And This Is Why Supination Is Not Good Or Normal

While doing a pretty basic partner drill in taekwondo tonight (step back, roundhouse kick, step back, roundhouse kick…), I turned my ankle inwards about 90 degrees and fell.  Man, did it hurt.  I knew as I was signing up for my first trial lesson that I was fated to injure myself at some point, but I at least hoped that it would be more dramatic, involving a flying kick, sparring gear, and an audience.  In the fastest rescue mission ever, Master Jerry supplied ice packs and elevation within 45 seconds, and I spent the rest of the class propped against the wall, watching my burgundy-mottled ankle swell to the size of a tennis ball.

I actually needed help walking the twelve feet from the dojang to my apartment, a brief but excruciating journey that taught me how much I really do use my ankle for moving around.  As I sit here with more ice packs attached to my left foot, debating whether it’s worth the effort to hobble over to the sink for another glass of water, I want to send an advance shout-out to my right leg, which is going to be bearing a lot of extra weight tomorrow on the 23-minute subway ride.

Oh man, not going to taekwondo for a week is going to make me a real sad panda.

In Celebration Of My Brand-New Purple Belt

I am really falling in love with Colombian food. I got a tamal de cerdo and a salpicón at Papa’s Empanadas to celebrate a surprisingly successful taekwondo promotion test (I nailed my form AND my flying sidekick). Admittedly, the tamal was not impressive (I’ve yet to find tamales that taste as good as Kevin’s favorite mail-order variety), but the salpicón, like its cousin the cholado, is perfection. It’s basically a fruit salad in a cup, with lots of sweet, bright red watermelony juice and tiny diced cubes of assorted tropical fruit, and you eat it the same way you enjoy a cholado, with both a straw and a spoon. It’s a deceptively simple treat, if only because I can’t quite replicate the magic in my own kitchen.