Good News

The best news first: I fed Scarlett a full pinky last night. It's been 26 hours so far and no urf.

I heard from Sunshine. She did get my shodan promotion filmed. She is going to send me a disc of it as soon as she can. But being a busy college student, I don't know when that'll be. I remember my own college days...

I'm going to try to get Cody to film me doing seisan kata soon. So many other bloggers have posted their own versions of seisan, that I wanted to add mine as well. I got to learn a little more of Sunsu kata last night. Yes, I finally made it back to karate. It seems like such a long time since I'd been, though it was only three classes I missed.

Sensei said the he wants to start a black belt class, so the four of us can continue to grow. I hope he does it soon, because I feel like I'm not doing anything now. I don't participate in classes any more, unless we have an odd number of students and someone needs a partner. I usually do basics with the class, even though I'm not required to. I'm the only one in the black belt row doing basics. Sensei and Mr. Tedder are teaching, and James just leans against a bag or something. Then, when we are doing kata, sensei will call us out by ranks. He never calls black belts out to do kata. If I want to go over kata, I have to do it by myself after class. If I want to learn anything, I have to get with sensei after class. I guess that's the way it was in sensei's home dojo--the black belts didn't work out with the kyu ranks.

I talked to sensei before I left. I told him Cody and I were going to have to quit karate. With the new house and the accompanying payments, I just couldn't afford to pay him. He said, "You don't have to quit."

I said, "But I can't afford to pay even for just Cody." He said again, "You don't have to quit. I've told you before that financial troubles are never a reason to quit."

Maybe he is not all about the money after all...