Day 5 and 6

Wednesday I did not have a very good day. I was exhausted from the day before and a bit irritable. I only took three classes and in all three I trained with black belts who were either injured or in their older years. It was frustrating because there where times when I couldn’t get through a technique without them stopping me to give advice. Needless to say by the end of the day I just wanted to talk with Sanji about philosophy and relax.

Thursday was the complete opposite. I had a blast all day and it felt like all my energy had returned. I took five of the six classes and only missed the weapons class because I forgot it was on the schedule and I had already gotten changed. I felt like through the whole class I was alert and absorbing the teaching from all the instructors corrections and connecting with my partners. Several of the teachers showed techniques that were not even remotely familiar to me, though they were cool nonetheless. I tried my best to write down my favorite so I can show it to all of you when I get back, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get it right.
The classes seem so short when you are having fun. All of the teachers have different styles of technique and teaching. Luke and Louis taught some of my favorite classes. I got to really train without being interrupted too much by either my partner or the teacher.

Then after class Thursday I went out to an Italian healthy food type restaurant with Enise, Julia and Miguel. We had a lot of fun talking about Aikido and what it means to each of us. We also discussed the different intimidating masters of Aikido around the world and rumors and stories about things they’ve done to poor ukes. We all agreed that some day we would like to visit Hombu Dojo in Japan. And Miguel and I talked about how we wanted to be uchi-deshi and how exactly we would finance that experience. Now the language barrier doesn’t seem so huge, because we all use hand gestures and sound effects, plus we talked about Aikido the whole time. It was like we all spoke Aikido as a language. This was the best day yet out of all my time here.

Tonya