Last weekend was my very Korean weekend.
It started by spending all day Saturday at a taekwondo tournament. Our team got there super early so we could help setup and then I got to judge the forms and board breaking competition. There are some pretty impressive little kids out there. But by far, the best moment was when a 70-ish year old lady got down to business to do her board breaking. It was super inspiring. The entire arena stopped to watch her do her thing and as she broke each board, the crowd would erupt in applause and cheering. It was awesome.
The afternoon of the competition was dedicated to sparring. Our team had 5 or 6 kids sparring and overall we did pretty well. Some of us hadn’t been in the ring for a while, but I think we represented ourselves well. I competed for the first time in a long while. I think the last time I competed at a tournament was sometime in late 2011. I think I did ok.
Now, that is basically a terrible photo. I look super weird in it and I’m wearing my pjs, but Elise asked me to take a picture of myself next to that trophy for scale. Um..yeah, it’s big. So, the little trophy is because I was first place in the 18-32 female bracket. Let’s pretend I wasn’t the only person in the 18-32 female bracket. The big trophy is because I was the 18-up female grand champion. Now, I did actually compete against someone in that category (and win!). She might have been 10 years older than me and this was her first competition, but you know, I totally showed her.
On Sunday, after my morning rock climbing jaunt, I headed up to hang out with my favorite suburban family. In addition to gracing them with my wonderfully charming presence, I brought along chicken. Now, this is no ordinary chicken. This is Korean friend chicken. Our TKD couch introduced us to it last week for a team dinner after practice. Man-o-man, that stuff is good. It’s fried without being greasy and it’s crispy, but not like American fried chicken at all. It’s from a place called BonChon and conveniently there is one right near our rock climbing gym. Immediately after eating it for the first time, I wanted to eat it again. Which is why I offered to bring some to the Abels. Any excuse to eat chicken! Her kids even liked it which I count as a win.
To round out my Korean weekend, Andrew requested bibimbap for dinner on Sunday night. Since I was up near the Korean store I stopped by and got ingredients for that and to make a fresh batch of kimchi. I think I have posted similar pictures before because we, well love having this for dinner.
After dinner I got working on the kimchi. This latest batch is for our wedding in May. I think it’s a slightly different recipe than the one I made last year, but I took a quick whiff a few days ago and it smells like kimchi. It looks like kimchi. Hopefully by the time our wedding comes around, it tastes like kimchi.
Comments
oops. I wrote the first one without filling out the top. You have changed this. It was nice to see the trophies. You weren’t exaggerating. See you soon.