Epilogue in which the protagonist admits his lies and omissions
As most of you know at this point, I did not actually renew my contract but instead left Korea at the end of 2009 for more adventures. I also have not been telling people about one of my favorite Korean pastimes: Taekwondo. John, one of my coworkers who was in Korea months before me, wanted me to go to Taekwondo with him but he had a black belt before even setting foot in Korea, so I wasn't that comfortable being the only newbie. When Will decided he was going to start, though, I joined him so that we could be ignorant foreigners together. Most Taekwondo students are children since most Koreans who are interested learn either when they are young or in the army, so we knew we'd be by far the oldest students anywhere we went and it was good to have someone with me who started out just as uncoordinated and ignorant of Taekwondo and the language and rituals of the martial art.
I'm feeling lazy with regards to this post, so I'm going to annotate my notes rather than make smooth transitions between paragraphs:
May 22nd—begin Taekwondo
The first school we went to met at night five days a week and the class consisted of just we three foreigners, John, Will, and myself. The instructor was seriously hardcore and expected us to be as well despite our lack of... everything. Between teaching us very basic kicks and blocks (which seemed so hard to learn at the time but are now second nature to me) he ran us through a conditioning regiment that left Will and me limping the three blocks to our apartments (John was in better shape and had much more training, and went to another Taekwondo class in addition to this one, which must have been exhausting). The stretching and warmups alone were more of a workout than some sports I've participated in. The one time I went to practice right after eating I ended up worshiping the porcelain gods, and that was only a few minute reprieve from the rigors of training. One day we were practicing kicks back and forth across the room and I was exhausted to the point of being barely able to stand. The master (whose English was perhaps the level of my Korean) told me that we were doing one more set of the kicks, so I summoned all my strength and willpower and made another trip down the room and back, collapsing against the pile of pads at the end. Then he told us to start doing sets of the next kick. The man pushed me like no coach has ever pushed me, and I am much stronger and more flexible for it. When we would slow down or stop he would scold us by saying "continuous!" which has become my private rallying cry when I need to do anything but feel like giving up.
June 8-11—temporarily possess keys to Taekwondo school
One day Will and I arrived to find a woman at the gym instead of the master. She explained to us that the master had some sort of health problem (with some calls to coworkers we eventually figured out it was probably an accute respiratory attack from overwork, since he always pushed himself just as hard as he pushed us and did everything with us, and presumably with the numerous other classes he taught every day). She actually gave us the keys to the gym so that we could continue to practice for the week he was gone, which we did. I think it was at this point when Will and I had a conversation about tying belts knots. The Taekwondo belt is tied in a specific way and the uniform is folded in a certain way when not in use as a sign of respect (there is a ton of ritual in Taekwondo). We were trying to remember the right knot for our belts and Will mentioned that he had fond memories of tying knots and I agreed. He said it made him think of sailing, and I said it made me think of having a naked girl in my bed. I forget sometimes that that sort of thing isn't mainstream outside of Reed.
June 29—Taekwondo is no
With the summer comes public school vacation, which means that the Taekwondo schedule drastically changed and that our timeslot no longer worked. Later in the summer we saw that the school had closed, so I hope our first master is ok, physically and financially. Will and I spent several weeks trying out a couple new places. One had a master that was younger than us and way too informal for our liking, and several others only accepted young children or only met during the day. Finally we ended up at Hyo Ja Taekwondo, John's other gym, whose name means 'filial piety'. We trained with a bunch of children, as well as some high school students. We later learned that many of the children knew some English, and one wonders how much of our private conversations they picked up on, but they didn't speak to us for ages. Thus Will and I gave them silly nicknames. Minnie had one of the largest collections of Mickey Mouse shirts I've ever seen, Flower Girl wore flowers in her hair one day, Fan Girl once oscillated along with one of the room's fans to our great amusement, Science Officer always wore a blue shirt the color of Spock's, Chingu ('friend') was a highschool student who was friends with the undermaster who taught most of our classes, and Captain Coordination is one of the most ungainly and physically awkward people I've met. Others had self explanatory names like Korean Elvis, melodrama boy, the twins, and Scar. John left Daejeon at the end of July, so Will and I were on our own with less knowledge of Korean or Taewondo, and had lots of side conversations beyond creating names for the kids. It was like we were speaking in code since 1) none of the Koreans' in the class had particularly amazing English skills and 2) Will and I have pretentiously large vocabularies even when we want to be understood and hung out so much that a native speaker would have trouble following most of our conversations.
August 24—dokkgalbi
The new gym was always doing nice things for us. They often handed out chocolate milk or ice cream to everyone, including us, at the end of practice. Over the six months with them they also treated us to several dinners, smoothies, and boxes of oranges. This night, apparently after a weekend where the kids had had a competition, the master took us all out for dinner of Dokkgalbi, which is probably my favorite Korean dish. We played our usual game of trying to hold a conversation with the masters using our limited shared vocabulary in two languages and cell phone translators.
August 28—ding (yellow)
In Taekwondo progress is measured and rewarded with a belt system. We started as white belts, symbolizing our innocence emptiness (of knowledge; black is the opposite). The next level is yellow, symbolizing the earth, meaning that we are setting down roots. To attain the level we had a test, wherein we demonstrated our knowledge of some kicks and of the first form--a set series of blocks, punches and kicks. The forms get more complicated and incorporate more difficult individual moves and patterns as you gain levels. I say levels because it is nearly impossible not to think of Taekwondo in terms of role playing games. I always think of the tinkling level up noise from Baldur's gate, the level up song from Final Fantasy, or the da-ding in the Mario games whenever I gained a belt. Usually Will and I would hum the Final Fantasy one together. Yes, we're huge dorks. We had no idea the test was coming. One day there was a table and chair at the front of the room, and after stretches the master sat at the desk and gave orders, taking notes. Afterward he told us what we had done wrong, but passed us anyway, presumably since he'd seen us do it right before and since we were close enough.
October 9—ding (green)
Green is for growth. The roots have set in and we start heading upward toward the blue sky. By this point out training was after the kids had left, mostly with the highschool students. Chingu and the Captain were usually there, with less frequent appearances by Scar, Korean Elvis, and Superform, a kid whose every move was textbook perfect.
October 30—ding (green-blue)
Some of the belts show that you are between levels and have a band of the higher level in the middle of the belt of the lower one. Thankfully they didn't do that with yellow upon white, which would have been hideous.
November 11—peppero day “Landon I love you”, “Will I love you”
This probably isn't as funny to you since you don't know the master, but Will and I busted up laughing when the master turned handed us boxes of peppero and in his ever-serious voice intoned “Landon I love you. Will I love you.”
November 12—the enemy's gate is down
Usually when doing the forms we faced the Korean Flag, bowing to it as we began and ended each one. On this day, though, we were tested on how well we really knew each form by rotating 90, 180, or 270 degrees and trying to perform them. Emphasis on trying. After this day we broke our minds of the visual cues and shortcuts we were using and actually learned the forms properly. I was reminded of the lesson in Ender's Game about the subjectivity of direction and learning to think outside of conditioned or obvious spatial orientations: The enemy's gate is down.
November 17—high jump champion
The younger children were usually still practicing when we arrived since we were supposed to be done stretching by the time our 9:00 session began. Often we were roped into playing soccer, dodgeball, or some other cool-down game with the kids. On this day they were having a high jump competition. They didn't ask us to join until almost everyone else was out, and in the end it was between Will, me, Chingu, and the masters. The high master said it was the Olympics between Korea and USA. I think that the undermaster would have won had he not insisted upon going straight forward instead of doing the Fosbury flop, but instead--after many rounds that made the kids late to get home--I was the champion.
November 30—ding ding ding ding (blue, brown-blue-brown, brown, red-brown-red)
At this point the masters started rushing us towards black belts since they realized we would be leaving soon. We actually were qualified for the huge jump in belts we made, there just hadn't been as many belt tests as times we had mastered new kicks and forms.
December 24—ding (red)
Red is for danger, a reminder of the power the student now has and a warning to use it wisely. Red was actually my goal when I started since I knew black was unrealistic, and frankly red was pushing it, but we worked hard for an hour a day, five days a week, plus refreshers outside of training time. I never got my black belt since I already had tickets to Jeju island during the one weekend in December that there was a national belt test. Any school can hand out the belts before black, but after that impartial judges must deem you worthy. I also didn't feel ready. I knew the forms damned well, but we had only sparred twice and I was just getting a feeling for the various counters and applying the blocks and moves that I knew. It worked out that I didn't have to go before a huge group for a test that I was almost but not quite ready for. In any case, the master seemed truly touched when I brought him back some Jeju orange chocolates for him.
In order to attain our Red belts, we had to pass our belt test during parents day. Will and I knew the eighth and final pre-black belt form well enough to do it blindfolded, which was good since they had us face opposite directions and run through in mirrored, which looked pretty cool. Then they pulled a real surprise on us and had us kick through (admittedly very thin and easy to break) pieces of wood. We correctly speculated that they would have us do our hardest kick to break it, one where we spin around and sweep the leg. I'm only accurate with that kick about one in three times, so I was quite glad to hit the board on the first try, breaking it into three pieces since the master was holding the top and bottom so tightly. Also, everything was a competition, so that the parents and families voted on who was the best at whatever was being done, whether jump rope routines or forms or kicks. It was awkward when they choose between me and Will, since at least with the kids they had reason for partisanship. We had been told that we would get our red belts if we passed and that we would lose three belts if we failed, and thankfully we did well and the masters could show off their oddities: the adult foreigners learning from them. Afterwards we had another Dokkgalbi dinner, this time with just the older students and coincidentally Fan Girl and her family. We learned her Korean and English names (which we promptly forgot because we liked the nickname better) and discovered that she went to one of the better English academies, and so she really knew English, so we actually had a conversation with her for the first time.
December 29—embroidered black belt, the real goodbye from Korea
My last day of Taekwondo came quickly. Will and I speculated that we would do something fun for our last day, like soccer or sparring. Will joked that they would have us run fifty laps. We ended up running fifty one suicides. It was amusing to do conditioning when I was about to leave and lose my great condition. At that point I was in the best shape of my life, and had far greater balance and flexibility than I ever thought I might attain. The master and undermaster gave me a black belt with my name embroidered on it (in English, sadly, rather than in Hangul as I'd hoped, but it was a wonderful gesture nonetheless) and a cute six inch tall taekwondo uniform window decoration. Despite the language barrier I feel that Will and I really did become friends with the masters and Chingu. We took them out to our favorite restaurant near the end as a thank you and nearly had to fight them to pay for it. Another time the undermaster Will and I sat talking for a long while and I was proud of myself for actually being able to tell a joke in a foreign language. Will accidentally said that he was looking for a boyfriend instead of girlfriend since he got the Korean vocabulary mixed up, so I mimed what happens when will walks into the women's room instead of the men's. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we had a real rapport. I knew that this was my real goodbye party in Korea.
When I did leave the country a few nights later I received a bland (to the point of rudeness) send off by my coworkers, some tears from my students earlier in the day, and an all night chat with Will and Courtney. Will and I went on an expedition to acquire some flags (a Korean flag for him, and two "Let's go together" Daejeon flags for me and Real Lindsay). Courtney gave me a book about America written by an embittered Korea which is amusingly racist and ridiculous but sometimes completely and devastatingly correct in its critiques. Will gave me a devise that makes the Mario-getting-a-coin sound and then the level up noise every 100 clicks, in honor of our Taekwondo levels. In the early hours of the morning I bade the farewell and took by backpack and suitcase through the snow to catch a cab to the intercity bus to the airport.
Update: I almost forgot to mention the amazing decorations at the second gym. The best part were the giraffe and cow fan covers that showed up the last couple months, but the cartoon TKD kids were pretty good too. Also, our uniforms are authorized by the World Taekwondo Federation, and hence say WTF on the front. There are numerous miscellaneous nuggets of amusement that will probably be unearthed from the depths of my brain over time. Also, Will, please feel free to correct any timelines I may have misremembered or to jog my memory of any good anecdotes I'm not remembering at the moment.
I'm feeling lazy with regards to this post, so I'm going to annotate my notes rather than make smooth transitions between paragraphs:
May 22nd—begin Taekwondo
The first school we went to met at night five days a week and the class consisted of just we three foreigners, John, Will, and myself. The instructor was seriously hardcore and expected us to be as well despite our lack of... everything. Between teaching us very basic kicks and blocks (which seemed so hard to learn at the time but are now second nature to me) he ran us through a conditioning regiment that left Will and me limping the three blocks to our apartments (John was in better shape and had much more training, and went to another Taekwondo class in addition to this one, which must have been exhausting). The stretching and warmups alone were more of a workout than some sports I've participated in. The one time I went to practice right after eating I ended up worshiping the porcelain gods, and that was only a few minute reprieve from the rigors of training. One day we were practicing kicks back and forth across the room and I was exhausted to the point of being barely able to stand. The master (whose English was perhaps the level of my Korean) told me that we were doing one more set of the kicks, so I summoned all my strength and willpower and made another trip down the room and back, collapsing against the pile of pads at the end. Then he told us to start doing sets of the next kick. The man pushed me like no coach has ever pushed me, and I am much stronger and more flexible for it. When we would slow down or stop he would scold us by saying "continuous!" which has become my private rallying cry when I need to do anything but feel like giving up.
June 8-11—temporarily possess keys to Taekwondo school
One day Will and I arrived to find a woman at the gym instead of the master. She explained to us that the master had some sort of health problem (with some calls to coworkers we eventually figured out it was probably an accute respiratory attack from overwork, since he always pushed himself just as hard as he pushed us and did everything with us, and presumably with the numerous other classes he taught every day). She actually gave us the keys to the gym so that we could continue to practice for the week he was gone, which we did. I think it was at this point when Will and I had a conversation about tying belts knots. The Taekwondo belt is tied in a specific way and the uniform is folded in a certain way when not in use as a sign of respect (there is a ton of ritual in Taekwondo). We were trying to remember the right knot for our belts and Will mentioned that he had fond memories of tying knots and I agreed. He said it made him think of sailing, and I said it made me think of having a naked girl in my bed. I forget sometimes that that sort of thing isn't mainstream outside of Reed.
June 29—Taekwondo is no
With the summer comes public school vacation, which means that the Taekwondo schedule drastically changed and that our timeslot no longer worked. Later in the summer we saw that the school had closed, so I hope our first master is ok, physically and financially. Will and I spent several weeks trying out a couple new places. One had a master that was younger than us and way too informal for our liking, and several others only accepted young children or only met during the day. Finally we ended up at Hyo Ja Taekwondo, John's other gym, whose name means 'filial piety'. We trained with a bunch of children, as well as some high school students. We later learned that many of the children knew some English, and one wonders how much of our private conversations they picked up on, but they didn't speak to us for ages. Thus Will and I gave them silly nicknames. Minnie had one of the largest collections of Mickey Mouse shirts I've ever seen, Flower Girl wore flowers in her hair one day, Fan Girl once oscillated along with one of the room's fans to our great amusement, Science Officer always wore a blue shirt the color of Spock's, Chingu ('friend') was a highschool student who was friends with the undermaster who taught most of our classes, and Captain Coordination is one of the most ungainly and physically awkward people I've met. Others had self explanatory names like Korean Elvis, melodrama boy, the twins, and Scar. John left Daejeon at the end of July, so Will and I were on our own with less knowledge of Korean or Taewondo, and had lots of side conversations beyond creating names for the kids. It was like we were speaking in code since 1) none of the Koreans' in the class had particularly amazing English skills and 2) Will and I have pretentiously large vocabularies even when we want to be understood and hung out so much that a native speaker would have trouble following most of our conversations.
August 24—dokkgalbi
The new gym was always doing nice things for us. They often handed out chocolate milk or ice cream to everyone, including us, at the end of practice. Over the six months with them they also treated us to several dinners, smoothies, and boxes of oranges. This night, apparently after a weekend where the kids had had a competition, the master took us all out for dinner of Dokkgalbi, which is probably my favorite Korean dish. We played our usual game of trying to hold a conversation with the masters using our limited shared vocabulary in two languages and cell phone translators.
August 28—ding (yellow)
In Taekwondo progress is measured and rewarded with a belt system. We started as white belts, symbolizing our innocence emptiness (of knowledge; black is the opposite). The next level is yellow, symbolizing the earth, meaning that we are setting down roots. To attain the level we had a test, wherein we demonstrated our knowledge of some kicks and of the first form--a set series of blocks, punches and kicks. The forms get more complicated and incorporate more difficult individual moves and patterns as you gain levels. I say levels because it is nearly impossible not to think of Taekwondo in terms of role playing games. I always think of the tinkling level up noise from Baldur's gate, the level up song from Final Fantasy, or the da-ding in the Mario games whenever I gained a belt. Usually Will and I would hum the Final Fantasy one together. Yes, we're huge dorks. We had no idea the test was coming. One day there was a table and chair at the front of the room, and after stretches the master sat at the desk and gave orders, taking notes. Afterward he told us what we had done wrong, but passed us anyway, presumably since he'd seen us do it right before and since we were close enough.
October 9—ding (green)
Green is for growth. The roots have set in and we start heading upward toward the blue sky. By this point out training was after the kids had left, mostly with the highschool students. Chingu and the Captain were usually there, with less frequent appearances by Scar, Korean Elvis, and Superform, a kid whose every move was textbook perfect.
October 30—ding (green-blue)
Some of the belts show that you are between levels and have a band of the higher level in the middle of the belt of the lower one. Thankfully they didn't do that with yellow upon white, which would have been hideous.
November 11—peppero day “Landon I love you”, “Will I love you”
This probably isn't as funny to you since you don't know the master, but Will and I busted up laughing when the master turned handed us boxes of peppero and in his ever-serious voice intoned “Landon I love you. Will I love you.”
November 12—the enemy's gate is down
Usually when doing the forms we faced the Korean Flag, bowing to it as we began and ended each one. On this day, though, we were tested on how well we really knew each form by rotating 90, 180, or 270 degrees and trying to perform them. Emphasis on trying. After this day we broke our minds of the visual cues and shortcuts we were using and actually learned the forms properly. I was reminded of the lesson in Ender's Game about the subjectivity of direction and learning to think outside of conditioned or obvious spatial orientations: The enemy's gate is down.
November 17—high jump champion
The younger children were usually still practicing when we arrived since we were supposed to be done stretching by the time our 9:00 session began. Often we were roped into playing soccer, dodgeball, or some other cool-down game with the kids. On this day they were having a high jump competition. They didn't ask us to join until almost everyone else was out, and in the end it was between Will, me, Chingu, and the masters. The high master said it was the Olympics between Korea and USA. I think that the undermaster would have won had he not insisted upon going straight forward instead of doing the Fosbury flop, but instead--after many rounds that made the kids late to get home--I was the champion.
November 30—ding ding ding ding (blue, brown-blue-brown, brown, red-brown-red)
At this point the masters started rushing us towards black belts since they realized we would be leaving soon. We actually were qualified for the huge jump in belts we made, there just hadn't been as many belt tests as times we had mastered new kicks and forms.
December 24—ding (red)
Red is for danger, a reminder of the power the student now has and a warning to use it wisely. Red was actually my goal when I started since I knew black was unrealistic, and frankly red was pushing it, but we worked hard for an hour a day, five days a week, plus refreshers outside of training time. I never got my black belt since I already had tickets to Jeju island during the one weekend in December that there was a national belt test. Any school can hand out the belts before black, but after that impartial judges must deem you worthy. I also didn't feel ready. I knew the forms damned well, but we had only sparred twice and I was just getting a feeling for the various counters and applying the blocks and moves that I knew. It worked out that I didn't have to go before a huge group for a test that I was almost but not quite ready for. In any case, the master seemed truly touched when I brought him back some Jeju orange chocolates for him.
In order to attain our Red belts, we had to pass our belt test during parents day. Will and I knew the eighth and final pre-black belt form well enough to do it blindfolded, which was good since they had us face opposite directions and run through in mirrored, which looked pretty cool. Then they pulled a real surprise on us and had us kick through (admittedly very thin and easy to break) pieces of wood. We correctly speculated that they would have us do our hardest kick to break it, one where we spin around and sweep the leg. I'm only accurate with that kick about one in three times, so I was quite glad to hit the board on the first try, breaking it into three pieces since the master was holding the top and bottom so tightly. Also, everything was a competition, so that the parents and families voted on who was the best at whatever was being done, whether jump rope routines or forms or kicks. It was awkward when they choose between me and Will, since at least with the kids they had reason for partisanship. We had been told that we would get our red belts if we passed and that we would lose three belts if we failed, and thankfully we did well and the masters could show off their oddities: the adult foreigners learning from them. Afterwards we had another Dokkgalbi dinner, this time with just the older students and coincidentally Fan Girl and her family. We learned her Korean and English names (which we promptly forgot because we liked the nickname better) and discovered that she went to one of the better English academies, and so she really knew English, so we actually had a conversation with her for the first time.
December 29—embroidered black belt, the real goodbye from Korea
My last day of Taekwondo came quickly. Will and I speculated that we would do something fun for our last day, like soccer or sparring. Will joked that they would have us run fifty laps. We ended up running fifty one suicides. It was amusing to do conditioning when I was about to leave and lose my great condition. At that point I was in the best shape of my life, and had far greater balance and flexibility than I ever thought I might attain. The master and undermaster gave me a black belt with my name embroidered on it (in English, sadly, rather than in Hangul as I'd hoped, but it was a wonderful gesture nonetheless) and a cute six inch tall taekwondo uniform window decoration. Despite the language barrier I feel that Will and I really did become friends with the masters and Chingu. We took them out to our favorite restaurant near the end as a thank you and nearly had to fight them to pay for it. Another time the undermaster Will and I sat talking for a long while and I was proud of myself for actually being able to tell a joke in a foreign language. Will accidentally said that he was looking for a boyfriend instead of girlfriend since he got the Korean vocabulary mixed up, so I mimed what happens when will walks into the women's room instead of the men's. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we had a real rapport. I knew that this was my real goodbye party in Korea.
When I did leave the country a few nights later I received a bland (to the point of rudeness) send off by my coworkers, some tears from my students earlier in the day, and an all night chat with Will and Courtney. Will and I went on an expedition to acquire some flags (a Korean flag for him, and two "Let's go together" Daejeon flags for me and Real Lindsay). Courtney gave me a book about America written by an embittered Korea which is amusingly racist and ridiculous but sometimes completely and devastatingly correct in its critiques. Will gave me a devise that makes the Mario-getting-a-coin sound and then the level up noise every 100 clicks, in honor of our Taekwondo levels. In the early hours of the morning I bade the farewell and took by backpack and suitcase through the snow to catch a cab to the intercity bus to the airport.
Update: I almost forgot to mention the amazing decorations at the second gym. The best part were the giraffe and cow fan covers that showed up the last couple months, but the cartoon TKD kids were pretty good too. Also, our uniforms are authorized by the World Taekwondo Federation, and hence say WTF on the front. There are numerous miscellaneous nuggets of amusement that will probably be unearthed from the depths of my brain over time. Also, Will, please feel free to correct any timelines I may have misremembered or to jog my memory of any good anecdotes I'm not remembering at the moment.