more pics from the kumdo tournament

One of my students goes to the same kumdo school as me, today he showed me some pictures from the tournament that were posted on the schools website. Here are some pictures of me during the team matches:







I am very bored in this photo:

1st Kumdo tournament

Last Sunday (Nov. 21) I participated in my first kumdo tournament. There were 5 kumdo schools in Paju participating.

I lost my first match in the individual competition, won my next match in the team competition, then lost my next 2 matches in the team competitions.

It was fun, but too long. I was picked up at 8:30am, went to the kumdo school for a while, got to the high school where the tournament was at around 9am. Tournament started at around 10am. My first match wasn't till the afternoon. I didn't get home till around 8pm. I don't like all day events like that.

Kumdo

Here are some photos of me at my kumdo class Wednesday night....












One of the instructors took some video of my training, but I haven't seen it yet.

Kumdo armor

Monday I got my kumdo armor. I don't have any photos of me wearing it yet. The pic below shows how it is stored.
I had them put my name on it in Korean characters. The top line of writing is the name/location of the school. The big character in the center is Jon. Below that is my last name "Ra i eon" (Ryan)


The blue armor stains the white dobok (uniform). I don't like it, but everyone's gets stained.

Kumdo pics

I have been doing kumdo almost 2 months now. I enjoy it, as I knew I would. I have been going 4-5 nights a week.

Here are some random photos and video from my class Friday night:





Jukdo (practice swords):




Armor:


The school is on the 4th floor:

starting kumdo

I had vacation from Aug 6-17. I'll write about that next time. Tonight and the past two nights I went to look at kumdo schools in my town. I decided I would start training at this school near Geumchon Station:
http://pajukumdo.co.kr/

I'll start tomorrow. I had been thinking I would do kumdo while I was in Korea even before I got here. I don't know why I waited so long. The first month I was here I was waiting to see how my money and expenses were. After that I was trying to decide if I wanted to spend money on a kumdo class or Korean language classes. I can't afford to do both and I didn't know what to do for a long time. But I am putting on weight, so I need to do something, and martial arts is my favorite kind of workout. I will keep studying Korean on my own and probably start going to a free Korean language class I found.