and just being able to speak English with someone else whose native language is also English.

The festival itself was a blur of beautiful sights, sounds, and smells. The lanterns lived up to the hype with the hall of a thousand wishes and the lanterns in the water as well as up by the fortress. There was even a water show set to music!


There was so much to see, I wish I lived closer to go more than a few hours just so I could see all that the place had to offer. There was so much to it. It is just so hard to describe everything that there was to see.

When we finished going around the festival, a few of us decided to break off from the main group and get some hot chocolate at a local cafe. It was a perfect end to a perfect night. It was exactly what I needed at the end of such an exhausting day, especially since I had to get up the next morning and take the 6ish hours on the bus back to Hwacheon. Though this time the first bus had a USB plug for my phone!

My Students are Such Actors

At the end of chapter 8 in the textbook that I use for my lessons has a roleplay/acting activity. I didn't include any pictures or videos because my students are minors and I do not have parental permission.

For 4th grade,   we had just finished a unit on "Let's play Soccer" and "It's on the desk." These two units influenced the textbook to write a script about The Three Little Pigs and The Big Bad Wolf., which was one of my favorite books from when I was a kid. This lesson took two classes to complete.

For the first class, we just read through the script and practiced. We played with voices, and the students rehearsed their roles. For the second class, the students were given a few minutes to practice, and then they took turns performing them in front of the class. Before they did this, we surprised them with a video we recorded of my Co-teacher, the other Fulbrighter at my school, and I performing the script. We even had a special guest performance by one of my 4th graders to play the big bad wolf. The kids loved it. It was a lot of fun watching my students come alive with this project. Especially the ones that never talk. And they are apparently much better actors than my 5th graders.

In 5th grade, we had a bit more fun.  For their storytime script, we played a variation on "The Giving Tree" We had previously covered the units "What did you do during summer vacation?" and "Can I take a picture?"

We had started the class by reading the four "mini-scripts" which was about two or three lines each. We borrowed from tablets from another teacher and had the students pick one of the mini-scripts and with their small groups and record it. It was actually the best day to watch the kids just really get into this project. Some groups made props out of paper, others grabbed things to be props in the classroom, and one group went all the way downstairs to the mural of the Giving Tree to film in front of them.

Also, let's just say that my 5th  graders really do not understand that the tree and the boy were friends. I had multiple groups finish out the final mini-script (the one where the old man was just talking to the tree and thanking it) by attacking each other. Afterward, each of the groups showed their videos to the class while the rest of the class commented on their performances.

Everland!

So this is a bit late, but last Tuesday was National Foundation Day here in Korea. So, of course, I had to take advantage of my day off.

I spent my day in the one and only...Everland! Everland is a very famous amusement park here. It was such a fun day. I met up with two other Fulbrighters while there, and it was actually exactly what I needed at this point. By the time October rolled around, I was beginning to need a break. I am so glad that is precisely what I got.

Getting there was another story. It took about 4 1/2 hours because I first had to go to Seoul and then I got on a bus to the park. It was such a long ride. But I got there. I survived. While we were there, we rode only a few rides, but the rides that we got on were well worth it. We rode the T Express, which is a really long roller coaster. We also rode a few others, which was fun because one of the people I was there with was scared of riding them.

We also got to experience the park's take on Holloween. They had decorations everywhere, including a Zombieland area and even a parade. It was actually pretty impressive, though we did notice that in the parade, all of the people seemed to be foreigners.

Although the time spent at the park was significantly less than the total time it took to get there (9hours), it was still worth it.