One more thing...

While home, I thought to attend 1-2 classes at the dojo. Saturday morning I was pleasantly surprised to find it was a clinic and grading with Master Okazaki. Delighted, I expected only to participate in the clinics, as I haven't trained at an actual dojo since leaving and my short visit in Spetember. After the clinic, Sensei Tony comes up and asks if i'll be grading. Well no, I was just here for training. He inists and goes off to get my records. EEEEEK!! A frantic look to my freind Rae for 3 seconds and we're downstairs rapidly going through Teki Shodan. Before my nerves can set in I've gone through the grading, amazed at how much sparing and japanese instructions you just instictivly remember. Everyone assured me I looked great, and sure enough I am now a brown belt. Now my purple belt, worn twice as much in three days than I had ever worn it before, belongs with the rest of my belts, and I must go find a brown one. :) I will continue to train at home, although it will take a lot of actual serious training to ever get near black, and I look forward to the frist time I get to wear my brown belt, of course in a dojo. here comes practicing Basai Dai. O.o
Side note: I was a green belt untill I left for Vancouver. The last class before the grading I was staying for, I re-sprained my knee and couldn't participate. I was shocked when I attended my last class after grading and (in t-shirt and jeans) was raised from 6th kyu to 4th kyu, 2nd purple. In tears, of course and in front of the entire brown-black class. I will nevere forget that very humbling moment.


I look forward to hearing how all my friends do in the Provincials on May 5th and wish them all the best luck, even though they don't need it. ;) I'm also ragingly jealous of all who get to go to mastercamp and hope they all do very well and enjoy such a great experience.

Please visit the Halifax JKA website: http://nsjka.ca/

It's awfuly hard to just stand back sometimes....

I got to go home for a week and a half, and I didn't get to see half the ppl I wanted to see, or do half the things I wanted to do. It seemed like more of a reminder of all the things I was missing rather than an escape to the place I want to be. I have a feeling a trip to Vancouver would turn out the exact same way. Almost the entire time I was there I was thinking 'This is great, but in X days I have to go back' or 'I don't live here anymore.' Crossing the border seemed like a warning that I shouldn't even be making this trip. Getting stopped 3 out of 4 times through is not just random checks. "We stop a certain number of cars a day as random checks so this is just your number comming up." I have an eight letter word for that, and it's what Moose Jaw smells like on a dialy basis. Even seeing the military houseing pop up in the distance made me depressed. When I came home after visiting Vancouver in Jan 2006, Halifax looked greyer and not as inviting, and I knew I wanted to live in Vancouver. When I came back from this trip, it felt like the whole place was yelling at me 'Don't be here!' I've been replaced at the pseudo job I had before I left and even my random $12-at-a-time job has dried up for another month. I asked my two "employers" if me going away was ok and they both said it was. Again I go back to doing nothing day in and out. Get up, kiss boyfriend goodbye, go back to sleep, wake up, have breakfast while boyfriend has lunch, kiss boyfriend goodbye, watch tv, clean house, look for more useless jobs I'll get 'laid off' of, and wait for school to start so I can build up another career and live anywhere but here in maybe 3-4 years. It's getting tough to think I can keep doing this. I don't want to leave, that would end the relationship with said boyfriend, but staying is getting harder and harder. I've been independant for a long time now and have never had any money issues, but now I'm broke and living off someone else's money, who consequently barely lives off his own money. Everyone back home wonders why I don't just move back, but as the cliche goes, it's complicated. The truck I used to move rusted out too much and I sold it at 80% loss. It seems like all the doors i came through were one way, and now this was what I wanted so why aren't I happy? I dunno what typing all this will acomplish, but let's hope I don't burn any more bridges.