"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face."
-Mike Tyson
This week I reached my two year anniversary of living in Korea. To celebrate I went back and read all of my blog posts from the past two years. My very first post was entitled "Fear." I had so many fears going into this experience. One of my fears in that post was that I would not succeed in my goal to get into better shape while I am here. While I am by no means in perfect shape, I have made huge progress and am extremely proud of myself. I dragged Lindsey along to try out a boxing gym owned by a Canadian coach in February and we have been going 3 times a week since.
These photos were from our very first day. We were super cool and asked the coach to take photos of us.
This was probably in our second week learning our first punch.
Now we are featured on the gyms posters and have appeared on a Korean television program when it visited the gym.
But last weekend is our biggest accomplishment of all. Last weekend, we participated in a national boxing tournament that is held every four months. Now before you get super excited, we participated by sparring with our coach so no one was actually fighting back BUT it was still a huge accomplishment to get in the big ring and show off our skills and there were a couple of coaches who complimented us on our skills.
Obviously in boxing you compete with people in your weight class. The average woman in woman in Korea is 5'4" not to mention generally they are of a very small build so finding woman to fight Lindsey is difficult enough much less trying to find someone to fight me. Thankfully our coach, Ju-Young, was willing to take one for the team and let us beat the crap out of him! Ju-Young was a professional boxer but unfortunately broke his hand ending his career, so even though i'm sure getting hit over and over repeatedly is never pleasant we are no where near to what he got as a pro. We each sparred for 2, 1-minute rounds.
In this video you will see the referee "take a point." If this was a real fight he would have been docked a point because he was bending down too far. If this was a real fight I also would have lost a point because I hit a little too low in one shot, oops.
So it might like look super impressive watching, but that was actually really hard and I am proud of myself. I have gained so much strength and endurance and hopefully next time I can have a real fight!
After the sparring I was feeling pretty good about myself and then the cherry on top: they gave us both a trophy and certificate!!!!
In the blue is Coach Ju-Young (who we sparred with) and in the black shirt, the Canadian owner and coach.
The certificate is in a fancy folder like you get your graduation diploma in. I took both to school on Monday to show my kids because you know I get my self-esteem from the approval of 5 year olds. They were super impressed that the certificate says my name and that it says winner.
My aunt shared this photo from right before I left Wisconsin for Korea. I have done so much and changed so much in the two years I have been here. I have 1 more year in Korea and I can't wait to see what it brings.
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