Thursday

Today I had a great time. I felt like I had lots of energy to burn and so I took all six classes. The weapons class sticks out in my mind particularly because. I learned so much about how to stand in hamni and how to hold the weapon that I had never heard before. I tried my best to apply it and I think the teacher Charles was impressed with my effort, skill and ease will come later, much later… We worked on the 31 jo kata and the opposite side of the kata. Then we did some strange bokken work that also had two people one defending and the other attacking.

Then the next class was Luke’s. He did some very interesting techniques and only stopped me to correct minor mistakes, which made me very pleased with how my technique was going. One technique in particular I found amusing, it was a ushiro ryo-kata technique where you not only drop to your kees but slide forward onto your stomach to throw the person. I had a lot of fun in that class. I trained with Allday who is full of funny little verbalisms and chuckles. I always have fun when I train with him.

The second to the last class was certainly interesting, I won’t get into the details, but a guy who has made it obvious that he is my admirer sat down right next to me so I had no choice but to train with him, or else face being rude. It was a fun class. He really threw me so I had a chance to practice break-falls the whole class. I had a good time and a nice workout.

The last class was taught by Luis. I love his classes because he always does an opening that I either am fairly unfamiliar with or have never seen. We did a sort of leading cross-hand grab then went underneath the arm for various different techniques. Then on the last technique I believe it was a behind the back kotegieshi. Once I figured out that I needed only to grab the wrist naturally the technique was pretty easy. I trained with a guy named Giath who was about where I am in my training. It was a good class. After wards I moved my things upstairs into the room Julia and Enis vacated earlier on in the week. And then I hung out with Doug and Miguel for the evening eating cheese and crackers. Good times

Tonya