Stillwater

just got my second degree blackbelt and new uniform. I wonder how fast i will get something on my white uniform.... plus my new pants are so wide i think i can tent under them! lol. (its like the catholic hats, the wider the pants, the higher the rank)

Soo ummmm....
China was awesome, but never use a tour group there..

Every Feb my wife and I are CURSED! I don't know why but mandy and i have a considerably bad time. In this month, I had my wedding ring stolen, hurt my knee so bad its still recovering, went throught 5 toilet seats (WTF!) Had food poisoning so bad, that i lost 12 pounds and the doctors wanted to hospitalize me 3 or 4 times i saw them. My big investement in a sheath came in looking like crap... so i had to send it back. My sword guard came loose had to send it away for repairs, came back still loose but nicely sharpened...

March has been good, work as the coordinator is always busy this time of year. My school has been good this term and i've got rid of alot of my debt. I tested for my 2nd degree black belt and passed, getting the gold metal WOOT! My master has asked if its ok if he get my instructor papers, i'll be teaching a class on saturdays starting in april (get to wear the blue shirt, that i shouldn't get to wear for 3 years, kind of cool) Got my new sheath and sword back, both are awesome.

Had a physical today wear the measure you body mass, fat muscle etc...

I found out that i have the body of a 32 year old...ouch, I'm 29. My legs have a slighly high fat percentage and the rest of my body is average, but not good. I've been on a specail diet for the past 2/3 weeks, so i'm hoping i will test better in a month. I need to start running but can't seem to find the time... sigh. I haven't had any coke in 3 weeks WOOT!.

I want to thank everyone for the presents they have sent or are sending. Everything has been pretty cool. Mandy and I have decided to wait before send our packages till after we go on our trips, because we think we can get cooler stuff to send over there.


PACHU!

My birthday was pretty awesome this year. Mandy and I went out to one of my favorite restaurants for supper. I talked to my father on the phone then showed up to gumdo a little late. We all then went out to my birthday party at a great rib joint, that mandy and I knew of. The gumdo crew bought me a punching bag, knunchuks and punching gloves, i was very surprised by this gift. Another one of my friend got me psp game, and mandy bought me a psp for my birthday, it was pretty cool gifts. My master told me that he didn't know what i would want but gave me a enveloped full of cash (fifty bucks, woot!) After ribs we all went to Elvis for a few drinks, it all went well.

I have the creeping feeling that today is going to be a bad day, we will see.
Already i know that i have to take a second trip out to my country school because i forgot an important letter,on my desk at home. Sigh.

Things have been going well. My family called me on thanksgiving day, which was really nice to hear from them all. Everything here has been the same old, same old. I got a parking ticket for my car already...bourns! Im looking forward to my birthday, since this year it falls on a weekday, which means lots of partying with the gumdo crew after working out. It should be really fun!

new things.

- Bought a car. A little Tico.
- Went to Jeju-do. I tropical type island off of Korea. It was fun
- Got in a fender bender in gwanju of day 1 of owning the car, 100% the
other persons fault.
- doing alot of gumdo
- Work has been good, right now really busy with co-ordinator stuff, but its starting to calm down again.

My master asked me today if i would like to teach a new class. I was honored of him asking me.

I got my sword friday night. Its pretty awesome. I just tested it out at the bamboo range. The blade is perfect. The handle of sword needs some modification but nothing big. I think about 50 grm. of weight at the guard and the butt of the sword should change the balance to my liking, this should be a big deal since i needed to send it back because the wrong guard was put on anways. Im very happy. :-)

Well I’ve been doing a lot of reading of miyamoto mushashi lately. I find these books really have inspired me and helped me with my Gumdo. Two weeks ago it hit me, what I want to do when I’m about to leave Korea. I’m going to go on a warriors pilgrimage, I want to walk around Korea going to different dojans and ask for a demonstration of techniques and teachings. I’ve already know about a Buddhist temple that teachers a special martial arts and I might ask for a extension on their normal teaching time (usually its only a weekend) I think this has a lot of potential do be an interesting time. I think a lot of my networking will be done at the next world championships. There I’m going to talk to as many masters as I can and ask if they would let me learn at their dojan for a short stay.

Well today mandy and i have been married eight years! Time certainly seems to be picking up speed. I can't wait to see what the next 8 brings us.

Well i've ordered my sword. It was hard to choose what to get. I was torn between a white sheath with a gold jumong, a three legged bird or a wood sheath with bamboo on it. I went with the wood one. The blade was an easy pick, I went to seoul and tried about 8 swords and found one that was right for my 'style' This is having all the weight of the sword just slighlty above the guard. The only thing i knew for sure was what to get for a sheath. there was one that i thought represented what i wanted very well. It had a moon on one side of the guard , made of silver, with a few clouds around it. The other side has cut out cherry blossoms. To me it would be a very person representation of my time in korea. Since im a member of the shadow moon society and the cherry blossom, for my time in korea. Unfortunatly i found out that this is made of pure gold! and would cost alone 600,000 W. So i guess i'll have to wait on that. I went with cherry blossoms on one side, on a black metal guard with a silver design on the other side.

If you want to see my original choice its the sword on the bottom middle of this webpage:

http://www.hrsword.com/sub02_1.htm Oh it will be mine. When i am forced to do a camp i don't want to do, this will be my reward :-)

Friday my stolen bike was found. After we retrieved the bike I went to the repair shop about getting things repaired on the bike. It will cost me about 120 dollars to get it fixed. That night i get a call from my friend that was helping me with the police. He asked if the father gave me some money to repair the bike and for my stresses would i drop the charges. I said probably. So he ended up giving me 1.5 million won. Its enough to buy a brand new bike, or laptop, or pay for a sword that could be passed down for generations... It was bizzare though meeting the father and son. The son just didn't talk and kept his head down. The father said he was sorry for and wanted to drink with me for the night. So we sat around a table while my friend and the father drank and ate chicken. Then my friend settles the ammount of money and brings out a bamboo piece of wood and hits the kid of few times. The father then invited us to his home in gwangjang for a nice dinner sometime this summer.

It was all very odd


Now i have to figure out what to use this money on....

well looks like i was right, when i was judging that my hand would need stitches on friday. I was trying to fix my fan and my finger slipped into the blades. The nurse suggested that if i kept bleeding that i should go see a doctor. Today i had the time to do this so i now have three stitches a we bit of morphine in me. Huzaa!

Well summer vacation will be in 4 weeks, I can’t wait to have some time off to do some fun things Mandy and I have wanted to do, I just hope we will have some cash available to do everything we want. We need to go to Japan to go to get Mandy’s Visa and then maybe we will head to Jeju Island

Gumdo has been great, we have a lot of new white belts at the Dojon and the master has asked me help him teach the basics to the new people in our class. Its great the get this experience in incase I ever start my own Dojon back home. At first I thought I would be only helping the foreigners, but I was told I should also help the new Korean kids too, so I thought that was pretty cool. I also have started leading the class for the stretching exercises at the beginning of class, all pretty cool stuff to be doing. 

Just thought I would post something since I haven’t in a while

What a weird morning. I was late for work today even though i was up stupid early to catch a drive. I waited around but he never showed up. i finally called him, he was too hung over to do anything. So i had to figure out the stupid bus system to get to my country school, much harder since there is no bus schedule in english.. well im here now. My vice-principle wasn't very happy, but its not like a i can communicate what happened other than to say im sorry.

Our demo this weekend went really well. Its unfortunate that our korean friends need to zoom in and out as much as possible. The competition went well, though neither of us won any trophies. It was a fun time though, and i felt honored to be asked to do a demo and be apart of the honour guard. There are many people that never get to do these their entire martial art careers.

Mandy did rank fifth out of the fifty women in her division.

my bike was stolen last night! :-(

My mp3 was in it


:_(

It makes me sad how badly this wad taped, and also that the korean only taped out first try of the day so we were all off. The idea of the demo is the kids around us do something, then we do something, etc....

My wife looks so wicked!


I guess i look ok too! :-)