qeySuS
11-04-2001, 10:25 AM
ahhh what a great country you guys live in! As if i wasnt obsessed with living there before, now i just gotta get back.
As soon as i came there i was greeted by an american family that welcomed the entire group into their home, it was a great experience spent 2 days with an all american family, had waffles with syrup and sausages for breakfest (never had more then a bowl of kellogs for breakfest before). And it was just cool staying with a family of five (the 13 year old son was practicing with your Master in baltimore that's why they took us in). Then we made a 6 hour drive to Yale (we didnt go to Hartford, aparently we were misinformed and the competition was in the Yale Coxe Cage).
The time at yale wasnt too interesting, lots and lots of waiting (had to wait for 10 hours before i competed) and then i fought 2 fights. First fight with a higher belt, he was technichly good but not very quick, i won him with a few points (they dont tell you the final score but the score after the first round was 3-0 for me). Next fight was against a guy i REALLY wanted to knock out, he was standing there with all his padding on the outside (illegal) wearing gloves (illegal) and trying to look mean and saying stuff like "F*ck this **** i just wanna get in there and beat someone up!". I saw him fight his first fight against a pretty unexperienced guy, he just throw big Muay Thai style roundhouse kicks and came jumping in with them, that was about it. So he won the first fight because the guy couldnt handle the aggressiveness, then i fought him and i just had to! I did the Vanderlai Silva wrist thing :D (i've always wanted to do that!). So we fought and it was 2-0 at halftime, he got 2 shots in on me in the second round, i blocked them though but you never know when the judges give points (blocks dont seem to matter all that much). Too make it short i won that fight too and got the gold in my belt/weight division, it was a pretty low belt division so it's not like i'm TKD king of the world :) But i enjoyed it.
What i mainly noticed at this tournement was that the caliber of black belts and other higher belts was VERY different. Some there could hardly throw a good roundhouse, i saw pictures from the 13 y.o's kids old TKD school, and that was a McDojangs that was just pumping out belts, they had VERY bad tecnhique and they had 2 belts, combat TKD and TKD (that way they get more money for promoting 2x). I saw the video (he was a black belt there) and he was BAD, he's really good now after a few years at Master Parks place. So it really struck me how the caliber is different, i saw some REALLy good black belts too there. I was also surprised how few poom belts tehre were (that's junior black belt) the majority of them just wore black belts.
Ok so competition is over, we went to NY for a quick 3 hour lookaround (went to some greek restaurant with a CRAZY waitress). And next day (monday) we went to DC to check out some landmarks, too bad that EVERYTHING was closed, the capitol the white house the monument, everything, went to the Smithsonian and the air and space museum though. Rest of the week i just spent training and eating weird food (i hardly eat veggies but this week i had to eat seaweed and lots of weird stuff), drank a lot of good authentic Green tea (good stuff), and we even went out drinking once, couldnt get in anywhere but one of the students just bought us beer and we drank it togethere and went shooting pool.
So all in all, a great trip LOVED THE COUNTRY, i almost felt like home, i never got that "i wanna go home" feeling or anything. Man i've always wanted to live there and now it's magnified by like 100x :)
Btw i didnt go downtown baltimore a lot, the school was on Joppa Road and we were staying at the Sheraton (towson). Only went downtown once to check out the aquarium and some other sites.
Free thinkers are dangerous!
As soon as i came there i was greeted by an american family that welcomed the entire group into their home, it was a great experience spent 2 days with an all american family, had waffles with syrup and sausages for breakfest (never had more then a bowl of kellogs for breakfest before). And it was just cool staying with a family of five (the 13 year old son was practicing with your Master in baltimore that's why they took us in). Then we made a 6 hour drive to Yale (we didnt go to Hartford, aparently we were misinformed and the competition was in the Yale Coxe Cage).
The time at yale wasnt too interesting, lots and lots of waiting (had to wait for 10 hours before i competed) and then i fought 2 fights. First fight with a higher belt, he was technichly good but not very quick, i won him with a few points (they dont tell you the final score but the score after the first round was 3-0 for me). Next fight was against a guy i REALLY wanted to knock out, he was standing there with all his padding on the outside (illegal) wearing gloves (illegal) and trying to look mean and saying stuff like "F*ck this **** i just wanna get in there and beat someone up!". I saw him fight his first fight against a pretty unexperienced guy, he just throw big Muay Thai style roundhouse kicks and came jumping in with them, that was about it. So he won the first fight because the guy couldnt handle the aggressiveness, then i fought him and i just had to! I did the Vanderlai Silva wrist thing :D (i've always wanted to do that!). So we fought and it was 2-0 at halftime, he got 2 shots in on me in the second round, i blocked them though but you never know when the judges give points (blocks dont seem to matter all that much). Too make it short i won that fight too and got the gold in my belt/weight division, it was a pretty low belt division so it's not like i'm TKD king of the world :) But i enjoyed it.
What i mainly noticed at this tournement was that the caliber of black belts and other higher belts was VERY different. Some there could hardly throw a good roundhouse, i saw pictures from the 13 y.o's kids old TKD school, and that was a McDojangs that was just pumping out belts, they had VERY bad tecnhique and they had 2 belts, combat TKD and TKD (that way they get more money for promoting 2x). I saw the video (he was a black belt there) and he was BAD, he's really good now after a few years at Master Parks place. So it really struck me how the caliber is different, i saw some REALLy good black belts too there. I was also surprised how few poom belts tehre were (that's junior black belt) the majority of them just wore black belts.
Ok so competition is over, we went to NY for a quick 3 hour lookaround (went to some greek restaurant with a CRAZY waitress). And next day (monday) we went to DC to check out some landmarks, too bad that EVERYTHING was closed, the capitol the white house the monument, everything, went to the Smithsonian and the air and space museum though. Rest of the week i just spent training and eating weird food (i hardly eat veggies but this week i had to eat seaweed and lots of weird stuff), drank a lot of good authentic Green tea (good stuff), and we even went out drinking once, couldnt get in anywhere but one of the students just bought us beer and we drank it togethere and went shooting pool.
So all in all, a great trip LOVED THE COUNTRY, i almost felt like home, i never got that "i wanna go home" feeling or anything. Man i've always wanted to live there and now it's magnified by like 100x :)
Btw i didnt go downtown baltimore a lot, the school was on Joppa Road and we were staying at the Sheraton (towson). Only went downtown once to check out the aquarium and some other sites.
Free thinkers are dangerous!