Taekwondo clown

For the past two months or so we've been joined at taekwondo by a Korean ajumma (아줌마), which means a middle aged Korean woman. Although she is there primarily there to improve her English - and she kind of admitted that to me - she does join in with the practice and is getting better. I kind of admire someone who goes out of their comfort zone like she has done to take this up.

She is a lot of fun. Of course her skills are much lower than us but that's not really the point. She seems to enjoy it and we laugh a lot more than we used to, and we've always had fun as a group. Her English is not bad and improving. She uses phrases that don't always work but we get what she means. Today she explained about when she was having a baby, describing it as an "Extreme activity." She is in her element when we play a game and seems to enjoy it more than us. She plays the clown really well and helps keep things light hearted when they need to be. She also is helping our Korean get a little better too.

Taekwondo is a decent way to kip fit but to improve you need to practice hard and try your best to get better. Recently we've been doing a lot of stretching and strengthening our leg muscles in order to improve our kicking. Today we spent a lot of time on that and at times it was bordering on painful, but in the best possible way. It really was difficult. At one point the taekwondo Master made me do some leg stretches while balancing his phone on my foot for the duration.

It was a bit tough on Lucy- her English name - as she had to do stuff she hadn't before but everyone else kind of had.stage which made us all laugh a lot. Importantly she didn't quit when it got difficult. Lucy is a white belt and is slowly getting ready for the next level, yellow belt. Her test is set for this Friday. Should be funny but in a good way like taekwondo is right now.