It has been a long year at the AKA, which saw a record of 14 Grading Ceremonies, a Spring Camp, AKA Team Competition that lasted 4 weeks, and an AKA Individual tournament for 3 weeks, and in the last 5 weeks or so have had a small stall up at the Coorparoo Markets! Plus we added three new classes for the Kindy Karate which has continue to grow, another two classes for the novice adult students, and introduced our new Kick-Ass Chicks program and Dirty Old Fighters (over 50′s). We are also planning on starting a new class next year, very similar to the Kick-Ass Chicks but aimed at men. We need a catchy name for it in the same context as Kick-Ass Chicks, so if you have any suggestions please let me know!

After all of that, I was ready for a break! And so my wife and I decided to spend Christmas with her family, as we hadn’t done for quite a while. It was also very good timing as the Korean Karate Federation is holding a weekend seminar and competition and have asked me to attend and teach a few classes. Last year i taught two classes for them – one on kumite (sparring) and the other on some joint locks and the nastier side of karate. i am surprised they want me back!

We left early Sunday morning and arrived in Kuala Lumpur as we were spending the night before flying out for Seoul in the morning. Air Asia has very cheap flights, but it means transferring in Malaysia almost every time. I like Kuala Lumpur, and love the food so it isn’t a big deal for us. We checked out the Petronas Towers and grabbed some food before hitting the sack. in the morning we did a little shopping at  a really big shopping mall, before flying to Seoul. Man it was cold! We went from a humid 30°C to a -2°C in 5 hours. Walking around Seoul at 9pm was bitterly cold, but thankfully we grabbed a bus for a 4 hour ride to my wife’s home town of Busan. Busan is Korea’s 2nd largest city with a small population of, I don’t know, 3.5 million people! At the moment it is a nice and balmy 8°C outside, so can’t wait to get down to the beach, or maybe not.

I went along to the dentist with the missus hoping to tag along, but after some convincing decided to have a quick check up. The dentist spoke great English, much better than my Korean, and advised me it would be a good idea to remove my wisdom teeth. Ouchies! It was only $70 per tooth, compared to over $1000 in Australia I decided it might be a good idea. It hurt, but not as bad as I thought. I still need to remove another two wisdom teeth, so the pain factor will increase next week. I am not too worried though, as the $$$ saving outweighs physical pain!

I love the street food in Korea, and especially in winter. It’s cheap and delicious, and generally tastes better than a lot of restaurants. Here is what we ate last night -

That’s all for now, but will report back during the weekend with a wrap up of the competition and the seminars.

Feel free to comment on the blogs, and would love some feedback on what you would like to hear more of, and less of.

Stay safe,

Cheyne