Last week's grading was a success! During the warm-up today, the 教练 wandered off, returning with an armful of belts and a stack of certificates.
He called me up first, and tied a green belt from his multi-coloured assortment, around my waist. Then he handed me a shiny certificate printed in both English and Korean. I made sure to use both hands when handing things over, and narrowly avoided headbutting him during the bow. I was rewarded with a smattering of applause.
In a nice (but wasteful) touch, he also handed out the intermediate belts that we'd passed, and skipped. In my case, that meant a yellow belt, neatly bound up with elastic bands at both ends. It was a sharp contrast to the recycling of belts performed at my 道场 back home, which always struck me more as a cost-saving measure than symbolic act.
"What's the point of this? I'll never wear it." I whispered to Yu Hao as we forced ourselves into something resembling the box splits.
"Souvenir!"
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