Black. Belt. Test. ^.^

My dear friend, Anriette, and I started this whole taekwondo thing last May.  We didn't even imagine at the time that we would be able to actually try to test for our black belts in the amount of time that we had in Korea.  I think we both thought that it was actually something that took forever.  But, a few months into our studying he told us that we could try, and that became the ultimate goal for us :-)

We have been having the most fun with taekwondo, and are obscenely lucky because we have our own class time every day and it's always just the two of us and our lovely teacher, Master Jack.

It's brilliant.

We have had our share of injuries, nerves, complete failures, and awesome times on the way to our black belt test, but yesterday the fated day finally arrived.  And, because this whole thing has been such a HUGE part of our lives for almost a year, I wanted to tell you a little bit about it :-)

In Korea, every single boy and more than half the girls, I would say, take taekwondo from the time they're about 12 minutes old.  They get their black belts, their jr black belts, when they are crazy young, young as in nearly too young to walk properly, and there they are, out there on the mat, doing forms and trying to spar.  You would think with that sort of precedent, we wouldn't be too worried about doing it as grown adults!  You're supposed to get braver as you get older, right?  This should have been a piece of cake!

But it wasn't, we were nervous.  But we worked really hard.  A few months before our scheduled test we realized that we were practicing around 20 hours a week for this thing.  About a month before the test we cut back (at least on the stuff we thought had a better chance of injuring us, we are such fragile creatures) and focused on forms and things like that.

Over the past year we studied 8 forms, several different kicks, sparring, plus all sorts of crazy exercises that he had us doing in our classes every morning.

Anriette is made for this stuff, man, and she looks great when she does her forms, very. . .Asian?  Anyway, even with waste-length blonde hair she still looks the part.

I do not.  Frankly.  I'm much more clumsy and I bounce around with all of my steps while she is always solid and strong.  So, I was pretty much scared to death.

So, we practiced and practiced and practiced.

The test is two random forms, two kinds of kicks and 30 seconds of sparring.  It's 5 minutes for a year of training.  Oh, and a speech in Korean.  5 minutes.

But, the thought of studying this martial art in the place of it's birth and taking a test that would be verified by government certified judges and would (if we pass) put us on a government list of (obviously) deadly weapons and earn us an embroidered black belt, a certificate AND a special black belt id card was too much to pass up.

It's been amazing.  So, here's what happened on the day of our test.

Our test was scheduled for sometime in the afternoon.  There are two testing facilities in Ulsan, and they alternate for the test that takes place every three months.

We started taking lessons in May of last year, so technically we hadn't actually been studying for a year, but apparently we were close enough.  We were SO looking forward to being Master Jack's first students to go all through the program and take our black belt test through his school, and as foreigners no less!  But, unfortunately his studio was registered a month shy of the year we would need to be registered under his school's name.  He told us this one morning a few days before our test and that we would either have to register (and wear the uniforms) of his friend's school or wait until June so that we could test with his school. After some careful thought we decided that we had better go ahead and test and that we would enter sparring and form tournaments this summer under his name and get our second degree under his name next year (since we're so obviously going to do that)

Anyway, the test.

Because we had to go under the name of his friend's school, we had to have a pretest at his school the Tuesday night before our test so that he could, you know, make sure that we weren't going to completely ruin his reputation or something.  Which was nerve wracking as anything but was actually REALLY good practice.  We have been spoiled to death to have no one else in class with us this whole time, but we were also, because of that, not used to doing things with distractions around us.  In the test we would have to do everything with strangers and with 50 people around us doing all sorts of other things at the same time.

So, good practice.  And we passed our pretest.

Saturday morning.  The plan was that we would meet him at our studio at 9:30am and get some last minute run throughs in and a little last minute sparring practice, get some lunch and then head off to his friend's school, then finally to the testing place.

I can't actually upload the video of our initial morning interview to my blog, so it's (at least temporarily) on youtube.  You can find it here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVEgL3uJb3w&feature=relmfu

While we were nervous and practicing, our teacher seemed to be less than concerned.  Here's what he was busy doing :-)

After we finished practicing we had some lunch.  Here in Korea they will deliver just about anything to you, so we had ja jang ramen. . .here's what it looks like.

Delivery man unpacking our pre-test lunch.

Ja jang, and all of the obligatory side dishes.

And here's what it looks like.  It's noodles with a soy bean pasty beefy sauce, corn, and egg.  Not too shabby.

Then it was off to the other school.

And here's a video from that school!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpwURuiv6B8

The other school that we went to is a lot different from ours. . .mainly, there are a lot more kids around us than we are used to having (at taekwondo class. . .obviously not from the rest of our daily lives) and they were very surprised to see us!  This school was called Tae-In, and he gave us our new uniforms, we ran through things one more time, and then loaded up with all the kids that were going for their first jr black belts.

But not before we got this touching message from our Master Jack:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi17xFZGwUI&feature=relmfu

Then it was time to face our testing. . .facility.

We have been to two black belt tests.  One, because we just really wanted to see it, and the other because our friend was testing, so we had to see that.  Both of these tests were at the same place, and it was not where we went.  The place where we were testing was beyond massive.  We walked in and the sheer mass of the place was overwhelming.  This is where we are going to do this thing?


It was pretty awesome, though, as we walked through the multitudes of children waiting for their tests they called out to us like we were actually some famous people who belonged there, and we waved and high-fived, and whatever as we made our way through the stadium to some seats.

It was big. And there were a LOT of people there.  And a LOT of kids waiting to test.

Kids waiting.

Kids testing.

Kids waiting.

Kids testing.

 I know that there were about 2000 people there that day testing.  Most of them children for their jr belts, just from our city!  And I also know that we were the only foreigners.  Woot!  :-)

Annie and I waiting.  Which we did.  For three hours or so.  Do we look nervous or what??

Our photo id name badge number things.  Mine says Harper. . .awesome.

Okay, so we waited for a long time.  Master Jack came with our friend Renee (who had tested in the previous test and totally got it and has the awesome stuff now) and finally it was our turn to get up and join those who were waiting down below.

And so we did.  With our hearts in our throats.

Fortunately, we were also testing with another sweet girl from our studio, so we got to face this thing head on all together.

Let me just say that when we were walking out into the main floor from the wings from the underground level into the bright stadium lights. . .I'm not gonna lie, I felt like Rocky :-)  One of those, I need to remember this forever, moments.

Then we sat in chairs on the sidelines and waited.

 Then we stood up and moved to the other side, and waited.

Here we all all standing in line.

 Then we moved again, and sat down.

Oh my gosh!  It's almost here!

And then we waited some more, frantically running the forms through our heads.

There we are :-)  The three Tae-In amigos.

Form practice.

"We worked hard for this" Anriette told me "We should enjoy it."  Such a wise little ninja.

Standing in front of the judge. . I think they had to read the arm bands.

Turning and bowing to the judges that would decide everything.

Wanna see the test?  It's basically all on video!

They were going to choose 2 of the 8 forms, right?  So they held up their fingers to show "8" and then, we got to it, after the punching of course:

Form 8.  The last form that we learned. (Whew, we thought, now that's over.)


Then they held up seven fingers for form 7.
(Heart is really racing now. . .)

We did it.  We didn't mess up, we remembered which way to turn and when to yell and all those good things.  Then there were only two things remaining:  Kicks and sparring.

Here are the kicks.

Not as spectacular, at least from my end, and I would have liked.  But we were pretty nervous.

The sparring is here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgyPRCL66Tc&feature=youtu.be
Please be kind.  We really don't look awesome.  Wait until the sparring thing we enter in May, that will be a much better display.  We got to fight each other, though, so that was pretty awesome.  ^^

And after those five minutes we walked back to our teacher, got in our van, and basically fell asleep.  Walking through the parking lot after it was over was pretty surreal.  We had been working for this for a long time (in Korean time we've been working for this for YEARS!) and now, it was finished.  What do we do now?  Oh yeah.  Fight.  :-)

So, we have to wait about a week before we know if we got it or not.  But the test itself was a pretty cool achievement for us and a goal all by itself.  We didn't know at the beginning of this that it would even be an option for us, but we did it, both of us, to the end.  If we get our belts, I'll let you know right away with lovely pictures and lots of exclamation points.  If we didn't, I tell you that we did anyway.  :-)