...Where Dreams Begin®
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October 31st - November 1st
Halloween 2007 is a day we'll always remember as the one that
got away from us. When I say us, I'm referring to Master Chambliss and
D'Marie, Apri Bondurant and her Mom April, Natalie Baker and her Dad Steve and
Lauren Overs and her Mom Lisa. Our trip to Korea for the 2nd World Poomsae
Championships started with our 10 AM flight from LAX to San Francisco, where we
met up with the rest of the USA National Poomsae Team. Master Chambliss
and I had planned to travel light, with one medium size suit case each, but all
that changed when a huge box of uniforms and special black belts for the USA
Team showed up out our studio on Tuesday morning. Suddenly we found
ourselves hauling 2 extra suitcases to Korea. Our 90 minute flight from
LAX to SFO was uneventful. Lucky we had a 3 hour layover at SFO
though, because Steve
had that "funny feeling" that something was wrong. Sure enough, in looking
at his baggage tags from LAX he realized that their luggage was not checked all
the way through to Korea so he had to return to the domestic terminal, find his
bags and recheck them. Since Natalie's uniform and everything else was
packed in those bags, that could have been a very disappointing discovery upon
arrival in Korea. After that, the rest of the day went without a hitch.
Our flight to Korea left at 2:30 PM on October 31st and we finally arrived in
Korea around 8 PM on November 1st. So much for October 31st! Had
plenty of time to watch some movies, eat a good meal, nap, catch up on some
reading, watch some more movies, eat another meal, sleep some more...and that
was all before we crossed the dateline. Fortunately, we were able to
upgrade to business class and it was worth every penny. When we arrived at Incheon airport, we were greeted by several Korean Grandmasters. They had
a nice motor coach bus waiting to take us to our hotel, and we quickly filled it
up with all the USA Team members, family members and luggage. After about
an hour's ride we arrived at the Royal Hotel Incheon, checked into our rooms and
called it a night. November 2, 2007
November 3, 2007
November 4, 2007 - 1st Day of Competition
Now, on to today's events. Today was the first day of competition, followed by opening ceremonies and the parade of countries. We arrived bright and early at the venue this morning so we could get good seats and relax before the competition began. While we waited, I had fun walking around promoting our Pan Americam Poomsae Open tournament next spring by handing out special trading pins and postcards that we had made. I had a chance to meet lots of people from all over the world, and some even gave me pins or small gifts in exchange. I got a decorative banner and pin from Chinese Tapei, a small tapestry lipstick case and hanging decoration from Japan, a cool keychain with a turtle on it from Costa Rica, pins from Russia and Austria and business cards from Brazil and Lebanon since they had nothing else to give me. We had 300 pins made and I handed out almost all of them before the competition began. It was a lot of fun talking, as best I could, to people from all different countries, but even when they didn't understand English, they got very excited about getting one of our pins. Hopefully, some of them will come to our Poomsae championship next March. USA's Junior Male Individual (Matthew Dunlap from Oregon) and Junior Female Individual (our Apri) both competed today. There were 25 in Matt's division and 28 in Apri's and unfortunately neither one of them made the top 50% cut to advance to the next round. Apri was the 3rd to compete in her division and scored 7.22, not bad for her first attempt at a World Championship and she still has another chance to compete tomorrow as part of the Female 1st Team with Natalie and Lauren. Master Chambliss also competed today in the Male 2nd Team Division but didn't make the 50% cut either . He and his teammates, both from Northern California, had only 3 opportunities to practice together over the past few months, so their expectations of winning a medal were not very high. Master Chambliss said he had a great time and is proud to claim he and his team mates are the 12th best in the world! USA's Young-A-Kim from Orange County, competing in the Female 1st Senior Individual division, made it through both the Prelimimary and Final Selection rounds to advance to the Finals tomorrow. The same is true of the Male 1st Team, brother Anthony and Johnny Nguyen from Arizona and Jason Hwang from California. They too will compete in the Final round tomorrow. But the big news of the day comes from the Female 2nd Team. Team members Noreen Thackrey, Barbara Brand and Akiko Reyes, all from Northern California, were awarded a bronze medal for their 4th place win in the final round. This is USA's first medal ever in the two years of this championship and the first time anyone from the Western Hemisphere has won a medal. It was really nice to see the American flag raised along with Australia (3rd place Bronze), Spain (2nd place Silver) and Germany (1st place Gold). Hopefully we'll see some more medals tomorrow. We've got lots of people competing tomorrow, including Apri, Lauren and Apri in the Female 1st Team division. Once the today's competition was finished and the medals awarded, we were treated to a real Olympic-style opening ceremonies. There were dancing girls, fireworks, Korean demo team board breaking, Korean folk dancers and of course the parade of countries. USA looked sharp this year in their matching blue warm ups. From what I was told by Master Chambliss and Natalie, it was almost more fun waiting back stage for the parade to begin. The different countries were trying to out do each other by singing their national anthems and chanting, and everyone joined in taking each other's photos. Master Chambliss thinks he was mistaken for someone else because people kept asking to have their photos taken with him. All in all, I think this is a memory Apri, Natalie and Lauren will never forget. The venue is really nice, except that there's not much choice for food. They have a snack bar, but the usual popcorn, nachos, hot dogs and dippin dots is sadly missing. Everything is in Korean packaging and appears to be chips and cookie-like things. Master Chambliss and I walked across the street and discovered a pizza place that was doing some brisk business. Our pepperoni pizza cost 10,000 won (about $10) and even came "gift wrapped"...they tie a red ribbon around the box. It wasn't too bad, even though they chop the pepperoni into small pieces and mix it with the cheese. Natalie and Steve joined us for was another 1,000 won ($1) ride on the subway for dinner, this time to Bennigans Restaurant. We've got this subway thing down now and I felt like a real pro, knowing exactly how to buy our tickets and where to go. Of course we've only ever gone 2 stops from the hotel, so that shouldn't be too hard. Well that's all for now. Hope all is well there in
Torrance. I guess you guys had an extra hour this weekend with the time
change, so now we're 17 hours ahead of you....I think. It's 11:30 PM here
now and we've got another early morning (bus picks us up at 7:30 AM) so I'll
sign off. Hope to have more exciting news for you tomorrow. November 5, 2007 - 2nd Day of Competition
Having been to the 1st World Poomsae Championships last year, I can definitely say Team USA has made a lot of progress. Last year we only had one team member make it past the preliminary round. This year we've had several make it to the final selection and final rounds, not to mention actually winning some medals. It really is a proud moment when you watch a member of Team USA stand on the medal stand to receive their medal, and then they raise the flags of the nations that medal and play the national anthem of the gold medal winner. We still have two more team members competing tomorrow and that means two more chances to earn the right to hear our national anthem. The one thing that hasn't changed much since last year is the fact the Korea continues to win (almost) all the gold medals. They have yet to score anything less than 8.20. In fact, so many of their competitors have scored a 8.40 that we're starting to think there's a special scoring button labeled "Korea". Last year they won every single gold medal in a total shut out, but the tide has turned this year. We finally got to hear a different national anthem today with Denmark's gold medal win in the Men's Individual 1st Master division. The winning competitor quickly became the crowd's hero when he topped his Korean opponent's score and bumped Korea to the silver medal spot. Last year, this same competitor from Denmark was robbed when the judges awarded his Korean opponent a very obvious unjustified higher score and Denmark was bumped to silver. There was so much excitement today when he had his chance to beat the Korean and the crowd went wild with lots of cheering for his high scores. It made for a very fun way to end the day. After today's competition we got back on our bus and headed back to our hotel to refresh and regroup. It's been five days now and still they just don't understand....we don't like Korean food....please don't keep offering it to us! We have breakfast included at our hotel and we still can't figure out why they can't grasp the concept of "crispy" bacon. At this point we'd just settle for cooked bacon. For some reason, the bacon is almost raw. Today we were offered a "special" treat....smoked eggs. In fact, we were given three trays (probably 36+) of these brown, varnished looking treats that we were expected to take to the tournament to "munch on". I swear they kept multiplying and it seemed like every time you turned around, someone was offering you one. In fact, when we were going down in the hotel elevator on our way to dinner, the door opened on another floor and there was a Korean man with a tray of smoked eggs in his hands and he offered us one. I'm afraid I'll be dreaming of smoked eggs tonight. The pizza place across the street from the venue continues to be the lunch of choice for most of us. From the look of the stacks of empty pizza boxes at the end of the day, it seems everyone is dining on pizza. There aren't any American restaurants near our hotel, so tonight we did another road trip on the subway to TGI Fridays. They have decent food and the staff tries their best to speak English with us. There were 10 of us tonight and we were all in a good and silly mood so I thought I'd crank it up a notch. I told our waitress that it was April's birthday, without knowing that Lauren had also told her it was Master Chambliss' birthday. When the restaurant staff come over with tambourines, guitar and birthday hat, Master Chambliss and I pointed to April and insisted it was really her birthday not his. April was a really good sport and even took me up on my dare to wear her birthday hat all the way back to the hotel on the subway train. Needless to say, we got a few curious looks from people in the subway. Well, one day left and only two members of Team USA left to compete. Two more chances to add to our medal count. Hopefully it will be a shorter day. Stay tuned.... November 6, 2007 - Final Day of Competition
We've only got two competitors left today, Tom Vu from Orange County, competing in the Individual Second Master Male division and Dure Chang, competing in the Individual Second Master Female division. Tom did not make it past the preliminary round but Dure did and even made history when she scored the first score ever in the 8's for USA. In the final round, she scored 7.96 which gave her the Silver medal spot just behind Korea. What and exciting moment for Team USA. Our first Silver and this brings our tournament total to 5 medals. Incredible. We've made so much progress from last year. Once again we watched with pride as the American flag was raised during the medal awarding ceremony. Today was also the day we saw Korea miss out on 2 more gold medals. The first one was lost to Iran in the 2nd Senior Male division when the Korean competitor made some errors and ended up in 7th place. At least this year, it was not a total shut out by Korea. Had a lot of time while waiting for our competitors. Stopped by the snack bar and discovered that they sold hot coffee in a can, just like a small soda. Things are really different here. The problem is the aluminum can burns your lips and is too hot to hold but it did taste great. Master Chambliss and I stopped by a table with information about the 72 various temples throughout Korea and how you can actually spend a week at one. They made me a colorful handmade flower and also a Buddhist chanting bracelet for each of us. While we were walking around we ran into the competitor from Denmark who bear Korea yesterday and we had our photos taken with him. He seems like a really cool guy and thanked us for cheering for him yesterday. Later at the hotel he ran into Master Chambliss and gave him a postcard with his picture on it to give to me. Guess I impressed him when I told him he was my hero. Through out the day today, there were several more demos, some of which involved Korean girls in silky pajama like uniforms... Pink and baby blue pj like uniforms. Tried to convince Master Chambliss that we need to stock those in our pro-shop but that idea didn't fly very far....I'm kidding. Of course no closing ceremony is complete with out more board breaking and flying apples. They really have a thing for "breaking" fruit and having it fly into the audience. Glad we were sitting up high. I didn't feel like smelling like apples for the rest of the day. Closing ceremonies ended with the final parade of flags from all the countries. They announced that there were 50 countries in attendance with 534 total competitors, although Steve and I could only count 33 flags. After taking the final team photos and photos with all the Korean Grandmasters associated with the tournament, we got back on our bus and headed back to the hotel. I don't think the team members have another photo smile left in them. Since this is our last night in Korea and we really haven't had much time to shop or sight see, I suggested that we might want to be adventurous and take the subway to Seoul and the famous Iteawon Market. I talked to the concierge at the hotel and he helped me map out our route on the subway. It only cost 1,500 won (about $1.50) and took us about 90 minutes. Probably would have taken twice as long in time and much much more in money if we had taken taxis. Besides, we had gotten so good at taking the subway two stops to go to dinner, so I felt this would be an exciting challenge. It involved four different subway lines and transfers but we made it. A very nice Korean lady noticed us looking lost at the first transfer point and told us to follow her. She got us on our next train and then explained to me how to make sense of the subway map. When we arrived, Master Chambliss and I and three others went to Outback Steakhouse for a good last meal in Korea. Apri, April, Natalie, Steve, Lauren and Lisa grabbed some fast food and hits the markets. We all met up two hours later and headed back to Incheon. By now it was 10 PM and we figured the subways would be empty. Boy were we wrong. Each time we got to a transfer stop and had to navigate to the next train, we felt like salmon swimming upstream. The subways were packed with hordes of people. Nothing beats the experience we had on the second train. If you're familiar with the Amazing Race and remember the crowded India trains, then you know what we went through. We were so packed into the train we couldn't move. Then to add to the fun time, there was a drunken Korean man causing trouble with a little Korean woman who was attempting to sweep the floors, and the people attempting to get out at the next stops. At one point I literally had to grab Natalie's arm because she was getting sucked into the vortex of people exiting our car. When we finally got to our stop, we found ourselves crammed in and facing the wrong direction. It's was all we could do to get turned around and off that train. Thank goodness none of us are claustrophic. We laughed about that one all the way home. I promised everyone an adventure and I think I came through. I know everyone will always remember our last night in Korea. I better end this now or I'll never get up in the morning, or should I say, in a few hours. It's now 1:30 AM and I haven't even packed. Our bus picks leaves at 10 AM for the one hour trip to the airport so I better get some sleep. We'll be back in LA around 12:30 on Wednesday. See you soon.
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Wow,
Friday already. Still trying to figure out what time it really is since
our cell phones never adjusted and still show California time. Started the
day off with breakfast at our hotel. Looks like teams from Mexico,
Austria, Netherlands and Australia are at our hotel too. After breakfast
the team got together in an empty ballroom and trained, then it was off to a
Korean restaurant for a special lunch with lots of Korean Grandmasters and WTF
officials. It was a very traditional setting where we had to remove our
shoes and sit on pillows on the floor. The table was covered with plenty
of plates of unidentified items, most of which none of us were brave enough to
try. Lauren was probably the most adventurous, even trying something that
I described as looking like a pig's snout. Master Chambliss is a meat-and-potates
kind of guy and I can't eat anything that looks or smells funny so needless to
say, we were still hungry when lunch was over. Thank goodness for those
Rits Bits crackers I remembered to pack. In the afternoon, we caravanned
over to the venue in 8 taxis so the team could check in and get their
credentials. Team China and Team Japan were checking in at the same time.
While we were there, we peeked in at the Korean Open Taekwondo Championship that
is taking place right now. The venue is a bit smaller than last year but
still very nice. The organizing committee took us back to our hotel on a
motor coach bus which save us from having to hail 8 more taxis. The team
was invited to sit in on the referee seminar at the hotel which hopefully gave
them a little insight as to what the judges will be looking for during
competition. It's only been a day and already the lack of some good ol'
American food is getting to us so we decided to do a "road trip". The
concierge told us there is a TGI Fridays two stops down on the subway. The
eight of us plus four others made the trip. It cost 1,000 won each way
(approximately $1). It was a pretty easy trip, we had a nice dinner, and
we didn't get lost so looks like that might be our restaurant of choice for the
next few nights. Well it's now 10:15 PM on Friday night (6:15 AM back
home) and I'm pretty tired so I'm going to post a link to my photos so far and
call it a night. By the way, my camera is giving me grief (wish I never
had dropped it on the cement floor at Junior Olympics) so I'm not sure how many
photos I'll be able to take on this trip. One of the teams members offered
me his camera and I may have to take him up on his offer. As long as it
has the same type of memory card, I'll be able to upload photos each night.
We'll just have to see how it goes. 
Unfortunately,
today was a very frustrating day for the team. With the competition
starting tomorrow, they really needed some time for training but instead, we
were basically held hostage to the plans of some Korean Grand Masters who
thought an entire day of touring around in a bus would be more fitting. We
left the hotel at 10 am and didn't return until 10 pm. With an early day
ahead of us and several team members competing tomorrow, including our own Apri
and Master Chambliss, sitting on a bus for most of the day wasn't exactly where
we wanted to be. I'm not saying it wasn't all good. We did get to
visit the Kukkiwon and one of the famous Seoul shopping markets for about 45
minutes each (not nearly enough time) but most of the day was spent in very
heavy traffic driving from Incheon to Seoul and back. After that, we were
taken to a banquet that was supposedly in the USA Team's honor, but instead
turned out to be another typical Korean dinner filled with speeches, awarding of
honorary plaques and self-congratulations. I was beginning to wonder if
the USA Team would even be acknowledged, when finally they asked Master
Chambliss to introduce the team and that was it. Then it was back on the
bus for another hour's drive back to our hotel. Needless to say, the USA
Team was not happy with today's events, including the fact that we were not
allowed to go to the Welcome Party for all participating countries this evening.
But, tomorrow's the start of competition and we need to put today behind us.
Apri and Master Chambliss will be competing tomorrow so wish them luck.
Before
I talk about today's exciting events, I forgot to mention yesterday how popular
Natalie is here in Korea. I guess they don't see too many fair haired
beauties like her. When we were at the Kukkiwon, there was a tournament
going on inside with lots of little kids, probably in the 6 to 13 year old
range. We were walking to the Kukkiwon store and a multi colored van with
several Korean kids was parked on the side of the road. When they saw
Natalie they went crazy, shouting "you're beautiful" and "what's your name".
They pleaded with her to take their photo. It was really quite a funny
scene with Natalie taking their photo while their taking hers. The Korean
attraction to Natalie doesn't stop with the younger kids. Later that
evening at the banquet, Grandmaster Jun Rhee, a Taekwondo icon, often referred
to as the "father of Taekwondo", asked that a "pretty lady" join him up on the
stage so he could demonstrate his power in board breaking. His gaze locked
in on Natalie at the back of the room and he immediately picked her. She
held a couple large boards, dangling from her grip, as Grandmaster Rhee quickly
and effortlessly sent the boards flying into pieces. 
Today
was a full day of competition for Team USA. We had team members competing
in 10 different divisions today, including our own Apri, Natalie and Lauren who
competed in the Female 1st Pairs division. Some team members got
eliminated in the preliminary round where only 50% advance to the next round,
and some got eliminated in the final selection round where only the top 8
advance to the finals. Unfortunately, our girls got eliminated in
the prelimimary round, but they looked great out there and said they would
definitely do it again next year if they qualify. We did get to see the
American flag raised one more time, though, when Noreen Thackrey of Northern
California captured her second bronze medal with her 4th place win in the
Individual Female 2nd Masters division. That brings our total medal win to
4 bronze medals. 
Today
started like all the others. Up early for a quick breakfast at our hotel
and then the whole team boards our bus for the venue. Team USA has
established it's territory, right in the middle and we get there early each
morning to hang our flag up. All the countries picked "their spot" on the
first day and continue to respect each other's choice of location. We've
been sitting with Turkey and Peru. Turkey is a fun group and really know
how to make noise when their competitors come up. Don't know how they
dragged a big drum on the plane, but they've got that and cymbals and other
noise makers. Any moment I think they'll bring out the belly dancers too.
