On October 6th – 9th I went to Las Vegas, Nevada to compete in the Pan Am Open International Taekwondo tournament.  My parents were at a missions conference so they weren’t able to come with me.  My mom dropped me off at the airport.  Once we got to security I was on my own.  It went well and I got to the plane and everything was fine.  Once landed I was picked up by Master Sam, my Taekwondo Master. Then we went to the hotel, the Rivera.

This tournament was an international event with about 900 people competing in it. At the same time we were competing with junior Olympic teams from all over the world but not in the same categories as us. I was able to watch all the these really good kids spar and saw some awesome moves. It was very interesting to watch and I also learned I would never want to fight any of these kids.

I competed in three different categories. My first event was board breaking.  For my board break I broke five boards.  I managed to break all of them on the first try.  I was not as nervous as I thought I would be and yes, I got the gold for that one.  It hurt my feet so bad that I didn’t really notice the gold till later.

I also competed in forms.  Forms was interesting because we signed me up as a blue belt.  I’m a purple belt and blue belt is one level above me.  I had 30 minutes  to learn a brand new form.  That was intense but it went ok.  I would have liked to have done better.  Since there was no one signed up in my class for that one I still got gold.

The last one is sparring.  The guy I had to fight had 5 to 6 inches on me and 50 pounds.  I did very well for my first tournament.  The score was 3 to 1.  I was the 1 (sad panda’s), so there I got the bronze. I had a weird feeling afterward.  I almost cried because all the adrenalin in my body had to go somewhere.  It was the weirdest thing I think I’ve every felt.

All in all it was a fantasic trip and a good growing experience. I hope to compete in more tournements just hopefully not in Vegas.