Jedi Master

Every time I write in my blog I feel better afterwards, like some kind of mental cleansing, but at the same time it seems to take a long period of mental "dirtying" before I actually get down to doing it again. Shortly after my last entry we went to Gyeongju, which was the capital of the ancient Shilla dynasty. It's an interesting city with many tombs of kings spread around. It seems that wherever you go, there is another grassy hill entombing an ancient king. For the most part these tombs are respected but when you get out of the city a bit you can find many people picnicking, sliding down and generally having a lot of fun playing on them, even though there is a sign at the bottom of each one warning people to stay off.

We recently received an orange and white kitten from one of my wife's students. We've had him for about a week now but he came to us sick so he was a handful for the first few days. Now he's settling into the apartment and us. He's sitting on my lap as I write this. He likes to play, especially hunting our clothes and feet. He sneaks up on something moving, then bursts out in a terribly uncoordinated pounce. He has scared my wife pretty good a few times this past week. We named him Yoda because sometimes he looks surprisingly like the jedi master.

We're in the middle of of World Cup fever here in Korea. After South Korea's 4th place finish in 2002, expectations are high for the team to do well again. I've been trying to follow the games but they run at 10 pm, 1 am and 4 am so I get to catch about one live match a day. When I was here in 2002 when the World Cup was hosted in Korea and Japan, I thought Koreans were crazy about soccer. It's all my students could talk about at the time. Actually it seems that they're crazy about Korea, not soccer. I've watched some of their national professional league soccer matches on TV and there's almost no one in the stands but when the World Cup comes around, everyone is suddenly a soccer fan. I guess large international sporting events often have this effect on sports fans and non-fans alike but I'm a bit surprised that there hasn't been more of an interest in the local teams (which is where many of the national team players play) after Korea's success in the last World Cup.

I've become increasingly annoyed with my kumdo teacher's slow pace of teaching. Lately we've been working very hard but not learning anything. For example we had to do one thousand center strikes during one training session. Everyone had blisters after 40 minutes and sore arms the next day but no one knew what the point of the exercise was. Yeah, I know, I've seen the martial arts movies where the master does strange things to train his apprentice (like carrying water and waxing cars) but I feel that it's getting a little ridiculous. I learned 15 different "gum-baps" (each gum-bap is several attack and defense moves coreographed together) last year in 8 months. Now in almost 4 months here I've relearned 14 of those (he wasn't happy with my form) and learned 2 more. My kumdo teacher wants us to help him open a school in Canada when we go back but at this pace I think I'll still be training for my 2nd dan well into my 40s and it takes 4th dan to open your own school. Also according to Korean Confucian ideas, it's very impolite to question your teacher's teaching. The student is supposed to just follow and learn. My teacher has won many awards and his school and students have won many awards as well so I'm going to be patient for a while longer. My wife is also frustrated with her slow progress. Her black belt test is July 1st and she's not sure she will pursue it any longer if we're going to continue learning so slowly.

Yoda keeps crawling onto the keyboard and messing up my typing. He's a bit of a nut but it's fun having more company around the house. People generally don't like cats as pets so it's tough to find cat products in Korea.