The Boy's Been In The Wars Again

Yesterday wasn't one of Yu-Jin's better days. Before he started taekwondo I asked him what he had to do. His first response was defend, kick, punch but I didn't get the "try hard to be good enough for grading" answer. He trained quite well but became a bit lost with taeguk four and taeguk five patterns.

His sparring was quite good. The last spar was against Bin Tan. She's a yellow belt who spars very hard. They are well matched and were into each other. Then Bin Tan did a back kick and, being a girl, who invariably are much better at doing high kicks, managed to kick him in the face. And what was one of the first things that his instructor said? "You should have blocked."

Later in the afternoon we went to his friend Jesse's house. When we started our bike ride it was still 36 degrees. Not bad for the middle of March. Pity Jesse wasn't home. At the start of the ride home is a very steep section. I reminded Yu-Jin what had happened last time he rode down there - he crashed into the grass when he couldn't stop. And what happened this time, you ask? I parked my bike in front of the grass section where he ended up last time and kept telling him to use his brakes. Did he listen? Maybe, but he didn't use his brakes. Luckily he came off his bike before his head and helmet clattered into my bike. Amazingly there was no skin lost. After a minute or two of crying we headed home. And not before time. There was a bit of lighting in the distance from an approaching storm - but we didn't get any rain last night.