Talk about wrong place wrong time.

Reminds me of the last tournament when a concerned parent couldn't find her child and we calmly told her that a martial arts tournament was the worst place to try to kidnap a kid.

BOGOTA (Reuters) - A karate academy was not the best target for a robbery, a Colombian thief found when his attempt got the chop from practicing students, police said on Friday.

The robber was recovering in a hospital in Santander province north of Bogota after the martial artists used their combat skills and took away his gun.

"An individual entered a martial arts school with a firearm but they managed to react, put their knowledge to use and disarmed him," Santander police commander Col. Julio Cesar Santoyo told local Caracol radio.

Life lessons

I learned a very important life lesson today. When wearing a taekwondo uniform in a parade, the sun can get in the opening at the chest. So now there is a nice triangle shaped sunburn on my chest. Great.

2nd Degree

Today I officially tested for my 2nd Degree Black Belt. It was an interesting time, but in the end, I passed! After not really worrying about my board breaks, I started to set up too far away from the step jump reverse side kick and didn't hit the board well enough. It took all three tries but I finally got it. So, on Tuesday, I will get the rank I've been working toward all year.

An eventful summer

It's been a long time since I took the time to update my personal blog. I guess I've spent so much time with my jobs as youth pastor and taekwondo instructor, doing the school web page, our family blog, and other things to really get a grip on this one. Time for that to stop.

I see that I left off at the Songahm World Championships, so let me start by saying that I went there and had a good time. I went there with the intention to do my best and that is what I did. I finished 9th in the world in my division for weapons. Also, my point total gave me the title of State Champion for Texas.

The funny thing was, I found out later that it was amazing that I competed in the championship at all. I had taken the Ground Fighting class with Sr. Master Arcemont (a great teacher) and had an amazing time learning some Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu techniques. The second day of the class, my partner landed on top of me pretty hard. It hurt, but I didn't think anything of it because I was so sore already.

The day before the weapons competition, I noticed that it hurt to breathe deeply and to turn my body to my left. I wondered about it but it seemed fine, so I kept going, even competing with Bahng Mahng Ee in the weapons Top Ten competition.

Then while at youth camp (which I'll post on later) I realized that all my soreness had gone away, but the pain in my side was not. So when I got home, I went to the doctor and realized that I had a cracked upper rib. After a bit of healing time, I was back to training.


So after a year plus of waiting, training, waiting, and more training, I will testing for second degree black belt tomorrow night. So far everything has been going great. My form looks the best it has ever looked. I have had no problems with the board breaking in class. This means that I have to keep myself under control and just go out there to do what I have already done in the school. As one instructor told me once, it's time to go out there and claim my belt!

Top Ten!

Men's 17-29 1st Degree Black Belt Weapons Standings

It's official! When the final standings were release, I have made the top ten in weapons for my division. That means that my World's week is now officially busy. I will be competing in the top ten ring on Thursday.