Greetings, my faithful blogger readers. (No greeting to those who only read now and then, even if you are reading this post) I didn't post any last week because I skipped fiction writing class because I had a huge project due in my late Wednesday night class. But that project is done (we get it back graded today!) and so I am back with a vengeance and ready to blog away!

So...what's been going on...I guess I'll start with the missions tournament and then talk about developments and frustrations at work.

Missions tournament is my favorite of the year. Everybody has a good attitude and the competition is intense but somehow it doesn't matter all that much if you do poorly. I was a little nervous about doing my kata, because this was my first time to compete at the black belt level in kata. I did Ten No Kata (as I've been doing for the past two years) and got 8.5, 8 and 8.5. And a "good job" from Mr. H. I placed 4th out of 5 black belts. That doesn't sound so great until I mention that first place went to Jason Murry, second to Kai Mitchel and third to Luke Rosebure. Scott Brown gave me some good tips on how to improve the kata and I'm thinking if I make those changes and work hard I should be able to beat out Luke.

Fighting was a blast. Luke has been hitting the cheeseburgers too much and is at 180 pounds, so he was in the heavy weight division. :( Ethan was allowed to fight up into the black belt division since he needs that for his black belt test. Jason and I were the only other people fighting in that division (if any other light weight black belts are reading this, let it be known that you guys really out to step up to the plate and fight...there were a lot of black belts there, why didn't you guys fight?) So the light weight was just Ethan, Jason and I. Ethan and I fought first. It was a blast. I made several good kicks on him. He rushed me and I folded instead of going around him. :( He won. He then went on to fight and beat Jason. First time a brown belt has won the black belt division at Missions Tournament, as far as I know. We were all thrilled for him.

This was also my first tournament to judge. I worked with Scott Brown and Greg Partridge, so it was fun. But man...judging is really intense! I hadn't expected to be exhausted by it, but mentally is is tiring.

So, frustrations at work. There is one worker in particular who has not been teaching her classes per Gymnastics City guidelines. My boss has had many discussions with her about the problems. Now my boss has decided that I will be in charge of running all classes for the next two weeks and making sure that everybody is doing what their supposed to do. I didn't ask for this job and I'm not really enjoying it, but at the same time I see that we do need somebody doing it, and I've been there long enough to know exactly how my boss wants everything done.

Last night was interesting. I was able to help several coworkers get some stuff figured out and to just move around and give tips on teaching. I think we need more of that at the gym: too often our teachers are thrown to the wolves, as it were, without as much preparation as I would like. But a couple of the teachers were very resentful of my instructions. It was all very frustrating. Because I've got work to do with my students (we've got a meet this weekend and need to be getting ready for it!) yet instead I'm fighting with these folks who don't want to do a good job. It's very frustrating.

What else to write about...next week is Thanksgiving break! I'm excited about that! It means no class next Wednesday and then Thursday down in Texas visiting with Mom's family. I might use the time to finish up some paper work and writing stuff for my internship. I'm glad the semester is just about over. I've only got a few more assignments left to finish and none of them are really huge.

I recently downloaded a song by Blue October called Hate Me. It's an incredibly sad and somewhat disturbing song but the lyrics are very tightly written.

On a totally random note that most of you probably don't care about, my archer character on Conquer is now a level 120 and has five sockets, each with super dragon gems in them. I'm two-hitting birdmen on scatter. That's cool.

And now I'll leave you.

This is me, looking rather dorky. I thought I'd post a picture to give y'all an idea of how long I grew my hair out before I cut it. I'm thinking I'll try growing it out again sometime in the next few years...

I'm not going to comment on the election. I'm not in the least surprised, but still highly upset. Beyond that I don't want to say anything...check out Mom's blog, I'm sure she'll post something brilliant soon. And read Anna's. Very good post.

Joshua is amazing. He passed his test last Monday. Because he was testing for an upper level (only one more test before he goes for black belt after this) he was given very little slack. Even though, physically, he isn't one of the "big dogs", he still had to hang with them. And, boy oh boy let me tell you, hang with them he did! He took some really hard shots but set his jaw and just kept on fighting. He is the smartest 14 year old fighter I have ever seen. Most kids that age simply understand techniques and combos. Joshua understands that he is fighting a person and works to understand and fight that person.

We're having our first TAG (Tulsa Area Gymnastics) meet on Saturday. I've got a weekend class then, but hopefully we'll get out a bit early and I can jump on the turnpike and rush back to gym and coach. Our USAG girls (the really highly competitive team) will also be competing just as a warm-up for their first official meet. We've got a level 6 who has an amazing amount of potential...but she freaks out and doesn't finish any of her skills. I've been working with her on her bar dismount for the past couple weeks and we've made some progress, but it seems like I can't get her to take the final step and do it without my spotting her. I'm going to see if I can't get some time to work with her specifically on that tonight...if we had 30 minutes to work on it, I think we could do it.

I'm finished with my internship yesterday. I've enjoyed it quite a bit: I got the chance to teach several times and got to work with a pretty good teacher. But I am glad that it's over: my Tuesdays are now free! I plan on going to the dollar movie (50 cent day!) next week.

This weekend I'm taking a one credit hour class called "Non-verbal communication." I've heard it's pretty good...I hope it is. I'm tired of boring classes.

Oh, I got my graduation audit back last week...as it turns out, cinema isn't on the list of gen ed classes that NSU accepts...so I've got to talk to the Department Chair and get a note from him that they will accept my cinema class from RSU. Otherwise I'll have to take an intersession class during Christmas break...which I really, really don't want to do.

Yea, so pray that the chair is ok with the class.

Ready to fight.

Joshua will be testing for his second degree brown belt this coming Monday. There are three degrees to brown belt, and odd as it may seem, third degree is actually the lowest and first degree is the highest. So right now Joshua is a third degree, and he'll be testing for second degree. He did an excellent job with his katas on his pre-test and quickly made improvements when we told him to. I've very excited about this test.

I taught three lessons yesterday at my internship site, and had a lot of fun doing it. Michelle, one of my classmates at NSU, came out and observed my teaching, since we're required to have somebody observe us as a part of the internship. I taught a lesson on speaking to people with limited English to a speech class and had a blast doing it. I was talking about how important it is to use your face, voice and body to get your message across and decided to tell a story in Chinese to get the point across. So I did a very dramatic story about a monster, a princess and a prince, all in Chinese but with big body motions and lots of voice inflection. They loved it. Then I taught a grammar lesson for a language arts class, which went fairly well...I hate grammar. I put together a webquest on architecture that we did for two humanities classes...it went out, but a lot of the students had never done a webquest before, so we ended up spending a lot of time trying to get them to understand how it was supposed to work.

Naomi is going to be joining the TAG team at gym as a level 5! We are all very excited about it. The first meet will be in just a few weeks, so she's going to have to jump on top of things pretty fast to learn the routines. She already knows most of the skills, although they will still need work to get them ready to compete with. The biggest problem she'll have is learning how to do a kip (a skill for mounting the bar that is VERY difficult to learn). She's already got some idea of what to do with it though, so hopefully it won't take her more than a few months to learn.

After tonight I will be halfway done with the semester. It seems like this semester is actually rushing by...I think it's because the black belt test had so much of my attention at the start of the semester that I didn't really realize the school year had started until the test was over. So from that perspective we've only been in school about three weeks!

Surely I have something more to write about. I'll think of something as soon as I hit "publish post", I just know I will. But of course the only thing running through my mind right now is, "can't we go to break right now? I have to go to the bathroom!"

Well...we had break, I went to the bathroom, and I've sat here for a while trying to think of something to write and ....nothing. So I'll sign off. Farewell!

Last night I read part of a really fascinating book by David Reagan called Wrath and Glory. We (Ethan, Joshua, Stokton and I) are reading it for our Wednesday morning Bible study. I've really liked it to far. He's said some stuff that I don't think he has support for (Hosea does not tell us that Jesus is coming back after two thousand years...the Bible is very clear that we don't know when he's coming back. Hence the admonition to watch. 'Cause we don't know.) But overall, really good book (so far).

Monday we had about 80 million things due for our state-required education portfolio and I actually got it all submitted by early Monday morning. I'm very impressed with myself. So far I've had three of the assignments assessed and I passed them all.

Thursday night Ethan, Naomi and I went into Tulsa to watch the Tour of US Gymnastics Champions. It was amazing. The men's high bar was the most incredible. Their tumbling was unreal. It was so totally worth $83.

If you ever get the chance to see or listen to the band KSM, run for your life. They are utterly, totally horrible.

Am I the only one who finds it deeply disturbing to see Nastia Lukin dressed in an almost bikini leotard, dancing provocatively to the song Butterfly Kisses? Doesn't that seem just a little bit icky?

As long as we're on that topic, allow me to climb on my soap box and give this rant that has been building up inside me since the Olympics. It's about the public image of female athletes. This rant was mostly brought on by the woman's beach volleyball and the woman's diving competitions. Apparently it isn't enough to be the best in the world: you have to be sexy as well. You have to wear next to nothing and parade around on national TV. In volleyball, the men can wear shorts and tank tops, but the woman are required to wear something that if spread out on the a table would not even cover a place setting.

I spend a lot of time working with some very serious female athletes. And believe me, they work hard. Have you ever had somebody literally lay on top of you to make you stretch farther? Or try this: hang from a bar, bring your toes to your hands, then put them down at 3 o'clock. Then back to your fingers, then down to 9 o'clock. Or shrug your shoulders. Now imagine putting enough power into shrugging those shoulders to throw your body 5 feet straight up in the air. These are common, everyday things for my students. Nobody turns their head or shouts "wow!" when they do these things: it's simply part of trying to be the best.

And after all that, our culture tells those girls that what they've done isn't enough. Oh no. What will really make you a success is some cleavage.

On a totally unrelated note, if you have never read the poem Requiem by Anna Akhmatova, then you need to read it. It's excellent.

I'm managing to get online from work by getting a little bit of the wireless from next door. I thought this was a good picture: Corky is enjoying a lazy afternoon of coloring. And I love that shirt.

The reason I can't hear you is because of the sinus infection that that has got my ears totally stopped up. And it's a great picture and I just had to post it.

So...black belt test. Below you can see pictures from the test. I had gotten an email earlier last week saying that the test was starting at 11:00. The newsletter said the test started at 11:00. So I showed up at 10:20 thinking that I had plenty of time to warm up and get ready. Haha. Apparently the test started at 10:00. Jason had already done most of the kata for his test. :-O Christa (God bless her) took the blame for the misinformation and I was still allowed to step in and test.

I don't really remember all that much from the test. It may sound odd, but the whole thing has turned into a big blur. We did kata and I only messed up twice and they were just small mistakes. Three minutes on the heavy bag was tough but I did ok. Once the fighting started everything blurs. I know Mr. Murry was my first fight. I know I fought Scott Brown, Kai Mittchel, James Price, Mr. H and Steven Whiteker somewhere in there. Ethan was my fourth fight. Or fifth? Scott Brown gave me a black eye and James Price bruised a rib. Kai was pulling my into some knee strikes and I tried to block one of the with my leg...got a really bad bruise on my thigh. My last fight was Dale Sloan.

Plural fights were intense. I did better than I've ever done. I actually won my four on one fight, but Mr. H didn't call it because he wanted the fight to go on (and I'm not making that up...he admitted to it!) Kai sidekicked me in the chin really, really hard. I actually blocked the kick with my hands, which then hit my chin. Had I not blocked that kick it would have knocked me out cold.

Hmm...other things that happened at the test. Jason got his third degree black. Mr. Murry broke his nose in the first fight and he was knocked out standing. He still finished his fights, although it was certainly very tough on him. His board breaking was awesome.

Erin got second black and did a great job. Her eskrima kata was wonderful.

School is killing me right now. I've got a ton (a TON) of stuff due next Monday. On top of that I'm sick. Bleh.

Last night I taught the second spotting workshop at work. We only had time for the very basics of bar but I'm glad we got to cover what we did. One of our troublesome teachers has stopped coming to work, and the other one has been getting much better. She was at the workshop last night and had a lot of good questions and actually seemed to listen to what I had to say.

I took a class on nutrition a few semesters ago and the teacher told us that there is no such thing as a suger rush. He even tried to explain crazy kids after trick or treating as well, you let them stay up late past their bedtime and go visit a bunch of folks, that's why they're nuts. Not because they ate fifteen bags of candy. That's got to be the biggest bunch of hogwash I've heard in all my classes. Yesterday our level 7 gymnasts were nuts. Totally crazy. Taylor was talking about 400 miles a minute all evening and I don't think Miranda ever even noticed we were having class, she was so busy singing songs and trying to coach all her teammates. Halfway through class I asked them, "What on earth did you girls eat on your way to class today?" "Oh, we had extra large smoothies."

No such thing as a suger rush my foot!

Well, ladies and gentlemen...I am now a black belt!



Fighting Kai.



Fighting Mr. H...6 time world kick boxing champion. If only I could remember what happened during that fight...





Trying to survice the last fifteen seconds of a fight with James Price.



Dale Sloan...my last fight. Notice the beautiful roundhouse that I just landed on his chin.











Do I look tired in this picture?



Getting the belt!



Samuel is hugging his sister...isn't that cute? No, it's not cute. Samuel is leaning entirely on his sister, who is the only reason that he is not lying on the ground...he's half dead.



It's offical! I have a black eye (thank you Scott Brown), black and purple ear, swollen nose, smashed lips, jacked jaw, bruises all over my head/face, bruises on my forearm from blocking, bruised ribs (thank you James Price), a deep muscle bruise on my right thigh (thank you Kai), very, very bruised shin from blocking and a stone bruise on the bottom of my right foot. It's not an experience I can say I enjoyed...but I'm certainly glad I did it.

Hello people, and welcome to this week's edition of Posts Written to Prevent Falling Asleep in Writing Class. I hope you are all having a wonderful day. I, for the most part, am doing very well. I spent a rather lazy morning doing Bible study at a coffee shop and then playing an online game with Ethan. Then I drove to school and read a couple short stories that we are discussing in writing workshop later today. And now I'm here in class, writing this post!

I'm finding myself more and more frustrated by the way a couple of my coworkers are running classes at the gym. Parents are paying a fair amount of money for these classes and it is important that we make good use of the time. This year I am working mostly with the team (which is wonderful...I'm very happy about that) but I often find myself leaving the team in the middle of something, running across the gym and fixing disasters in a class. Of course the teachers don't think there is a disaster in their class, but to a parent sitting in the bleachers it looks horrible when there are seven kids standing in a line while two teachers stand by and just watch. I feel like a broken record sometimes. Get on your knees. Get physically close to the kids. Touch, look at and speak to every child in your line. Set up self-running stations. If there are more than three kids in a line, you are doing something wrong. If they could just get those simple things then classes would be awesome. But until they figure those things out we will continue to lose students! I did a workshop for the new teachers two weeks ago and I'm planning on doing another one next week, so hopefully that will help things.

As long as we're talking about gym, I think I'll write a little more. I haven't written much about gym lately. I am working Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights and I'm working mostly with the level five to sevens. This is a blast. I've never been able to spend this much time working with the higher levels and I'm learning a ton. We have a new optionals coach this year and she's taught me quite a bit. I'm learning how to teach giants on the bar (where they swing all the way around the bar) and a little bit of twisting on vault. Additionally, the fact that the students are at the gym 3 or 4 nights a week means you get to know them a lot better, which makes everything more fun.

Saturday night I ran five miles. That is a long distance.

Last night I met with a girl from church who wants to go on a mission trip to London next year. She and her mom wanted to talk about preparing for a mission trip, so I spent about half an hour giving her my views on how missions work and showing her a few verses that stand out to me about missions. Planning for that was all very interesting...you often don't realize how much thought you've given something until you start outlining what you want to tell somebody about it.

Yesterday I taught my first lesson at my internship school. We read "Monsters are Due on Maple Street", a Twilight Zone episode. We talked about conflict and drew "conflict charts" as we read it and talked about reading strategies for reading a script. It went very well and I really enjoyed teaching it.

I have purposely not mentioned my black belt test so far. I will try not to mention it as I sign out.

Bye people!

My black belt test will be Oct 4th at 11:00 am in Jennings, OK. Those who want to come are welcome.

Here's directions.

Oh wow. I'm posting from home...using my laptop...which is connected to our brand new high speed wireless internet!

Yesterday I walked into the woman's restroom and didn't even realize it. That must be a sign of being too busy. I stood for a moment in the middle of the room, wondering why there wasn't a urinal on the wall. You would think that would have tipped me off. It didn't. It wasn't until I was buckling my belt and a lady walked into the room that I finally connected all the dots.

It's funny what happens when a member of the wrong gender walks into the restroom. There's this slight little pause while both people stare at each other in shock and wonders if they are in the wrong bathroom or if the other person is.

Sunday morning we did I Cor. 13 in children's church. We only got through the first 4 verses, but we re-wrote each verse in our own words and talked about practical applications in their life. Next Sunday we'll be using the Roman Road to learn how to present the Gospel to a friend...killing two birds with one stone, 'cause the unsaved will hear the Gospel at the same time!

Tonight I'm teaching a short grammar lesson in one of my methods classes. I'm going to be teaching about prepositional phrases. It should be interesting.

Tomorrow we are getting high-speed wireless at our house. Yea!

A week and a half 'til my black belt test. I don't actually have anything to say about it, but it is taking up so much of my time and thoughts right now that it only seems right to mention something about it here. I should get a count-down timer for it or something.

Oh, btw, if any of y'all who are close enough want to go watch the test you are free to do so. It's out in Jennings, OK and starts at 11 am on Oct. 4th.

Ok, I've got to go now. Bye people!

Did I mention that I cut my hair? I've been growing it out for a little over a year and it was almost long enough that I could pull it back into a pony tail. I actually liked it quite a bit, but I had to cut it for two reasons. Firstly, I'm doing an internship at a local school, and it struck me that I might be applying for a job at that school in less than 8 months. So I need to look professional. Second, I can't deal with my hair in my face for twenty minutes of fighting as I test for my black belt and it wasn't going to be long enough to pull back and keep back.

So now my hair is short again. It feels strange.

I'm sitting in my creative writing class trying not to let my mind turn off. Many people complain that a teacher has a "monotone" voice and puts you to sleep. I've never met one of those teachers and have actually found that most of them do have something interesting to say. But I think I've finally found that guy they keep talking about...he's the most boring teaching I've ever had.

I'm probably going to post my short story on here sometime soon...there's a couple more things I want to tweak before I put it up though.

Let's see...black belt pre-test. Overall it went well. Mr. H seemed happy with my empty hand kata. My bo kata needs work on a couple technical areas but they said I was doing it with good power. I got lost on my sword kata...don't know how that happened. I know that kata quite well. So I need to work on it more and fix a couple technical things as well. But Mr. Murry said I made him proud, which is cool! Test is in three weeks.

We've got a lot of new teachers at gym, plus a ton of new students with the new term starting just a few weeks ago. I'm working mostly with the team these days but I keep finding myself running over to the classes for a few minutes at a time to fix things. I'm going to be doing a training session for the new teachers on Thursday after class, because there's just so many things they don't realize they're doing wrong.

Now the teacher is telling a story he's already told last week...I'm hungry.

wow...last week I wrote that Ethan's ankle is getting "bettery". That sounds like the annoying rhyme-talk that stupid cheer leader types think is cute. I think I'm going to puke now.

I wrote my first piece for my creative writing class and turned it in last week. We had to write a five page personal account of some sort. The idea is to eventually mutate it into a fictional piece. I wrote about practicing kata with Jason for a year and then winning first at Octoberfist as a blue belt. I'm not sure where I'm going to take it from there...ten pages really is a short amount of space to tell much of a story.

I'm ready to kill Ethan and Naomi. These kids have got to get serious about finishing school sometime this century or I think their cold, limp bodies will be found on a deserted road in the very near future.

Tomorrow I start my internship at a local middle school. I'll be in a 7th grade classroom for ten days this semester and I'll be teaching several lessons while I'm there...that should be fun. On top of that I'm trying to get a bunch of stuff ready to submit for my portfolio that the state of Oklahoma requires all teaching majors to complete. The whole thing is really a pain in the neck but it's one of those unavoidable pain in the necks that it doesn't really help to complain about, because everybody else is stuck doing (and hating) it as well.

Regular classes at gymnastics started again last week. We had our first homeschool class this morning, which went very well. That class is always one of the best. A large number of students from last year are back this year, which is great to see.

Oh, something interesting happened at gym on Thursday. I was teaching a class for girls over 12 and couldn't help but think that this one girl looked really familiar...then it hit me. I had taught her in the very first gymnastics class I ever taught...when she was six!

Sunday was the first of four weeks that I'm taking the older kids for Children's Church and doing lesson that are a little deeper than we typically do with them. I was really happy with how things went: we talked about the Bible using Ps. 19 7 and 8 and 2 Tim 3:16. There was a kid there who had never been to church before and she was full of really good questions. She said she didn't have a Bible, so I loaned her mine until next week when I'll have one for her...which is pretty derned cool, if you ask me.

Ok, I ought to get off of here. Bye!

Lol..judging from the number of comments I'm getting on my latest posts, it would seem that I've lost a good number of my readers. :( Oh well...I guess that's to be expected considering how good I've been about updating this thing. I'm trying to do better. I'm not going to make any promises about at least one post per two weeks or something like that, because I know I'll break it, but at least I will say that I'm trying to update more often.

Ethan's ankle is slowly but surely getting bettery. I'm really, really hoping he can still test for his blackbelt...the pre-test is coming up in just a few weeks and then the actual test is Oct. 4th. He's finally to the point that he can run again, so things are looking hopeful.

I'm having writers block, so I was scanning other people's blogs and I found this on JC's blog...so I'm stealing it.

Three things.

Three things that scare me:
1. Fiddleback spiders. Ugg.
2. Loosing any of my unsaved students.
3. Keith M. as my tenth fight at my black belt test. Normally, I think I could handle fighting him but the man has absolutly no control and after 18 minutes of fighting I don't want to have to fight him. Hopefully it will be Mr. Murry.

Three people who make me laugh:
1: Daniel
2: Joy
3: Naomi

Three Things I love:
1: Dr. Pepper
2: Back hand spring classes
3: Being fit

Three Things I hate:
1: Gretchen Wilson
2: Auto repair
3: Big Government

Three things I don't understand:
1: People who do drugs. I mean, I can understand why people would have a lot of vices, even if I wouldn't do them myself. I can understand the desire to rob a bank, even though I haven't ever done it. But I just can't think of why somebody would take drugs.
2: People who hate Wal-Mart
3: If we're running somebody like John McCain, is there even a point to having a Republican Party?

Three things on my table next to me:
1: My laptop (I'm sitting at a computer in the library, but carrying my laptop with me)
2: My bag of books
3: Another student

Three things I'm doing right now:
1: Downloading a large file and hoping the computer lets me install it.
2: Feeling a little cold...why do American's keep the A/C so low all the time?
3: Wishing QT was still doing their sale on 32 oz fountain drinks.

Three things I want to do before I die:
1: Travel Asia
2: Become fluent in Chinese and Taiwanese
3: Do Mr. Murry proud.

Three things I can do:
1: Juggle
2: Teach
3: Leather tool

Three ways to describe my personality:
1: Out going
2: Talkative
3: Confident (is that the same as number one?)

Three things I can't do:
1: A layout
2: Math
3: Eat bambo.

Good times, good people, good ice cream. (Visiting with Daniel up in Kansas)

School start on Monday. I'm only taking 12 hours, which seems very odd because I've never taken that light of a load. Of course you never know how a semester will be until you've finished the first week, but I'm seriously hoping to have a semester at least a little bit less crazy than last one.

You know how you'll do something, and then it's only later that you'll look back on it and say to yourself "wow, that was totally nuts." That's what last semester was like. I took a rather heavy load (ok, a VERY heavy load!), did tutoring for several classmates, tested for first brown and worked full time and then four days after the semester was over I left the country! The whole thing was extremely stressful and I'm surprised I didn't just explode. But when it was actually going on I was too caught up in keeping my head above water that I didn't even realize how stressed I was.

Next month I'm going to be taking the older half of the kids in Children's Church (9 to 12 years old) and doing a separate lesson with them. I'm really looking forward to it. We're going to be covering the basics of Christian living and my hope is to get a little deeper and more serious than the Sunday school lessons which come from the Baptist convention (which are amazingly shallow).

Last Sunday we drove down to Dallas early in the morning. We stopped by Uncle Rod's house and then went with them to Medieval Times, where we also met up with Daniel and his family. Medieval Times is a diner theater place...after sorts. You are served a medieval style meal (sans spoon and fork, of course) and while eating it you watch a show. There were some really good horse men and very well trained horses there. Plus it was fun cheering on our knight as he went on to win the tournament and defeat the evil Green Knight (boo, boo). Then Monday we went to six flags, which of course was a blast. It's hard to beat the Titan (255 foot drop!) but Mr Freeze, with it's 0 to 70 mph in 3 seconds came very close. But Titan is still my favorite.

I have to go now...got to go pick up Anna from school and then go home and finish putting my car back together (don't even ask). bye!

I love this Cannon Digital Rebel we've bought. It makes it look like I actually know what I'm doing with the camera. These are pictures from the balloon toss at VBS.

Ok, short update here...I'm back in the States after a fairly short trip of only 27 hours from Taipei to Claremore. Andrea and Young are here with me and seem to be enjoying themselves.

Camp was great. God really put his blessing on it and many seeds were planted and several students saved. There were no huge disasters (which was a huge relief to me, since this was my first time be totally responsible for a camp!) and everybody had a very good time. Large group time was awesome. On the first day (God is powerful) Daniel told the creation story, focusing on how God divided things. I'll have to post pictures of that later. It was very funny. Then day two (God is just) I told the story of the fall. Day three (God is personal) three of our teachers gave testimonies...one in English and two in Chinese. Then on day four (God is love) Joy presented the Gospel.

We also did a few activities that were really fun. We did a treasure hunt where they kids were given a list of things to do, with each task being worth a certain number of points. The team with the most points won. We also did water games, which are always fun. I taught them how to dance the Virginia Reel, which was actually a huge success, even though I was expecting it to totally crash and burn.

The trip back from Taiwan was really fast...I'd never made it in under 32 hours before. But this time we did it in 27 hours. One of our layovers was only 30 minutes! And on top of that Andrea was throwing up in between flights, which made things rather difficult...I mean, you don't want to hurry somebody is is feeling horrible, but you REALLY don't want to miss your flight...so what do you do? But now that we're here we've been having a really good time.

Yesterday I visited the gym and taught for a little bit and today I worked all morning...it's fun being back there. Tomorrow I'll be going back to work at Donald and Corky's...I'm looking forward to seeing those guys again. Tonight I'm going to go visit a karate class started by one of Mr. Murry's students...I've actually been wanting to visit for a long time, so now I'll finally get a chance.

I'm going to sign out now. 再見!

Vic speaking to the youth group. Vic is a wonderful leader.



The youth group...these folks rock.



Sunday afternoon mountain climbing.



Ben started a push-up compitition and this guy won with 60 push-ups. I got 58.



Then Samuel, Ben and I tried doing chain push-ups (or whatever their called).



So I come to Kinmen wearing a do-rag and now the window god is wearing one...strange.



Ray-ray!



Harry, a kid from my Wednesday school...he's a real blast.



This, if I may say so myself, is a very good picture.



The cool thing about these tanks is that you can get inside them and pretend to drive...(Nathan, a guy from the English Village who visited us this weekend)



Taken just a few hours ago...Megan, Rachal, Kiwi, Mr. Yo, his wife and daughter and her classmate. We had a good time.



Samuel, signing out.

Well howdy folks. Yes, I know it's been forever. I now that most of you have probably stopped looking at my blog at all. But this time I am not going to say I'm sorry...haha! No, I'm just going to pretend it's just a normal thing for me to leave my blog without any new posts for an entire semester while I take 19 hours and get a 4.0 and not apologize to anybody!

I am in Kinmen now. And having an awesome time. It's wonderful to be back here with old (and new) friends and hearing Chinese and eating lots of good food...ahhh...yes, it's awesome. I'm not working as much this time, which is good since I'm keeping fairly busy preparing things for the church camp, which will be July 7-10 and for junior high students (no more pre-K students, yea!) I'm also doing some tutoring and teaching a class for high school teachers. Monday and Thursday nights we are having karate class at the church, which has been very fun.

Andrea and Young, Pastor Samuel's two kids, are coming back with me to the States and will be spending a month at our house. We're all really excited about that. Andrea has been working on her English a lot the past two years and has learned quite a bit. Young speaks almost no English, so BJ and I will be kept busy translating for him. Andrea has been doing very good in the karate class and I'm hoping she'll be able to test for yellow belt while in the States.

This past semester was very, very full. I took 19 hours and worked two days a week as well. All told I spent about 36 hours a week at work (although part of that was at night, when I'm able to sleep) and probably close to 35 hours at school. Fortunately I am able to do school work while on the job...otherwise I don't think it would have worked. The cool news is that I made a 4.0 for the spring semester and next semester I am only taking 12 hours. I also took and passed the Oklahoma Subject Area Test (OSAT) for English, so now I've only got one more test left to become a certified teacher (and I still have to graduate, of course). I'm planning on taking that test in September and then taking a couple more OSATs over the next two semesters, so eventually I will be certified to teach English, ESL, Special Ed and History.

In Feb. Ethan and I passed our test for first degree black belt, which means we are preparing for the black belt test on September 20th. We're both extremely excited and nervous about it. Luke and Josiah, the last two guys from our dojo to test for black belt, set the bar really high. We'll have to work very hard to meet that standard. On top of that, I would really like to raise the bar somewhat in the area of breaking. I plan on being the first (as far as I know) black belt candidate to break monster boards and I'd like to include some shin breaks as well. I've got my eyes set on breaking a baseball bat at my second degree black belt test (yea, I'm already thinking about that...I'm nuts). Ethan and I have been keeping each other accountable for running these past few months...Ethan's running 5 miles now! I'm running about 3 and a half with 10 minutes of jump rope before running.

But enough about karate. Dad made it home from Iraq safely just a couple days ago! YEA! We're all very, very happy that he's back at home and all in one peice. I called home and talked to him the day after he got home...it was good to hear his voice. I haven't been able to talk to him the whole time I've been here in Taiwan. For a while we had the family in three different parts of the world...that was interesting.

Ok, I'm going to close for now...talk to y'all later!

I am pumped. Majorly, seriously, totally pumped. Today I wore one of my favorite Christmas gifts (a shirt that says CLEPtomaniac on the front) when Anna and I went into Tulsa to take some CLEP tests (Anna passed hers, btw). I took the American lit. CLEP (the one I failed by three points last May) and scored a 60 (an improvement of 13 poitns)! Meaning that I automatically gained 6 hours of credit! I then took the English Lit. CLEP and scored a 55 (with no prepretory studying), gaining another 6 hours of credit! In one afternoon, for the price of $130, I got 12 hours of credit! That is HUGE!!!!!!!

I'm literally sitting here bouncing up and down thinking about it.

School start tomorrow. Linguistics. Oh boy. I'm not looking forward to that class...Dr Bently is not a good teacher.

Here's something I wrote last week...on the fourth, I think.


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Howdy. I’m actually updating within a month of my last update. Do I get a gold star Chera?

I’m loving my new laptop. I’m sitting in the living room at Donald’s and Corky’s typing this…is that cool or is that cool? And I’ve been spending time at a coffee shop enjoying the wireless, where I’ve been studying for my next CLEP test.

Yup, time for another CLEP…it’s actually been about 7 months since I took one. This one will be American Lit…the same one that I failed by three points last time. Once I pass it then I’ll have an automatic 6 hours added to my transcript….you’ve got to love CLEPs. Mom got me a shirt for Christmas that says CLEPtomaniac. I love it.

Ethan and I plan to test for first degree brown belt at the end of this month. (There are three levels of brown….third, second and first. Oddly enough, it goes in reverse order…third is lower than first, which is right before black. But once you get on to black belt…then a third degree is higher than a first degree. Yes, I know it doesn’t make any sense.) We’ve got a bow kata that we learned only a few weeks ago…so that will be a challenge. I’m excited about breaking at this test…I’ve been working on some cool power breaks. I’ll be posting it on YouTube afterwards…assuming I actually break the boards. My leg was mostly healed…until I threw a jump spin crescent and hurt it again.  At least I’m still kicking (haha…I’m so funny)…just not kicking very high.

Circuit City is horrible. I went to buy it on Monday…but they didn’t actually have it in stock (in spite of the fact that they had advertised that they had it). So they offered me an open box one…I looked it over and there was a problem…it was a return and the previous owner had put a password on it. So they said they would get it fixed…three times I drove down to that stupid store only to hear them say how sorry they were that it wasn’t ready in spite of calling me and saying it was. Finally they told me, “Ok, we can’t get the password off. So you can take the laptop and buy the restore disc…and we’ll refund you the price.” I told him that I had come to buy a working laptop, not pay for a working laptop so that I could get a broken one instead and then fix it myself. Eventually I ended up with the display model…and they were total jerks when I finally picked it up.

Assuming ticket prices don’t go up between now and my next two paychecks, then I’ll be going to Taiwan over the summer. China was the original plan, but it would only be about ten days and would cost about $3000…while I could do Taiwan for two months for about $1500. Plus I’ll be bringing Andrea and Young (Pastor Samuel’s kids) back with me, so they’ll spend about a month at our house. Right now I’m working on getting some basic plans in place for summer English camp at the church…I’m also trying to find some other American’s who can help with camp. I’m trying to get Andrew and some people from the Nantou team to sign up. Anybody here in the states interested?