Shout it At the Top of Your Lungs, WE GOT IT!!!... Thursday, February 7

Perhaps my call to my father in Canada regarding our news was not necessarily a needed thing considering maybe he heard all our excessive screaming and cheering from us here in Cheonan. There was the initial scream when Snickers showed me the above picture (locked door), the cheering at the hospital when we told his side of the family, and then the additional cheering at the restaurant when we celebrated. Even the staff at the restaurant got in on our cheering when the manager recognized Snickers from TV and caught word of what we were celebrating. 

“A round of soju for everyone!” the lady yelled out, and with that we toasted everyone and I yelled out “to living our dream!” 

I’m sure you can guess what it is that we were actually celebrating – we’ve been granted permission for use of the building – the 200 pyung building!!! And not only were we granted the building but the other day $10,000 was knocked off the key deposit and today we all agreed on $1,000 off the monthly rent. That’s a $22,000 discount for our first year of business, awesome, and $10,000 off every year after that, super duper awesome!!!

Snickers and I are just incredibly overjoyed and so ecstatic. To have wanted this for quite some time and to have had to fight through some sour people and sour situations only makes it all that more sweet.  You have to know the sour to appreciate the sweet, right?!  Of course this doesn’t mark the end of the sour but definitely the biggest and most sour of obstacles is out of the way.  This time last week where we now stand with the building seemed so farfetched, so unattainable and so unrealistic.  In our hearts and minds we were refusing to settle but there was always that fear that perhaps maybe we would have to.

We’re turning into quite the workaholic couple and, despite clocking in only about 3-5 hours of sleep a night, we wake up eager to go at it again.  There is no separate of business and pleasure at this point, our business is our pleasure, so sketching out floor plan ideas on coffee shop napkins and making random voice record messages on my phone are very much a big part of our days.  I went to go get my hair dyed the other day but stopped myself.  “I could use this money to buy hand wraps -- use this time to work on pricing”, I thought to myself.  I never did get my hair dyed though it’s definitely needing something to be done with it.  We certainly think differently now, that’s for sure, and I’m becoming one of those annoyingly over hyper, super happy people that I always used to want to kick in the head. 

When the official news of us being given the go-ahead with the building hit my ears, my screams inside Snickers’ car definitely hit the ears of Snickers and everyone and anyone probably within a good one block radius, even with his car windows closed. Then, via text messages, Facebook and KakaoTalk, word of our awesome news fled like wildfire and our phones were bombarded with additional cheers of friends and family.  We headed over to the hospital where Snickers’ sister had her baby just yesterday.  We wanted to share our fantastic news with them.  They were happy for us but due all our excessive hyperness we had to excuse ourselves.  We just couldn’t contain our excitement; we wanted to celebrate.  An hour later our electrician arrived in Cheonan.  Snickers had broke the news to him earlier so that he could make the three hour drive over in time for another evening meeting.  He ended up joining us for dinner and then it was straight back to business.  He and Snickers headed over to the boxing club, OUR OFFICIAL boxing club (ohhhh, felt good typing that in), to deal with the electrical planning and I stayed home, working on my floor plan, business card designs and a million and one different documents that need to be typed up. 

I’m dying to share with everyone the name of our boxing club and must admit I’m guilty of sharing it with some of my Flipside Fitness ladies and friends, but we’re forced to refrain from using it until we make it legally ours.  God help another boxing club here has rights to it (I’ll punch them if they do… hahha).  In order for it to become officially ours, we have to pay the building key deposit and get the filled in building contract submitted.  I’m totally banking on us being able to use the name though, heck I’ve already made a logo with it, set up both a Facebook group page and Facebook business page, and I’ve also set up an email address with it.  Both Facebook pages are set to private so only Snickers and I can see them but I’m so eager to send the link out to all my friends and family. 

It’s mind boggling to think that less than a week ago I felt so far away from my dream, it was just a overflowing pile of thoughts in my head, but now it’s here.  I can now literally stand on the front doorstep of my dream and welcome others into it.  Sure, it’s still the dirty, old, pooped-in, homeless man occupied, broken glass infested, cold building it was yesterday but today it’s ours.  It’s now our dirty, old, pooped-in, homeless man occupied, broken glass infested, cold building and it’s simply fab-u-lous!!!