Taekwondo Day Camp: Day Five

Today, Friday, July 15, 2011 was our last day of day camp. Today we didn't start with a run. Today we started out writing letters to our parents. Most everybody wanted to write about how much fun they were having at camp, and how grateful they were that their parents had paid to send them to camp. My six-eyar-old son wanted to write me a list of gifts he would like to receive at the earliest appropriate moment. My eight-year-old daughter was much more sentimental. I wrote my father a get well soon card. I received an email yesterday from my mother explaining that he has an infection in his foot. He's been in the hospital for a couple of days, but they haven't made any progress on slowing the rate of infection.

After we wrote letters, we did our conditioning drills. We did the drill where we form up a line and we zig-zag between our team mates. It took a bit of practice to get the turn right. Then we did the same basic thing, but we sat down and took turns jumping over each others legs. I only recall winning one of these events. We mostly came in second.

After our conditioning drills, we played dodge ball. My team, the green team, paired up with the yellow team and the blue team paired up with the white team. It was great fun, but I don't think we found a winner. After playing a rather basic game of dodge ball, we played another version in which one team dodged and the other team threw. It was fun to see who might be the last man standing.

We did kicking drills and forms and nun chucks today. He taught us Nun Chuck Form Number Two. It's quite a bit more difficult than Nun Chuck Form Number One. There are fifteen single nun chuck forms. There are about ten double nun chuck forms.

At the very end of the day, Instructor Eric explained to us why he asked us to pick one person to stand up as the best team member and one person to stand up as the worst team member each day. Sacrifice. Since we had to pick a different person each day, some one had to sacrifice part of their ego for the good of the team. This was to teach us that none of us can do taekwondo without our team. Master Kim is an Olympic Gold Medalist, but he has also said many times, that he did not win his gold medal alone. He had his coach and his team mates and his parents all supporting him, and without them, he could not have won a gold medal.