After dodging testings, my Taekwondo instructor finally managed to trick me into testing for my blue belt.
Now, considering I have done the martial arts since I was fourteen, he found it absurd that I chose to keep my status as a white belt. Two weeks into my training he insisted I test to become an intermediate.
"You are the best in your group," The Instructor said through our interpreter, JY. "You work so hard . . . you need to go up at least one level."
However, I wasn't comfortable moving up because of my difficulties with the language. Even though I'd made flashcards and bought books, my only opportunities to study take place on the bus or subway.
This isn't like high school, when I curled up in my sofa with bottled water and a box of cereal and proceeded to mumble the same twelve Korean words until I fell asleep.
Now I'm responsible for a massive amount of vocabulary, and I do think I've memorized a lot. However, I didn't want to move up a level and learn a new batch of words when I hadn't absorbed my beginner words.
Last Friday I entered the dojang to find my Kwanjangnim (master and the school owner) seated behind a long table draped in a dark blue cloth. Everyone seemed to be running on an abundance of nervous energy. I found JY and pulled her aside.
"Yo-dong-saeng. Na ihe mote," I said, waving a hand over the room. Little sister. I don't understand.
"Ah," she said, squinting over my broken pronunciation. "Testing today."
JY was my first real Korean friend–that is, the first outside of work who wasn't interested in hanging out with me just to practice her English. Slender, lovely and good-humored, she also took Hapkido lessons and was training to become a police officer.
She was just a year younger than me, and we silently bonded over being twenty-somethings pursuing what most women in our community didn't understand. Our conversations were somewhat limited ("English is difficult." "Korean is difficult." "How is school?" "Things are busy.") and we preferred to interact by practicing wrist-locks and weaponry.
So she was the only one who could tell The Instructor I wasn't ready to test. "I did not know there was testing today," I said.
"You didn't get my text message?" she asked.
(Yes, I had. My student had translated it like this: "Last carrot at eight o'clock.")
"I'm not ready to test."
She told The Instructor, who smiled patiently at me. "He says you will not test."
"No test?"
"No test. Now, he wants you to practice your [one steps, or short defense techniques]."
"Waaaaait. I'm not testing, right."
"No test. Now, he wants you to practice number two and three."
So I tested. And even though I did the wrong one steps, I did the wrong ones right. As I knotted my new blue belt around my waist, I was happy I'd done it.
It's always nice to move forward, even when I'm not ready.
Musings from the Orchards 