My path to Korea is spread in the world!

Hello, nice people!

Long time no see, I was gone for 2 weeks in 3 different parts of South Korea. Now, unfortunately I got my first Korean cold and I feel I have no energy for anything. But even though, I feel excited!

This article is a special one, because I think I put the biggest amount of effort and time in it, so far. Read until the end and you’ll see what I am talking about. 🙂

First, a new student came to BIBA, Peter Brouwer from The Netherlands! This nice person impressed me immediately, by his kindness and way of being. An interesting fact about him, is that he, together with Kim Ouweleen are the creators of the Baduk Movies. There is/was a site with short videos, very useful ones, about Baduk positions, and all kinds of moves that you could also try in your games. I also studied some of these videos, so when I heard about it, I was very surprised. I like a lot people who involve in the Go community and they want to give something back to the next generations, or players in general. I would love to tell him welcome to BIBA, but soon he will go back home, so hope to see you soon, Peter!

Wow! I had so many interesting experiences lately. I was surrounded by 2 different environments.

1. Samsung Cup:

Samsung Cup had a very serious atmosphere. I had a chance to see top 32 players in the world, fighting for the first places. You could have seen Ke Jie, Park Junghwan and other very strong professionals, walking around after rounds, laughing and chilling. During the rounds, BIBA students were in the study room, together with other pros and young promising children who are willing to become professionals in the near future, commenting the games that were played just one floor away from us. It was an incredible feeling.

Picture with Ryu Shihun Sensei, 9 dan professional!

Iyama Yuta, 9 dan professional! (one of my favourite Go professional players)

Park Junghwan, 9 dan professional, second in the world, at this moment!

Studying and listening to Blackie Sensei and Ryu Shihun Sensei!

2. KPMC:

Korean Prime Minister Cup, was a completely different environment. I met a lot of foreigners and I somehow mixed 2 worlds. The world where I study only Baduk, many hours a day and the world in which I sometimes go to tournaments and I meet some of these people. I met one of my good friends, Mirta Medak, from Croatia and I made a lot of new friends.

Current and ex BIBA students together with Dia Sensei and Blackie Sensei, present in the KPMC 2019! (and Tanguy, honorary BIBA member) 🙂

Fighting with Mirta!

A blurred picture during a pairgo with Amir Fragman, Dragoș Băjenaru and Mirta Medak!

Chilling together!

Playing against a very cute and promising girl. She is 8 years old and 3 dan Tygem!

Singing with the representative from Slovakia! 🙂

BIBA power! Peter, Gabi and Denizay. 😀

Here, I also want to mention a very special moment that I had in KPMC. A nice person stopped me at some point, asking me if I am Gabriela. Then he was very surprised to realize that I am the writer of My Path to Korea blog. He was so kind to me, saying that what I am writing is very motivational, we took a picture and he gave me a present as well. Wow, what a moment. Thank you Bryan, hopefully I will visit Ecuador soon!

Together with Bryan!

What was even more surprising, was the fact that not only Bryan recognised me from my blog, but many of the KPMC players. I couldn’t believe, it was such a strange feeling. Up to now, I thought what I am doing doesn’t have such a big impact on people and it is a small personal thing. Now I see that many people know about this little blog. Should I be excited about it? Maybe. But in my life I always enjoyed little things, rather than big achievements, so let me still think that is still a very small thing.

Because I wanted you to see how much a team needs to work for such a tournament like KPMC, I stole Seunghyun Lee, the main organizer, for a few minutes, to tell us shortly how was the experience of organising this tournament. She, together with her team, did a wonderful job!

What has changed is that I don’t want to call it anymore my blog. It is our blog, since many people read it. So because of this, I decided to take all of you, in these 2 weeks with me. How did I do that?

I filmed what I did when I was gone for the tournaments, so I created my first videoblog. Please, don’t hate me too much for the quality of my poor phone camera. :p I want to thank to my friend, Christian, who was kind to help me editing the video, unless an eternity would have passed until I would post the article.

Hope you’ll enjoy watching!

G