Today we woke up at around 5 o’clock to prepare for the morning training. Master Usman told us when you get back from the festival it is going to be much harder. We have noticed that today. We had to do alot of jogging, then when we finished the that part we had to clib the stairs in a lot of difficult ways.

The jogging was much harder this time because we had to do some speed rounds that means that we had to run at a much faster tempo. Most of the guys were catching up with the korean students rebecca had some diffculty catching up with the team, she cryed a bit because she didnt feel well, azamat tryed to make her feel good again. everything went ok later on.

We were so tired that we went to sleep again

see you

Moalla

2008/07/08 at 4:18 AM

THe festival was veryhelpful to gain more experience. There we are in a stadium just made for taekwondo with three big rings. The first three days we all didnt have to fight but just to experience the fighting from the seats. There were alot of countries competing.Also there was a England team competing its good that we didn have to fight them because we felt that they are our team aswell.

On the thursday 4 july my fight , azamat rushid rebecca and montasar had to fight. The fighting when good, but we all think that there was some messing around with the pointing system. Any way we have recoreded any single fight and we will upload it soon hopely or bring it with us by the end of this week.

Now that we are back at the High school, the internet is not that easy to reach. It took us about 15-20 min to get there by car but obviously we will try our best. Sorry if we cant reply you

Anyway we are enjoying it here.

2008/07/08 at 4:09 AM

Moalla

If it wasnt for the constant in and out of shops which had AC most of us wouldnt of lasted the 4 hours we were out. The shops sell more or less the same sort of things that England do same style of clothes but there are shops that you wouldnt find in England

There is a shop with the great british flag on it as an English shop, but……all the clothes seemed to have mickey mouse on them - Apparantly korean people really like Mickey mouse

Oh and im sure the children will be glad to know that there is a McDonalds here as well as KFC but the food for me yet again isn’t every nice at all

But the Mcfurrys are much better than the ones we get in England

Most of the shops we see are mostly sports with A LOT of trainers in them. It was so hard not to be tempted into buying all of them!!!

They are also very cheap here but i here that we can get stuff cheaper in seoul when we go shopping there

As we went round i saw the stands of food out here, in England its normally hot dogs, chips etc, but here i see them selling a sort of cockroach looking inset fried in oil i think and there is also chicken foot
and alot of other unidentified food that are there - It seems that the koreans eat anything that moves
even cats and dogs!!

Well today all of us are relaxing as we all know we’re going to start the hardcore training back at the school tomorrow. For those of who are wondering we have yet to do our 7 mile run but when we get back it will be a 7 mile run up and down a mountain 10 times at 6am and i just about keep up with the laps we did in preivous days before the festival - Not sure how hard im going to find the 7 mile run

Anyways this is probably the last day of blogging for quite some time because at the high school we don’t have internet access but i will hopfully try and see if i can get everything i have taken with my dodgey camera and ‘chose to work when i want to’ video camcorder

If i manage to figure out how to edit and upload it on the site. So far i have abit of the fights but not mine (my camera battery decided to cut out after a night of charging). The opening cermony on a mountain, a few preformances from the areobic tae kwon do teams and today when we spent it in town - Hopefully fingers cross i can get them all on this site

Bye for now

Rabekah

The food……some people enjoy but as i don’t eat meat i find myself eating plain rice and bread. Kimchi seems to be the favourite food of the citizens of the country and i see it everywhere.

The majority of korean people wear glasses and are short for whatever reason but they are all nice people.This nation has a great deal of manners and bow towards you when you come into an acquainance with them or when stepping through a door and people are present, more people than i thought can speak English - All i can say is that their english is better than my Korean

The thing i hate the most is the mosquitos - they right now have caused my left foot to swell like a water balloon and im worried that when we go back to the high school i can not participate in the run and the training as i cant even put on a trainer

The dorms in the university are very nice, and we have free phone and internet access, also hot showers, but at the high school none of that is present and the showers are ice cold!!! - Not looking forward to that when i get back

Korea is very proud of Taekwondo and there is alot of spirt from both the people who do it and the citizens of the country, most adults are at least 1st dan as they have to get their black belt in 2 years for i think military school

Im kind of having a good time

Its hard when

1. You dont really eat any of the food

2. Cant really speak much Korean

3. The only girl in the team

but the people from both here and other countries are all united and it is a sad thing that it is all over now - but there is always next year

Rabekah

Here’s some pics both Mo and myself took while out here. Just to give u guys an idea of all the places we’ve been so far.  Watch the space for some fight footage

both mo an rushid should be posting the pictures and the videos they took if not…..

well hope u enjoy

i will try an edit the footage the other LTA members got of all the fights we all did as a team and see if i can upload it

the festival is fineshed now and we all had a great time

meeting people from alot of different countries and cultures is an experiance i will tresure forever

as for the fighting as well

and if i get the chance, i will like to come back bigger and better than now and get alot more than bronze

its not only hard finding what to say but it is hard to write it in my day 2 day journal and then on the blog witch up till now i still don’t know how to use And i have also written a lot in my journal and because we are out all day, the wait for the computer is extremely long especially when these lil children get on it (we call them the raiders)

well i have read your comments and it seems you all want to know how the festival fight went well the 6 day event is still going on till now but i had my fight on Thursday

i feel that i didn’t do as good as other people told me i lost 9-1 to a girl named Hanna rose from Australia, she was a black belt and really really good

It was hard to kick her in the face as she was a lot taller than me

The fights consist of 3 rounds of a 1 min 1/2 but i only got to round 2 as the rules state when you are 7 points ahead you win the game for that fight i got bronze and Hanna rose second opponent didn’t turn up :O

I was so close to gold yet so far apart

Well that wasn’t my best performance but i tried my best

Maybe next time i will come home with gold

Rushed also came home with bronze wining an losing 1 fight
moalla lost his fight

I will try and keep you posted
but you will defiantly hear everything when i get back

Rabekah

on behalf of me sorry that we havent posted anything yet but we are at the festival and we have internet access so u should here from us soon

if i manage to work out how to post the thing haha just joking

anyway u ll b glad to here that were not gettin our butts kicked

ps. did you watch Jmup yet..

tell me all about it

Rabekah

Korea is nice the people are nice. Just to let you know what is going on in Korea:

We wake up at 5am and jog about 7miles at a Sports college its hard to keep up with the koreans but we are doing wel.
After that we have a short break and the training starts again. This is a different type of training were we do sparring target and many more

So fare so good , we all enjoying it here. At the moment we are at the Festival to register etc. ancious about the fightting thats going to happen in a couple of days. im fighting on thursday, rushid is fighting on thursday aswell.

We miss you guys , and the classes we have on thuesday and thursdays
hope to see you soon
hugs for everybody Moalla, Rushid and Rebecca

Let me just start by apologising for the late coming for the blog. Today was the first time the three of us are actually using computers since coming out here.

Well with that said i guess i start by filling you guys in on what the training is like in Korea.

First of all when I heard we were going to be doing a 7 mile run i was a bit unsure on whether or not i could actualy complete it. Those feelings soon passed as I realised the run was merely 25 laps for a small football pitch. I think i did pretty well to keep up with the koreans with this aspect of the training.

Next in the Korean’s training regime came target training and fighting. Though i cannot speak for any of the others, i can say that for the first training lesson went pretty well but it sure wasn’t easy! There were so many exercises and fighting combinations i never knew existed!!! At first it was a bit of a struggle but u know, in order to truly succeed in anything in life, you need to persevere; and thats exactly what we did.

As for fighting well……sorry guys but your boy hasn’t taken the full wrath of the koreans yet! I guess we were taking it easy on each other due to the fact that we have the festival coming up (which is where i’m blogging you from). One thing ive gathered is that these koreans are faster than i ever imagined! (thanks for that heads up Master by the way) Already I can see improvements in speed and technique, I’m sooooo excited to show you all my results!

Right now im just relaxing so my muslces can heal–had to miss yesterdays session unfortunately bucause of the pain i was in :’( not to worry; after the festival that’s when the real training begins!!!

Well guys i’ll keep you posted on anything else that happens in the followng days.

I’m really missing my family, friends and everyone in KDK/OTC. Hope youre all improving just like we are! I’ll make you all proud in the coming tournament (my fights should be on friday) we’re bringing back gold you hear!?!?! hahaha

see you guys soon

Rushid