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The Family Bandwagon

Our family is spread out across the country and across the world, and what better way to keep in touch than a collaborative digital journal?

Monday 10 March 2014

Go Dan Grading

A big week this week for Iaido.

On Tuesday the Win News cameraman came and took some footage of the dojo, plus interviewing me and my students. He'd seen me do the demo for Chinese New Year, and started training a few weeks earlier. He'd had the idea of putting together a little story about the club, and was able to find a "newsworthy" angle to go with.

Wednesday it was on the news. I don't know if it will bring new students or not, but it was kind of cool anyway. You've probably already seen it but here it is.

Thursday I headed out to a karate class to teach one of the Sensei there. He's keen to learn but very busy (and unavailable on Tuesday when I have my usual class) so we'll need to work out some way I can teach him, maybe once a month.

Then Saturday I caught a lift to Melbourne with one of the students to take part in Shihan's seminar/grading. I passed my Go Dan (fifth Dan) grade, which was good! We'd had a bit of training but then everyone just stood around watching, so I had to be careful - Shihan might not have minded a little mistake but I didn't want the students doubting me ;) I'd prepared for 20 waza (fighting forms) and Shihan picked about 7 out of that list for me to do. If I'd known which 7 I could have really worked those, but no luck - I had to be ready to do any.

That should be my last grading for 2 years, plus the next one also requires those same 20, so I'm okay for now.

Shihan also wanted me to take a more active role in teaching the Melbourne guys, and especially to try to get their teacher up to a higher standard, so I'm going to try to make the trip down every 4 - 6 weeks to teach. There's a fair bit to improve but hopefully I can get it all working a bit better before Shihan returns.


Sunday 2 March 2014

House Hunting

Today we started our hunt to find a new place to live.

It turns out our 'walk-in bar' is actually bigger than most people's master bedroom...   :-(

Hmmm ....  maybe we have too much alcohol.....I guess we can fix that though!!  :-)