Moving Forward

I like, millions of others was completely captivated by the news this week. After hearing the news of the bombings at the Boston Marathon I was basically glued to Boston.com and the never ending updates on the situation. I consider Boston my hometown. My mom lives in a suburb north of the city, but hearing about the attacks hit so close to home. Immediately after I heard the news I was looking up friends on Facebook who live in Boston or might have been at the race to make sure they were ok. Luckily everyone I know is safe, but looking the pictures of hundreds of people hurt was heart-wrenching.

The events of last week were basically insane. It was like watching a movie unfold before my own eyes. But now, I’m grateful it’s all over.

A lot of things have happened over the past few weeks, but in light of what was going on in Boston, it all seemed rather trivial. But now that things have settled down and we’re all moving on with our lives, I figured I could share a few of those things.

This past weekend Andrew and I took his brother up to Cornell for a campus visit. He’s still trying to decide to go to college next year, but he hadn’t been up to Ithaca yet, so we figured we’d take a quick trip to upstate New York. And I mean quick. I think we were in Ithaca for about 15 hours. Mind you, we were driving to and from Ithaca for about 13 hours, so it was probably worth it.

I tried not to nerd out too much while at Cornell, because I did not want to unfairly influence Andrew’s brother’s decision to go there or not. I loved my time at Cornell, but if ends up going there because I lobbied hard for it and then he ends up hating it…well, I’m going to feel very bad. While we were there, I did get to visit a few nostalgic places though.

Melissa and I met at this rock twice a week for all of freshman year. The dorm behind me was her dorm and mine is to my right. We would meet there around 8:45 for the (often cold) walk to gymnastics practice from 9-11 PM. We met there before heading to dinner every night (and eating bowls full of ice cream. It’s good we were doing that gymnastics or else we would’ve gained a lot more than the freshmen fifteen.) and in general, it became our default place to make sure the other person hadn’t fallen down a deserted stairwell on the way to something else. It’s a good rock.

While in Ithaca we also managed to hit up Collegetown Bagels twice. Both locations in fact. We made a quick stop at The Commons and had lunch in a dining hall. Andrew and I also crashed a “Student Only” question and answer session where we slouched and tried to look young after we realized we probably weren’t supposed to be there.

The verdict is still out on Cornell though for Andrew’s brother. I guess we’ll find out in a few weeks what his decision is, but for now, it was a good excuse to go up and visit good ole Ithaca.

So, that whole trip happened. And it was only Saturday. We got back around 11:30 Saturday night , which gave me more time than I was expecting to sleep before…my black belt test on Sunday. Hallelujah! After three years or so and over a year of waiting, I finally got to test for my black belt in taekwondo.

Spoiler warning! I got my black belt.

We got up in the morning to do the conditioning portion of the test. We each had to run 1.5 miles followed by 200 push-ups and 200 sit-ups. After a mildly inconvenient two hour break, the actual test portion started at 12:30. Six of us were testing for our 1st black belts and one was testing for his 3rd degree black belt. I thought the test went rather quickly. We did forms, one step sparring, self defense, weapons, board breaking, and ending with sparring. Sparring was the most fun and the most difficult, if only because each of us had to fight for 5 minutes or until we scored 10 points – whichever came first. Five minutes of sparring is brutal. A normal match has 2 minute rounds with 30 seconds of rest between each round. After two and a half minutes of sparring during my test I basically wanted to just sit down with a steady stream of oxygen.

We all survived. All seven of us were promoted and it was pretty cool. Some of these kids have been working towards this for 9, 10, 11 years. They were so excited (and relieved!) and their parents were proud (and probably also relieved). I’ve known a bunch of them for the entire time I’ve been at the school and it’s been really cool to see how they’ve grown up and matured throughout the years. They’ve all turned out be really great people. I’m honored to reach this milestone with them.

I’ve done taekwondo off and on (mostly off) since I was 7 or 8, but I was never this committed and involved. I’ve been on the sparring team for the past three years in addition to taking classes.  The kids on my team are awesome. They’re unique, funny, determined kids who I will always consider friends. We trained together, fought together, ached together (I probably ached a bit more than them), traveled together, and became a team together. I get a lot of crap from my coworkers for being on a team with a bunch of kids, but it’s been one of the most fulfilling things I’ve done in the past few years. It started with them teaching me how to kick (I was terrible. It was humbling being kicked in the head by an 11 year-old who is a foot shorter than you). After a while, I started to help train the with conditioning and endurance. Now they’re faster, stronger, (and taller) than me. Time moves quickly.

But, this is the culmination of my taekwondo career for now. I’m taking a break for a while to try some new things, relax a little, and oh yeah, get married. Between classes and training, it was preventing me from doing other things in my life. I’m going to spend the summer meeting up with friends, maybe pick up running again, heading to the beach, and just enjoying life without the pressure of a competition or a class. I’m not saying I won’t be back, but it’s time to start a new chapter.