Friday 7-19, Saturday 7-20 Taekwondo and Ettiquette

Today we started doing taekwondo... It's like Korea's way if doing karate, we will continue this tomorrow 7-20. We received our own custom made uniforms. the uniform had our national flag on one sleeve and the Korean flag on the opposing sleeve. The teacher Deoksoo Jeon was a Korean adoptee as well. His adoption was domestic though and this made him a wiser man. He has been helping teach taekwondo for this camp now for three years and he is recently married. I am thankful to him for sharing his story and his journey of adoption and the struggles he faced.
We started the day off with warm-up drills of running, flexibility, and stretching... I never realized how out of shape I am till taking this class. We practiced kicking; round kicks, straight kicks and punching with our fists.
The instructor gave us a challenge to break a board the next day to receive a prize. No one's failed yet...
Then we got back onto the red tour bus and went back to the hotel took quick showers and then ate lunch; Korean McDonald's food and tried on the traditional Korean clothes hanbok.

After that we went back onto the bus to go to the Myung Won Cultural Foundation. It was an etiquette class where we were going to learn  how to bow properly make green tea and pour it properly. Sadly, this art form is slowly dying in Korea.The tea was really good. We also did the coming of age ceremony which is when a child turns 20 they receive an adult name. We received our adult names and their meanings with great gratitude.

At the tea ceremony place dinner was served, it was delicious! 

Then we had free time so I went with a group to norae bong or karaoke place called Rock Q.

I also was able to go shopping so I picked up a few things.

7/20~ We woke up to attend taekwondo again. The challenge was becoming a reality, everyone broke their board and we received our prize. It was a black belt with our Korean name engraved on it. For lunch we ate chicken again and we celebrated our Norwegian friend's Tove birthday by eating banana bread.