Heavy on the TKD

[ciroccoj]

• Am still in a bit of pain from our TKD on Monday. Spent the entire hour running, doing pushups, kicking, jumping, and running some more. May be starting to think I'm too old for this.
  
  Or at least, too old for the Monday grown-up class, in which Chris and I are usually two of the only coloured belts in a sea of black belts. I can do the kids' classes no problem ;)
  
  
• Skills and Professional Responsibility is officially Lame. Our teachers are good, the material is probably stuff that's useful to be reminded about right before we enter the profession, but the assignments and work required are kind of laughably easy. Except without the 'kind of' part. And we get the better part of two days off every week to complete them. B'zuh?
  
  
• OTOH, this does mean that we're getting stuff done that we needed to get done. Bought some more storage stuff at IKEA, are trying to re-organize the living room and dining room so they look more like eating/home schooling/living spaces instead of giant happenings of stuff, and are eating better than I thought we would be. The weeks pre-Bar Pt. 1 consisted of rather more pizza and spaghetti than we normally think healthy. For today's dinner I made tuna salad, chicken dumplings, quinoa tabouleh, asparagus, and blueberry pie.
  
  
• Discovered Monday that the next belt test is this Friday, not next Friday. Yikes. The boys got theirs last month, but Chris and I didn't because of the Bar. This is nice; it means a whole week less of having to bow to the kids ;)
  
  
• Speaking of the boys and TKD, they participated in a tournament last weekend! Daniel was eliminated in the first round of both his pattern and his sparring, but Justin got to round two in both!
  
  Funny thing happened during sparring. I couldn't tell what was going on from the stands; all I could see was that Justin and his opponent would fight a bit, a whistle would blow, they would sit with their backs to one another while the refs talked, then they would stand up, one of the refs would talk to them, and they'd go again. It looked like they were breaking the rules and about to be tossed out over and over, and I was getting worried because none of the other kids had that happen. I was also wondering a bit about their discipline methods, because if that's what was happening... well, jeez. If a kid's messing up, you might give him one or two chances to straighten up, but four? Kinda defeats the whole "negative actions have negative consequences" thing, don't you think?
  
  They weren't messing up. They just kept tying. Four times they tied. And the kid was a higher belt than Justin, and when Justin finally lost, he lost (according to him) because the judges thought he hadn't blocked a kick that he did block. And according to Chris (who was closer) he looked like he was getting angry and just about to cry - and then he didn't. Just nodded and accepted the defeat and went to sit down. He was nominated for a bronze medal, but didn't get it.
  
  At the next class, the kids who were in the tournament were asked to tell the others what they participated in, and how they did. Daniel's cheerful summary cracked up the black belts:
  
  "Well, I had fun, and I did my best in my patterns and sparring, but I was still crushed like a bug."
  
  I love my kids.