Taekwondo tournament!

Day 141, 2^nd of December 2012 21:46

La festival de la luz y la festival de la pelea!

Yes! These were two great days; they just don’t seem to stop! Yesterday evening was the festival of the lights in San Mateo.  Since I feel way more connected with San Mateo as with Orotina was that the place to be last Saturday.

There weren’t so many lights as I expected, but it is a little village. It was pretty much like carnival; all the local bands came in a row past by the park and even the band of San José came. Every band represented either a school or a place and every one of those also had dancers, and carnival cars. But also the medical people and the fireman participated. The fireman just used there fire truck because they are so awesome already. They all made nice things, elephants, the birth of the baby Christ but our school was the best of course. We had a big truck with a forest at the back with huge butterflies and the 3 meter Iguana we made, it looked beautiful.

I really enjoyed the festival; I first went with my family but quickly met up with some friends. There were food stands, a lot of people and live music. Walking around through all of this kind of made me feel back in Holland where we have these kinds of things more often.

Afterwards I asked what the other people thought about it, and surprisingly they all thought it was horrible. According to them there was too much chaos and it wasn’t good organized. Here I kind of miss the Pura Vida way of thinking; Ticos can complain a lot sometimes.

And then today, today was so epic cool. Today finally came the day of the Taekwondo tournament, where we have been training for the last month. The tournament was in Heredia so I drove with the coach in a car there. It was at a gymnasium of a school, so there was plenty of space for the public as well. It felt so good to be back at a big sports event again.  Orotina was represented by 8 competitors including me, we also had some supporters from Orotina, there are always a few moms watching at the training, and they also came to the tournament. We got our own spot where we put all our bags and everything and then the waiting started. First went the smallest and youngest kids. It was funny to see them fight, but the pressuring parent is a problem here as well. I had to wait until 4:30 for my fight, we arrived there at 9.

There were some black belt people demonstrations which were pretty cool, but I spent most of my time watching the other people fight, which is pretty nice actually. I also spent some time training with my teammates at the training area. It was so cool that there were so many Taekwondo people together and everybody was just kicking all over the place. It felt a bit like the PSV-tournament we have every 29^th of December.

I got all ready and set for my fight when my time came; I already met the dude who I had to fight with. When the time was there it appeared that my body protector was too small, so we had 1 minute to change. We didn’t have one ourselves so we had to search all over the place. When we came back they said that I was disqualified. But my opponent was so nice to say that he did want to fight. First everything got checked by the referee and then we had to bow and put our helmets up, I put it on reverse the first time but that is a common problem. After the referee said ´Shi-Cha´ we could start, first there was some jumping and looking for an opportunity. Everything went really fast after the first kick, I did a double ‘kick & spin combination’ after that there were some single kick which all got blocked by both of us. Then I kicked him twice in the stomach which made him stop twice, that got me 2 points, so it was 2-0 for Bram. After 1 minute I got to kick him in the face, this is worth the most points; 3. So the score was 5-0 for me; looking pretty good. But this dude was lying on the floor and apparently I had already won because of K.O., knock out. I didn’t really understand but it apparently it was really special and good. So I greeted my opponent, who was sitting at the medical spot and happily went to pick up my gold medal. When I walked back the public was clapping their hands and congratulating me! It was an epic experience!

On the way home there was a lot of traffic, this is like the third time I got stuck in a traffic jam here in Costa Rica and all of these times it was in San José, some things are so nice about a small village!

Day 144, Wednesday 5 December 2012 8:08

Bajansia

I didn’t wrote on my blog the last 2 days because of bajansia, or in English; laziness. Laziness actually is a pretty bad thing her I Costa Rica and they can get pretty disturbed if you are lazy. An example, my host mom asked me a few days ago if I drank coffee that day, I replied no, she said why, it isn’t because you were too last to make coffee right? It’s funny because Costa Ricans are very lazy themselves!

And what I did these 2 days actually just being lazy. I didn’t do anything special just being at home watching television; I really started liking NCIS, CSI, Criminal Minds and all that kind of stuff, so that is kind of bad I think. But it saves me money and since I am going on  a lot of trips next 2 months I need that money.

The only special moment was Monday at Taekwondo training: I was welcomed as a hero and we watched my video all together. I know really have some friends at taekwondo as well, so that’s always nice. And it also made me very proud.