Taekwondo

We had our midterm exams on Wednesday and Thursday. Instead of going right back to studying on Friday, the school arranged a field trip outing for us: a crash course in Taekwondo, the Korean martial art, at Gyeonghui Palace (경희궁 慶熙宮). Students in all four Level 3 classes went together. We were all given Taekwondo uniforms to wear, and then we marched up a hill to the courtyard in front of Sungjeong Hall (숭정전 崇政殿).


Our instructor was waiting for us.


We all gathered on this big blue mat.


Then we had about an hour of instruction. It was all rather superficial but great fun. We learned a few basic stances, and put together a sequence of 10 moves involving kicks and punches. We got to yell a lot in Korean. The weather was perfect.

When the lesson was over, we were all given a chance to try to break a piece of plywood with a single kick. The wood must have been pretty flimsy, because we were all able to do it, despite the minimal level of instruction we'd received.



[Following sentence and picture added April 10, 2008 by Lance:]
We all received certificates afterwards, handed to us personally by the instructor.

As it happened, a group of reporters and photographers from Hong Kong were on hand. When we were done with our lesson, they arranged to record a few scenes with the instructor. They wanted him to demonstrate something impressive, so one of the reporters held a piece of plywood high up in the air and the instructor demolished it with a flying kick.

This is the first piece of video to appear on the blog!


Right after he removes his socks, you can hear me chuckling briefly ("heh-heh-heh") behind the camera. You can also hear a lot of Cantonese spoken in the background.

On the second take, I tried to capture the moment of impact in a photo.


I think it's amazing how beautifully horizontal he is as his foot punches through the wood.