Richard! Hike your belt up!

*sigh*  My entire life is currently centered around training.  And midterms.  Both hurt.  I have my microbiology exam on friday, so we'll see how that goes over.  I think it's gonna be pretty hard, so I've been trying to spend the week studying, but it's hard when I have to interrupt to go train for 2-3 hours, and my brain keeps drifting to the competition.  I HAVE to hit the flying armbar.  I just have to.  There is no other option.  

I went up to Rob and asked him for advice, and was told "um.....aim high, and uh....don't fall on your head and get a concussion like I did.  But I slipped.  So don't slip".  Great....Thanks Rob...On a good note, I learned SO much in the past week from Carmen and everybody else on certain techniques, and can actually see the improvement, that it's amazing.  I finally learned how to be really technical and effective in getting an armbar from guard, and how to stabilize mount WITHOUT getting swept, which is awesome.  Whatever, it'll be fun no matter what, and I know the day of the tournament I'll be much more in fighting spirit.  I can't wait until after the comp is over though, and after midterms are done, so I can get back to kickboxing, finally start exploring Melbourne, and train BJJ for technique, rather than having Carmen work us into the ground :/

Here's hoping I don't fail my midterm, and that I don't fail my tournament either!

Kangaroo Assault

Well....today was interesting....We went to Phillip Island, which is pretty much a giant outdoor wildlife sanctuary.  Did the whole "oh look wild koalas" thing, and then we hit up this open-range zoo, where you can walk around with food and feed the wildlife, which was pretty cool/terrifying.  I fed a cassouary, which apparently can be the deadliest bird on earth (HUGE claws).  Those things scare the crap out of me.  They look like giant dinosaur birds (reminiscent of the velociraptors in Jurassic Park).  *shudder*  There was also the generic wallaby feeding, which is always cute, but THEN came the kangaroos.  

It was all fun and games for a while, fed a momma kangaroo and got to pet the joey in her pouch, which was ADORABLE.  But the kangaroos get really excited that you have a bag of food which you're carrying around, so they get really bold and start approaching you and grabbing at the food bag in your hand.  That was fine when the kangaroos were little, but then we found the BIG guy.

This roo was seriously as tall as I am when he would sit upright, and was REALLY strong.  Wanna know how I know that?  The damn thing attacked me for the food bag.  He grabbed onto my jacket and was pulling at me trying to get the food.  Remember how I said my friends from martial arts wanted me to box a roo?  Well today, that in essence happened, since I practically punched the stupid thing to get it to let go.  We all approached with caution after that point, especially when he ate the BAG that the food was in......hrm.....he also started barking and clawing at any smaller kangaroos that would come around us trying to get food.  What a fatass.....

After that, things were fine, and we headed to the beach to watch the penguins!  We got our seats as the sun was setting right on the sand, and waited and sure enough, got to watch loads of little penguins shuffling out of the water to get back to their nests on the shore!!  It was the CUTEST thing I have ever seen.  They would come in groups, and would all wait on the beach until everyone was together so they could run up the dunes in groups for safety.  Funniest thing I've seen in a LONG time. :D

Anyways, other than that, training is eating my life as usual.  Carmen made us do 5 rounds of 5 minutes of sparring back to back nonstop, which destroyed us.  Thank god this week is going to be about technique, not conditioning any more.  I need to get my game strategy up to par.  I spent the entire bus ride back from Phillip Island getting mentally prepared, running through scenarios, so I just hope I can pull things out....

Midterm this friday, 2 papers due monday.  *sigh*  The list grows longer every day...

Climbing (Rocks AND People)

Hello loyal readers, sorry for the lag in updates.

As of Saturday morning at 7:00 a.m., I boarded a bus and headed out towards the Grampian mountain range for 3 days of climbing goodness.  After promptly passing out on the bus, I awoke when we arrived at our first climbing location.  Our group was only made up of 7 other people and our 2 guides (Steffan and Will) so we were going to get a lot of climbs in.  We headed up to the wall, and got oriented (re-oriented for me) with knot tying, belaying, general climbing technique, then hit the wall.  It had been a little while since I climbed, so it took me a climb to get my bearings again, but going into the climbs with the mentality of focusing on my footwork and climbing with my feet instead of my arms really helped me not tire out and I got through one pretty tough climb :D

After climbing for about 4 hours, we headed out to our campground to get set up and make some dinner, and promptly proceeded to PASS OUT.  I haven't fallen asleep that fast in a long time, and got some much needed rest.  UNTIL Steff and Will woke us up at 7:00 the next morning to get up and ready for our next bit of climbing.  Our location this time was directly by our camp, so we just walked over and were ready to go.

The climbs were definitely more challenging.  One of them lead up into this cave that I was desperate to get into, but it was an overhand, and I couldn't quite manage the technique needed to get up and over to reach the cave :(  I did manage two pretty hard climbs based around these big cracks in the wall, which was good.  Though I went pretty hard for the 4 hours in the morning, and realized that I still had to climb for the rest of the day :/  My hands were starting to get pretty torn up from digging into the sandstone for so long, so when we got to our second climb for the day, I tried taping up my fingertips, to no avail.

We went up to the top of the ridge to watch Will set up the climb, so we knew what went into holding us up.  By that point, the low-comfort of our harnesses (seat-belt material) and our shoes (the only ones that fit me had holes in the toes which....are kind of critical for gripping) was starting to wear on me.  I did 2 fun climbs, but again, burned out on this one really tough overhang :/  We then headed into town to a pub, then returned to our campground to pass out.

The next morning, we completely took down camp, and headed to our final climb site of the day.  There were entire gradients of climbs from super-easy ones, to one REALLY hard one.  I decided to push myself and try the hardest one, which was just a thin crack in the wall between these two corners, meaning that I had to try to cram my fingers into the crack and plant my feet against opposing walls to stand up.  It was by far the most technical climb I did, but I was the only person to get up it besides out guides!!  I was really proud of myself for that one.

Anyways, now that I'm back today, I got resettled in my classes, and more importantly (obviously) back in BJJ.  Practice was really good, and Carmen definitely put us through the paces.  However, then she decided to host a mock tournament, and paired me against Jo (blue belt, about my same size) to fight for 6 minutes (full minute longer than my fight will be).  Needless to say, we both went pretty all out.  I keep forgetting that in BJJ people can pull guard and gain points, so that's exactly what Jo did.  She nearly got a triangle on me, but I avoided it pretty solidly, and all in all, while she definitely held the advantage the whole fight, I managed a good sweep and lasted NEARLY the entire fight without getting submitted.  She caught me in a choke right near the end, but I was glad I did as well as I did.

I'm still tossing around the flying armbar idea, and I think I'm gonna just do it.  I'm gonna practice more with some of the girl ot get the rhythm of it, and hopefully I'll nail it and win my fight!

Other than that, tonight I'm gonna try to finish up some of my lectures and maybe start on my BMB essays, just to get some busy-work out of the way.  Bleh.  I'm gonna skip TKD for the rest of this week to get some more BJJ mat time.

On a travel note, Phillip Island and surf trips this weekend!  Hooray for surfing!!

Chimp Soccer!

Hmmm....Thursday's practice was....hilarious to say the least.  I got there early to work flying armbars with Richard, but we ended up playing chimp soccer with Carmen's mini-soccer ball.  Probably the best game of all time.  It involves running around on hands and feet like chimps, and then grabbing the ball with your feel, and rolling over backwards, thus hurling the ball across the mat.  Surprisingly entertaining and provides an excellent way to return to childhood feelings of being high energy and kind of stupid :D  

I finally did end up working flying armbars with Richard, just to get back in the swing of it.  I'm ok on the motion itself, but I need more practice on hitting it with a moving target :/  I also need to get a little more height and momentum to physically pull the person down.  I can technically GET the armbar from upside down, but it's a little easier and a more guaranteed submission from the ground.....hmmm

That night, Stathi's mom invited all us international kids over for dinner, and I can't remember the last time I've eaten that much.  Fresh roast beef, salad, shrimp, bread w/feta cheese, seasoned potatoes, HUGE cake. God.  It was the best night of my life.  I officially love Greek people.  His mom was great and was treating us like we were family and inviting us to Greece and all this awesome stuff.  

Tomorrow I leave early early early in the morning for a joyous 3 days rock climbing trip :D  It's gonna suck to wake up that early, but climbing is gonna be amazing.  So needless to say, I will be out of commission for the next three days, but updates to come on monday :D

Other than that, I FINALLY got my neuroscience report done, and Christine is gonna drop it off for me on Monday, which is nice to have off my mind.  However, my Islam assignment is still incomplete, as is my stupid BMB essay.  Argggg.  I might try to crank out some of my essay when I have downtime on my trip, just so I don't have to worry about it.  

Anyways, see you kids in a few days, picture update to come :D

Flying Armbar!

Today was semi-productive.  I woke up and tried to do a little more research for my neuroscience lab report, which turned out to be unsuccessful, then headed to class for BMB, which was boring as usual.  I then had to go downtown to print a bunch of papers I needed for my classes since the stupid printer at RMIT is missing in action.  Thanks, jerks.  

Following that, I had to go make up my neuroscience lab which I missed last week, which upon arriving I realized I didn't even NEED to go to b/c it was stupid.  I sat in a room for an hour clicking through a multimedia file on polysomnography (studying sleep), and learned....nothing.  Great.  I'm really beginning to hate labs here.  Arg.  They're either waaaay too hard, or mind-numbing.  Whatever.

I came back and got ready for my first day back at BJJ, which I was really excited for.  I hopped on the tram and headed down to practice, and was immediately glad I was there.  I had my toe buddy taped and felt good.  Then....warmup started.  Carmen was determined to drill us into the floor.  We got in a circle and proceeded to do drills counting off sets one by one, which is normally fine except when you have FIFTEEN people in the circle and you're trying to do sets of judo pushups.....I DIED.  We then did 200 squats, 200 lunges, psycho ab work, and other painful drills of joy.  However, somewhere during those drills, I managed to tweak my toe, despite it being taped >.<  It hurt REAL bad.  So we then started working some drills from full-mount, which I needed, and managed to get my side-mount a little more solid.

I talked to Carmen for a while about a strategy for my tournament.  I need to work my judo/takedowns a LOT to be ready for the standing portion.  As for the ground part of the fight, I think I'm going to try to either take guard and spend the whole fight attacking from there, and force my opponent to defend, leaving no time for the pass OR I'm gonna let my opponent pull guard, and then spend the fight working my way past guard and trying to get side control, and attack from there.  I really learned a lot from Carmen today about tournament strategy and how to stay more mobile and offensive.

I threw out the idea of possibly attempting a flying armbar during the tournament....see picture below:

Carmen was surprisingly supportive of the idea, telling me that if I could hold myself steady enough to get the technique, that I should go for it.  I've done flying armbars before, so I think I might try for it during the fight.  If I'm fighting another white belt, I might have the surprise factor behind the attack too, and might be able to catch them off-guard enough to pull it out.  Who knows, we'll see.....  But I think I'm gonna practice flying armbars for a while each practice to at least leave it as a viable option.  I might get a spurt of CRAZY during my fight and use it :D

On that note, I have SO much work to do, as usual, so I'm gonna go try to crank out 1000 words on modern interpretations of the Qur'an by Western scholars.  *BLEH*

Suck on THAT, Ocean!!

This weekend was great.  I got up super-early on Saturday for my Great Ocean Road trip with the outdoors program, which was kicked off with 2 hours of surfing goodness :D  At first I was less than enthused about it, both because of my prior surfing toe dislocation, and the fact that the temperature was....low.  But, regardless, I suited up in my wetsuit, felt somewhat like a chubby penguin, and waddled down to the beach carrying boards.  We were surfing at Anglesea beach, which is pretty much perfect for beginning surfers, as the waves are small, not too steep, and don't come in too fast.

So once I got in the water, I awaited my first wave aaaaand........WIPED OUT!  Wooooo.  I'm a champion surfer, I think I'm going to go pro.  Well, after my initial wipeout, I actually started doing pretty well, and managed to paddle into and catch a good number of waves, which was really exciting!! :D  Eventually though, the sun went away, and the water temperature dropped, leaving my toes feeling like artificial appendages on my feet, so I had to keep checking every now and then for dislocations, just to make sure, since I couldn't feel anything.  But, I taped my injured toe up, and it managed to survive the 2.5 hours of surfing, so yay!  

Afterwards, we grabbed some lunch, and headed over to Erskin falls (same waterfall I saw with Stathi) which was nice since there was a little more water this time.  We jumped the rail and walked up to the waterfall itself which is really pretty up close.  Following that adventure, we checked out some little lookout points along this river, and stopped for a couple photo ops.  Before we decided to pass out at our hostel though, we stopped by this place to see if we could spot any wild koalas, and low and behold, there was one that had climbed down and was just chowing down on some eucalyptus right at chest height!  We got so close to it, it was ridiculous!

Then we apparently heard from our guide how koalas are kind of like gremlins, in that they seem super-cute, but if you touch them or get in their face at all, they will turn into crazy hell-beasts.  He said there was one in the road once, and he tried to move it off the road by picking it up in a mattress pad, since poking it failed, and as soon as he picked it up, it went bonkers and started howling and clawing at him >.<  For something so cute, they sure do have big claws....we also learned that the reason koalas sleep so much is that when they metabolize the eucalyptus, it has a narcotic effect on them....so there you go, folks, koalas are the hippie-stoners of the natural world.  They sleep and get high.....wow

OH!  Also as we were driving, we saw a wild echidna in someone's front yard, and a few houses down, there were FOUR kangaroos just chillin in this yard, so we obviously had to back the van up and go take pictures (no the novelty of kangaroos doesn't wear off at any point).  Apparently they're kind of the pets of the guy who lives there.  This kindly old guy came out with roo food and said he rescued them off the road after their mom was hit, and has been taking care of them for over a year now!  They would go right up to him and paw at him for food!  It was so cute/hilarious!!  I officially want a kangaroo as a pet....

Anyways, we got to our hostel, where Christine and I promptly passed out while everybody else went to dinner/pub crawling.  We were so wiped from surfing/insomnia that it just wasn't worth trying to stay conscious.  Though the random people outside our room talking for half the night meant we didn't get much sleep AGAIN.

Today we cruised around and checked out the 12 Apostles, and some other rock formations (the Arch, etc.) which was cool to see again.  Other than that, that's really all today has been made of.  Once I got back to RMIT, it was a sad return to the reality of my assignments :/

I've made SOME progress on my lab report at least.  I've gotten pretty much all the details for it off the website, have done my methods section (which was cut & paste...) and am reading the background experiment at the moment.  It's hard because I get so much more information out of hard copies of things, but the RMIT printer is absent....hmmm....I think tomorrow before class I'm gonna try to print all the materials I need, so I can just crank this bad boy out.  

I have to write 1000 words per day for the next WEEK to give myself breathing room to study for my microbiology exam and to have time to go out again :/  *DOH*

Solid Food? Yes Please!

Today has been the uneasy transition to solid food.  I awoke pretty tired due to a crappy round of insomnia last night (it's getting more frequent :/) and decided it was time to try some solid food again.  So I had a bowl of cereal, which, after not eating for 2 days was super-filling and didn't sit too well at first, but I kept it down and felt a little more energized afterwards. 

I dashed to campus and picked up a book for my Islamic studies class that FINALLY arrived at the bookstore and realized that b/c it's been out for so long, I pretty much have to read....the WHOLE THING.  aw crap.  Add it to the eternal list of things to do....

So once I got back, I decided it was time to get back on the horse in terms of working out, and headed down to the kickboxing gym, but opted to just hit the treatmill instead of trying anything that might torque my toe (which I had safely buddy-taped inside my shoe :D).  Given that I've been completely nutrient-deprived and recovering from food poisoning, I guess I did alright, but I totally gassed out around the 24 (not counting warmup) minute mark.  I managed to push through a super-intense side cramp and make it to almost 4 kms, so I think I'll just have to take it slow for a few days before I'm back up to speed.  My quads were COMPLETELY shot afterwards though, and my whole back got super-tense, I guess from the unexpected work, so I opted out of BJJ for one more day to rest up some more.  

Again, I spent the rest of the day trying to catch up on work.  Even though I was mostly caught up on wednesday, the amount of classes I missed between then and today gave me more stuff to do *sigh*.  I want to have a social life again!!  Because my body responded a little shakily to the cereal in the morning, I switched back to a chicken soup diet for the rest of the day, to stave off any relapses, but I think by tomorrow, I should be back to normal :D

Saturday I leave for 2 days for a group trip to the Great Ocean Road again, but this time with more hiking and surfing!!!  I'm really excited for that, and tomorrow is Thai food with Stathi, so I'm pretty pumped for that too.

Man, I gotta stretch tonight, or TKD tomorrow is gonna suckkkk.....

Recovery

Today has been.....slow.  I woke up still feeling pretty gross, but I managed to make it through the night without another puking spell.....*yay*....it's the little things, really.  I opted to skip class today to recover, as I didn't want to risk exacerbating things and putting myself out for LONGER.  So I spent the day listening to lectures that I've missed and catching up on work, which has actually taken all day.

My appetite still isn't really back yet, which is mildly concerning, given the fact that my only caloric intake for the past 2 days has been gatorade, but I'm hoping by tomorrow my energy will be back up, and hopefully my appetite too.  I was hoping to have a more controlled method of cutting weight for my tournament, but I suppose medically induced fasting works too :/

Tomorrow will be my first day back in the gym, so we'll see how it goes.  I'm not gonna do kickboxing or any bare-foot activities that involve me twisting on my toe to avoid injury, so I think I'm gonna hit the treadmill and try to build up some cardio before doing weights.  I'll head back to BJJ tomorrow night and see how my toe handles things.  I'm definitely not gonna be rolling hard though.  I'll probably just focus more on conditioning and technique than actual sparring.  If my toe is still mad, I'll probably just take Jen's advice and cut it off......hah

Life has significantly slowed down here with the sudden arrival of.....work.  I feel like I'm back in Berkeley again!  It's suddenly normal to not go out every single night of the week.  How odd!  Though I'm sure May will pick back up again :D

Lab report due in 2 weeks, Islam paper due in 3, BMB papers due in 3, micro midterm in 3.  EEK!  Curse you learning!

Screw you, health care!

So the past 2 days have really just consisted of me hating the Australian health care system.  I opted to go to the student health center to make sure my toe was set properly.  So after picking up my insurance card, I got to the desk to make an appointment, and the lady tells me that I could see a nurse right then if I wanted to, which sounded good to me, so I took a seat and waited.....

After an HOUR of waiting, I get called in to see the nurse, at which point (without so much as LOOKING at my toe) tells me that it's probably fine and I need to see a doctor if I really want it looked at.....All I needed was for her to check the alignment of my toe, which as a nurse, she should be qualified to do.....but I was so pissed at that point that I just left and went home, rolling my toe in the process since I had taken my tape off thinking it was going to be examined....

That night, around 3 a.m., things turned UGLY.  I woke up not feeling....good, and spent the next 3 hours in and out of bed, throwing up nonstop.  It was pretty cracking.  I eventually spent the rest of the night/morning in a ball in my bed, throwing up into a bucket for the next few hours.  I was getting pretty concerned since I couldn't keep fluids down (just rinsing my mouth with water would cause another spell of puking :/) so I opted to go to the health center again. 

I took a cab over since I didn't think I could walk that far, and who do I get to see?  The SAME nurse who turned me away for my toe.  She proceeded to tell me that it was just probably some gastric bug, and since they didn't know if it was an infection or not (IT'S FOOD POISONING, THAT IIIIIS AN INFECTION!!) there wasn't anything they could do and nothing they could give me......though I could think of a bunch of things they could have given me....antibiotics....anti-nausea....a sedative even, so I didn't have to spend the rest of the day in agony?  Nope.  I was told to "sleep it off".......it's a bad sign when a Korean hospital takes better care of you than an Australian.....hrm

So needless to say, I've spent the rest of the day alternating between sleeping and desperately trying to rehydrate with gatorade.....bleh.  We'll see if I feel good enough to make it to class tomorrow, given that I missed it today :/

That reminds me of how insanely behind I am in school!  aaahhhh!  Random assignments keep getting talked about on my class websites, but then when I look for more information about it, I can't find it anywhere?!  Is there something I'm just missing?  I hate the way classes are run here, it's so annoying!!!

Anyways, I'm sleepy again, sitting takes too much energy, so it's bedtime......w00t

"Ok Evan, this is where we're going to RACE"

Despite doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING on Friday (primarily due to toe immobility), Saturday was pretty incredible.  Ignoring the painfully early 7 a.m. wake-up after a night of insomnia, I met up with Camille and Melissa and a bunch of other uni kids for SEA KAYAKING!  We hopped into the van and headed out for this place called Portsea, and were initially pretty bummed b/c it started raining on the way, and that plus being tired + injured made me not too excited....

However, once we got to the drop point and unloaded the boats and everything, the sun came out!  We paddled around to this place that used to be a quarantine station for boats coming into Melbourne, where they would burn anything they deemed to be contaminated with disease, to try to keep Melbourne clean.  Then we headed over to this really nice quiet beach for lunch, before hitting the water again.  We were about to head around this point when all the sudden we saw wild dolphins in the water!  We promptly turned around and started following them, and next thing I knew, we were in the middle of a pack of at least 10 dolphins that were swimming around our kayaks!

It was so unbelievably awesome!  The dolphins were getting so close I probably could have reached out and touched one if I wanted too, and they kept making passes under our boats, so that at one point I looked over the side to see the white belly of a dolphin passing underneath me!  SO COOL!!!

After we got back to the van though, we were BEAT.  4+ hours of nonstop paddling will do that to you......

That night I didn't really do much, due to being so tired.  Camille came over, and she and I, along with Christine, opted to watch bad horror movies, and watched 30 Days of Night (least scary horror movie I think I've ever seen).....blech

Today has also been uneventful, apart from getting a glorious amount of sleep, and then getting abducted by Stathi.  He picked up me, Christine and Camille and drove us around Melbourne, showing us some of the sights, and took us over to St. Kildas, which was quite possibly one of the coolest places on earth!  It reminded me of a livelier, cleaner version of Berkeley.  It had loads of independent shops and cafes and whatnot, and of course it has Luna Park!  I've been DYING to check out Luna Park, mainly because of the massive face at the entrance to it (google it).

It has such a genius concept for a theme park, since admission is actually free!  You only pay for the rides you want to go on, which is so awesome, because if you don't like it, you're not out 50$ :)  So we wandered around St. Kildas for a while, hitting up the pier, market, and some cafes (got churros w/melted chocolate mmmmmm) before heading home. 

And until now I've just been gathering more information on my assignments and at least PLANNING on getting some work done :/  It's daylight savings here, so we gained an extra hour today, which is awesome, but now I'm super tired and it's only 8:45!

Tomorrow is gonna consist of loads of errands (making a stupid dr.'s appt for my foot being top of the list :/) *grumble grumble hate being injured grumble*

Stirfry and Gi Chokes

Bleh, today was ok.  I got up for BMB discussion (I really don't know why I bother going) and again proceeded to live within minutes of arriving, after learning that we were going to be discussion slides I looked over last night, which consisted of describing what a "population" is, in statistical terms....blech.  So yeah, I headed out again, but I got some postcards mailed (be checking the mailbox!)  Then I peaced out for kickboxing class.  Today was alright, except I felt like I was getting NO power behind my kicks and knees at all!  Hrm....need to somehow get my TKD kicking technique sharp enough that I can borrow some of their power without sacrificing speed.

I ran into Jo (one of my BJJ training partners) after kickboxing and chatted with her for so long I actually ended up missing boxing!  But we had a nice little chat and whatnot, at which point I headed back to RMIT, and did a little more work before heading out to BJJ.

Practice was SO fun today.  Carmen likes to warm us up by playing tag, which is always fun, and makes me feel like such a kid.  Everybody just gets this really playful/childish look on their faces, and it's just great.  Afterwards, Carmen brought out this mini-soccer ball, and made us all get down on our knees and try to toss the ball around to score and whatnot.  That was SUCH a fun game, and I'm definitely bringing it back to YMD.

Afterwards it was down to business with conditioning drills and whatnot, during which I learned a new super-cool gi choke, which I plan on utilizing ASAP.  Need to work on smoothing my transitions to omoplatas (shoulder locks) though, they're pretty lumpy.  However, the end of practice turned a bit ugly for me.  I think I either broke or dislocated part of my 4th toe on my left foot.  I was rolling with this guy, and because the mats have a lot of friction, as I was turning and getting moved, part of my foot moved, and another part....didn't.  So I opted to leave practice a little early, and when I checked my foot as I was leaving, my toe was massively swollen and the tip of it was/is......loose?  Hrm.....am concerned.  I will definitely be doing some preventative taping from now on, as I can't afford to get injured before the tourney.  

Glad I've got my TKD shoes for tomorrow!  Hrm, that reminds me that I need to practice my forms before workout tomorrow.....curse you Jeremy, for making me learn 3 forms!

Um....where's my class?

Today was kind of random.  I got up for Islamic Studies, which was pretty slow today, spaced out through most of it, also spaced out through BMB, what w/learning the various theories of emotion AGAIN.  Some of it I've never learned before, but we're sort of moving out of that material, so it's back to boredom.  Then, however, my day got interesting.  I hiked over to where my microbiology class was....SUPPOSED...to meet.  I just recently found the lecture theatre where they moved the class to, so I was really proud that I got to class on monday, but when I returned to said theatre today....there was some random polisci class in there?  Hrm....I'm positive it was the right theatre, and nothing was mentioned about a room change on the website....did I just miss something?  And the lecture recording is up online, so they apparently had class SOMEWHERE.....*fail*

I returned to RMIT and spent the day putzing around and doing some work until neuroscience at 4:15.  Though on my way to class, I noticed that the weather was kind of freaking out.  The sky was.....brown.  That isn't supposed to happen last time I checked....and the wind apparently maxed out in Melbourne at about 110 km/hr.  For those not on the metric system, that's nearly 70 mph winds......wtf Melbourne.  They're actually debating evacuating downtown due to the weather extremes.  It came on so suddenly, I don't understand.

Luckily for me, I was too busy doing TKD to be outside during the chaos!  I actually wasn't that late for warmup today, which was cool.  We did paddle drill for a bit, and they finally made an intermediate line, so I wasn't feeling totally spastic.  We worked natabans and spin hooks for a good amount of time, which was awesome, since I needed the work.  I need to not start my nataban jump so early so I can actually get enough rotation to land the kick, and I need to wait to extend my spin hooks until I'm closer to my target :(  Other than that, I feel progress is slowly being made :D

Practice then got interesting, as they decided to work forms, which I've never done before.  So back with the white-belts I went.  We learned a "14-step" exercise, which was just basic blocks and punches, and Jeremy was laughing at me for getting bored so easily....oops.  He then attempted to teach us Taeguk Il Jang, the first TKD form, which I already semi-knew just from watching so many belt tests, so at the water break, he pulled me aside and made me learn Taeguk Ee Jang (2nd form) anyways.  Whee for actually being ahead of the learning curve when I get back to Berkeley.  He wants me to learn the 3rd and 4th forms too, just in case I test here, and I could possibly double promote :D  Poomsae (forms) were actually way more entertaining to do than they look, which I was surprised at.

I opted to stay in tonight, and I'm dealing with caffeine withdrawals and possibly staving off a cold and am sore as hell from BJJ, so I'm glad to have a night in.  I'm gonna do a quick stretching session, since I've been horrible about staying on track, and hopefully another one tomorrow morning before class :D

Feel the FIRE

Today was pretty good.  I spent the bulk of the day working and just taking care of general life tasks.  I met up with my group for my Islamic Studies project, who seem pretty chill and everything, but given that I'm taking the class Pass/Fail, are waaaaaay too serious about it for my liking.  We have a thousand words due by the end of the 7th week of class, and it is currently the 3rd week, and we are already meeting.  Arg.  It's just one more thing to add to my constantly growing list of things to take care of.  I feel like my to-do list in Melbourne gets longer every day, and I am never going to be able to finish it.

The city is so amazing and there is so much to do, and I feel like I've barely put a dent in it :(  Though Stathi offered to take me and some friends around tomorrow just on a driving tour of the city so we'll at least get to SEE a bunch of it, even if we never get around to going....

I later got prepped for practice and was so excited to break in my new uniform.  That was until I felt how stiff it was.  The collar was so rigid that it nearly made me submit during certain pins just because of how it was oriented on my neck.  >.<  Carmen has officially turned the heat on the people who are competing.  Practice today was SO hard, and the fact that I'm horribly out of shape after my week off didn't help.  I thought I was going to die.  Though the fact that I drank WAY too much water before warmup didn't help.  My tummy was not a happy camper.

I felt better near the end of practice and my energy picked back up, though technically, it was a bad practice for me.  I got submitted WAY more than I would like, since I need to be able to fend off attacks decently if I don't want my tournament fight to get cut dramatically short :(  The way Carmen was talking about the tournament was really inspiring, and her excitement about it is really contagious.  She really thinks I have a shot of doing fairly well, so that feels good.  She is going to work through a game-plan with me next practice, so that's gonna help my strategy a lot.  I'm learning more and more what my strengths are and how to use them, and how to be more dynamic as a fighter :)

Tonight's practice left me feeling really really energized and excited about the tournament as a whole.  I feel like I've got a whole new fire in me about training, and I really want to push myself hard to get in good shape for this tournament.  Getting up for a run tomorrow morning, so my heart is in for a shock.  I haven't done cardio in so long, what with the lack of TKD, so this'll be interesting....