Discovering taekwondo

Jump into the future again and my now wife and young son, Daniel, are attending a Korean arts and culture festival in Raleigh where they had Taekwondo demonstrations on stage. Daniel’s eyes lit up when he saw the cleanly uniformed taekwondo athletes jumping and kicking with bits of broken board flying through the air. He was too young to start training at the time, but for his 4th birthday, we hosted it at a Taekwondo dojang walking distance from our house where we first met Master Houman and Ms. Neshat.

Daniel advanced through the young kid belts and enjoyed every minute of his training. And then COVID happened and everything changed. In person training was replaced with YouTube videos and Zoom classes in the living room. Daniel was trying to train all alone in our living room over a Zoom meeting, which was hard for a young guy. So, I started doing the classes with him in our living room so that he would not have to train alone. It’s always more fun to do martial arts with others rather than alone.