Weekend kiddie hike and vacation day Cherry Blossoms

Sometimes on Saturdays we have sparring classes at our taekwondo studio that absolutely kick our butts.  But, now spring is in the air and our taekwondo teacher decided that it was time to go for a hike with his kids that usually attend the morning English camp at the studio.  He dropped us off at our house on Friday morning and called out to us at the last minute that he needed us tomorrow and that he would be at our house to pick us up at 8am, which he later changed to around 10, which was much more manageable for a Saturday morning for foreigners in Korea.

We woke up Saturday morning and prepared for our hike with children.  We really don't get enough of children during the week at our teaching jobs. . .but it was a beautiful day and we are always glad when we start Saturdays early because we tend to discover something like an extra day tucked into the weekend :-)

We went to the studio and met all our new hiking partners and headed out into the morning sunshine (after stopping for proper rations)

Annie and our new awesome friend Julie, ready for the outing.  

Part of our entourage with our fearless leader.

 We walked through the town until we got to the bottom of a little mountain that we had hiked once before.  It was a lovely day :-)  The kids ran up the hill full blast and scattered off into the woods.  We were left with two of them.

 But we found them again when it was snack time.  :-)

He's explaining something very important, I'm sure ^^

Wee!

Annie has an awesome camera ^^

Lovely place

Kimchi!

Break time.

Too cool.

Our vicious protector and his air soft WMD

 At the end of the trail was a lake with a natural water spring that you could drink from if you so desired.  We will have to come back to this little lake later in the Spring because there were little water flower beds planted along most of the boardwalk and in the middle was a little bed shaped like a whale that wasn't in bloom yet, and that I'm sure would be something to see :-)

Looking for giant tadpoles.

Cherry blossoms :-)

We stayed there for just a little while and then it was time to head back and get some lunch, after we dropped off the kids, of course.  This was walking distance more or less from our house, and all of the kids lived around the studio, so we just walked along and the kids would just run off home (which really threw off our head count. . .)  But eventually they all found their homes and we ran back to the studio.

The street right outside of our studio, absolutely lined with cherry blossom trees.

Aren't they amazing?

We had gone to a Chinese place with Master Jack a few months back or so and decided that we absolutely needed some of that orange glazed pork today.  So, we drove around for a while trying to find it, finally got it and ordered some with sides of rice and ja jjang, which is home made noodles with a beefy, soy bean sauce.

It's colorful AND delicious!  What more could you possibly want??

I couldn't wait for the photo shoot to finish.  I needed it.  ^^

 We were too busy inhaling that amazing food to take any more pictures.  We finished and headed back to our houses to put some crazy colors in our hair and meet up again with Julie for a Saturday night in Mugeo-dong with Julie.

~Election Day, Wednesday, April 11~


We get precious few days off as academy teachers here in Korea.  Seriously.  But, fortunately for us, there was a big election here this past week and we got the day off for election day ^^  Well, some foreign teachers did, not all of them, but thankfully we did.  And we decided the very best thing to do would be to go to Gyeonju, visit some temples, and see some cherry blossoms in one of the most famous cities in Korea for them.

You may remember last year around this time we went to Gyeonju for the cherry blossom festival with the English Fun Table where we took Korean lessons and rode bikes for 26 hours and saw the whole city from the backs of those bikes.  Which was awesome, don't get me wrong, but this time we wanted a little more of a relaxed approach.
We were planning on going with Julie, and new guy named Ian who just joined our morning class, and maybe Master Jack, but our plan was to meet at the train station at 8am so the two guys weren't able to make it, so it was a girls trip to Gyeonju.

We met at the train station, bought our tickets, and headed off on our very favorite form of transportation.  (I'm seriously going to miss trains.  Easy, cheap, fast, what more could you ask for?)

Julie and Anriette chillin

We got the the Bulgoksa stop and took a taxi to the temple.  It was raining a little bit, but it still made for some pretty photos.  These are all Anriette's, and I'm just going to steal them and post them.

The lake in front of the main entrance to the main temple gate.

You can see the rain :-)

These are, I think, some sort of guardians.

Pretty cool, huh?

A little stand where you could buy and write on roof tiles.  We thought about it for a second, but then couldn't really think of anything to write.

Front entrance.

Inside the first part of the grounds.

This was in a walled section of the temple complex.  There were a few buildings with huge golden statues in them and people joined the monks for ceremonies.

Giant drum on a turtle.  ^^

Very steep staircases :-)  Going to another section of the temple grounds.

We tried pretty hard to get pictures of the insides of these buildings, but they REALLY didn't want us to.

Just talking to monks, you know, like ya do.  They were really explaining to me that there was a golden pig hiding behind the sign, and so there was.

It was the perfect day for cherry blossoms.  Now, just a few days later, they're already almost just leaves.

Isn't it beautiful??

Little mini pagodas that people built out of little stones.  

After we walked around here for a couple of hours we found a souvenir shop and a traditional Korean tea shop and decided to stop in for a bit.

Five Taste Tea and Lotus Leaf Tea :-)

They gave us a thermos filled with hot water and then we just decanted it into the pot with the lotus leaf loose tea, then you filtered that into another little glass tea pot, then poured it into the little tea cups, then repeat ^^

Cheers!

The lotus tea.

Little pottery for sale :-)

Kimchi!

These next pictures are from the grounds all around the other entrance to Bulgoksa Temple. It was just covered with cherry blossom trees!

Trinkets for sale!

One interesting phenomenon in Korea, especially in the Spring and Summer time in touristy areas, is that in strips where there are a lot of restaurants there are an equal number of elderly women (who run them) who stand out in front of their places and shout at people to come to their places.  They will come up and latch on to you, list off their menus, and brag about different things they will give us for free.  I don't think they really care how much of a group they get, and if three different women came and each only got one of us, I don't think they would care so much.  But this is something that happens with restaurants and rooms for rent for the night this time of year. :-)

We ended up at one called "Ulsan Restaurant" and were seated outside. . .perhaps as advertisement?  :-)

Korean "pizza" kind of flour doughish stuff around kimchi and scallions.  Pretty awesome, actually.

Soft tofu with some red pepper, leaves, carrots, and sauce.  Another freebie.

One of my VERY favorite dishes: dolsot bibimbap.  Regular bibimbap is cooked warm rice served with raw veggies, usually cucumber, carrots, and things like that, with some red pepper paste.  Dolsot bibimbap is a little different because it's served in a scalding hot pottery bowl which makes the rice on the edges all crispy and is served with a raw egg on top, which obviously cooks when you stir it, and this one also had mushrooms and seaweed.  Not sure why, but I absolutely LOVE this and crave it at least once a week.

After we finished eating we headed off for our other destination in Gyeonju which was a national treasure giant Buddha statue that was carved into the granite of a cave on the very, very top on a mountain, surrounded by, of course, a temple.  So, we grabbed another cab and began our journey into the clouds.

Fun fact to know and tell.  The road that we took to the temple was one of those switch back roads, just giant curves winding all the way up, and here those sort of curves are indicated on street signs by a trumpet, instead of just a curvy arrow.

We got to the temple grounds and the taxi driver asked if we wanted him to wait.  We said no.  He said that we wouldn't be able to get a ride down because there were no buses and all the taxis that were up there were standing by for other people already there.  So, we decided to let him wait.  And babysit our bags, after his offer.  We really hoped that he would still be there by the time we got back. . .

This temple was right in the clouds.  Pretty cool.

We went to see the statue but unfortunately unable to take pictures of it.  It was pretty impressive, just a giant Buddha statue inside of a cave surrounded by various important people carved into the cave walls.  It is one of the most famous statues in Korea, so I'm glad that we were able to see it.

We were there for maybe an hour or so, but it was raining and we were worried that our driver might have abandoned us and taken off with our stuff so we headed back.  Or, thought we were heading back. . .

We were actually dead tired.  But, unfortunately going the wrong way, even though we were literally hand placed on that very train.

Anriette figured out first, while talking to (or perhaps trying not to talk to) a guy who sat down next to her and started pouring himself maccoli and offering it to her.  He informed us that the train that we were on did in fact not go back to Ulsan and that we would have to get off and get on another train.  So we did.  In the middle of no where.  Which was a huge mission.  We tried to trade in our tickets to the guy working at the counter, but he acted like he didn't know what we could possible want.  (This is, by the way EXTREMELY unusual for the train/KTX outfit.  They usually literally bend over backwards to help us out, even if we were just being stupid and missed out train because we were busy drinking coffee or something, and they never charge us again) This guy let us struggle and struggle before finally breaking out in perfect English that the train was coming at such and such a time and to make sure that we got on going this direction, and blah blah.  So, we had 20 minutes to kill.  We ran out and got something to snack on and then waited in the lobby again.  When they called for boarding time we walked out to the platform.  We were there for five minutes or so, the train was due in about 45 seconds and here comes the desk guy.  "Do you have tickets?"  Man, you saw our tickets, handed them back to us and told us to get on the train that was coming that very moment.
So, he dragged us back inside and as slowly as was physically possible printed us new tickets and painstakingly explained every little detail of them.  Needless to say, we missed that train.  And had to wait another 20 minutes or so.

But, you'll be happy to know that we did eventually make it back home.  And fell asleep after about five seconds.

Good times.

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.  :-)