So here I sit
Looking at the traffic light.
The red extinguishes the hope that the green ignites.
--Reliant K

I find that I really enjoy well written lyrics. Above is one of my favorite examples. As a matter of fact, I find Reliant K’s music to be far too repetitive, but their writing is so fun I still listen to them pretty often.

We should get jerseys, ‘cause we make a good team.
But yours would be better than mine, ‘cause your out’a my league.

See what I mean? That is just some really good writing!

Along the same lines, I very much enjoy “Trying to Stop Your Leaving” by Derks Bentley because of the word pictures he uses so effectively in that song. The pictures of a song against a train and a pebble against the Rio Grande (which isn’t actually all that Grande, but few people know that) are very apt.

A song which I find to be rather upsetting but is still extremely well written is “Hate Me” by Blue October. The mood created by the use of certain loaded words is awesome. “Cockroaches”, “porno”, and “suicidal” all conjure up images of a dirty apartment with burnt out light bulbs and the smell of throw up. Like I said, it’s not exactly an inspiring song, but it is still very well done.

A song I have recently become a very big fan of is “I Don’t Care” by Apocalyptica. This isn’t so much because of the lyrics (although they still are well written) but because of the way the music could really tell the story without the words. On the surface it’s just a typical screaming break-up song.

If you were dead or still alive
I don’t care, I don’t care.
Just go and leave this all behind
‘Cause I swear (I swear) I don’t care.

Yet in the midst of all this screaming, hatred and banging guitars and drums there is a single violin mournfully carrying the tune. Beneath all the rage of the song writer, buried so deep that he is hardly even aware of it, is a profoundly deep sense of loss. It’s an incredible example of artfully mixing musical styles to create the desired effect.

A favorite of mine for many years has been a song by 張韶涵. I’ve only heard one of her CD’s and the quality was rather inconsistent from one song to the next, but she still did a couple very good ones. One of my favorite lines from the song:

因為花開的聲音
冬天也會遠離

Which could roughly be translated as, “Winter leaves because of the sound of an opening flower.” It doesn’t really come across so well in English (or at least it doesn’t come across so well when I translate it) so just take my word for it that it’s a very well written couple of lines.

Saving the very best for the last: Brave Saint Saturn. If you have not heard anything by this incredible Christian band then you are living a seriously deprived life. One of the most challenging songs about our fallen state is “Heart Still Beats.”

I’m sickened by compassion
Stifled by my limitations
Anesthetic apathy!
Come take the pain away!

BSS does not shy away from hard issues that are very real in the Christian’s life. Anger, hatred, a feeling of being lost or overwhelmed. Their song “Enamel” has some great lines from a guy whose girl left him for a guy in Mexico.

Well I hope you cannot sleep and I hope you cannot smile
And I hope you are burdened with your guilt for quite a while.
I hope you fall in love but I hope your plans are thwarted
I hope that now your back it’s because you were deported!

“Titan” is something straight from a horror movie, except for so many it’s no movie at all. It’s a song about cancer.

DESTROY!
DEVIDE!
THE DARK!
INSIDE!
Titans rushing over me
Giants that are crushing me.

“Estrella” is a heartfelt and moving song about a young Christian who died of a serious medical condition.

He was twenty-five like I was
But he was deaf and slowly going blind
He made my faith seem worthless
The things I hoped were pointless
And he fought to stay
But always dreamed that he could leave this place.

The angels’ wings will cover you tonight
Hallelujah
Press you head against the breast of Christ
Hallelujah

It made me so empty
Collapsing on some dirty bathroom floor
And isn’t just like me
To mourn his passing breath
When he will never suffer anymore?

Of course it’s not all doom and gloom and sad music. “The Sun Also Rises” is an inspiring song and has been one of my theme songs for the past year and a half.

With all the hope that I could beg or borrow
I can’t wait, can’t wait ‘til tomorrow!
I believe! The sun also rises
Dries our tears, bring the blue skies of day.
I believe! The sun also rises
Lighting our paths, driving the darkness away.
So far away! So far away!

Wow…this is becoming a very long post. If you are still reading, congrats! My advice is that you go to amazon.com and download all three Brave Saint Saturn CDs. I’ll just talk about three more: Daylight, Mercenary and Starlings.

Daylight is the story of a space craft that is lost, on the dark side of a moon and out of contact with their base. A newscasters voice tells us “The crew is out of radio contact and at this point there is no way to know if they are alive or dead.” The emptiness of the darkness away from the sun and the isolation away from their base represent a backslidden Christian. When the ship finally comes back into the daylight we hear

U.S.S. Gloria: Houston this is the U.S.S. Gloria.
Good to hear your voice
We are coming out of the eclipse now.
I see the sunlight. It’s beautiful
The sunlight is beautiful.

Jesus Christ, Light of the World
You never did forget me
And when I bled in darkness, You held me
Still held me
When desperate nights I cursed You
You loved me, still loved me
Jesus Christ, You dry the tears
You break my heart of stone
Your words are life
Cut marrow through
The darkness, to the bone
A heart of flesh You gave me
Only You can save me

Savior
Daylight
I am coming home

“Starlings” is a beautiful and heart breaking song about the senselessness of death.

Starling falling to her death,
Piercing copper steals her breath.
See the flutter in her breast,
Starving babies in her nest.
Raise their souls up to the sky,
Why must helpless creatures die?

“Mercenary” is another great song. Using the picture of a boxer who takes money to lose a fight, BSS addresses the issue of compromise in a world that is not always supportive of God’s plans and goals for Christians.

Here’s to your lame award,
Your phony Nobel Prize.
Here’s to the suckers lining up
To see us compromise.
Let’s light a campfire,
We’ll have a sing along,
I’ll burn some bridges,
You’ll bring the crappy songs.

So…yea. I would recommend any of the above songs.

No, I am not battling depression and coming close to suicide. I am, however, enjoying stuff from despair.com with all of my being. The cruel judgmentalist in me finds a lot to laugh at in this particular poster.

So, two weeks down, only 14 to go in my full internship! Things have been going quite well. According to the suggested timeline for this internship, I am supposed to begin teaching next week. Haha. I started teaching the second day. We're a little bit ahead of schedule but Mrs. Deweese agrees that I would probably go stir crazy if I just had to sit and watch her teach for two weeks. She did give me a complement though by saying that, "Of course if you couldn't teach it wouldn't matter how bored you got! But since you can teach, it's fine."

With regards to the whole grammar side of things...I feel like I am mostly prepared for what we're doing. Grammar, as you guys know, is not my strong point, nor do I feel that it really is all that important to spend so much time on it. There are a few things that I have had to look up to make sure I know what I'm talking about, but for the most part it's all worked out pretty well.

In other news...we are enrolling about 80 million kids per night at Gymnastics City. Add to that the fact that we've got a bunch of kids doing make-ups for snow days and this past week has been crazy. Then Wednesday night one of our teachers hurt her knee, so she couldn't come in Thursday. Then another called in with car trouble. I was trying to figure out how we could arrange things to have enough teachers and finally just called Mom and asked her to go pick up the teacher who was broken down and bring him to gym! :) Mrs. Tucker laughed a lot at that, but it worked!

I've noticed something amazing about public school kids. They have the ability to blow their nose silently. As in, they make no noise. I don't see how that is possible. But apparently they do it. As a homeschooler I guess I never had any chance to worry about my friends (or enemies) staring at me while I blew my nose. Interesting how your up bringing affects you in so many little ways.

Last night Mom made annabread. Annabread is the most wonderful thing ever. When Anna was little she couldn't eat full blown whole wheat bread, so Mom would make a half and half mix that she baked in butter in the over. BJ and I would always beg and beg for some and Mom normally gave us each a piece, but it never seemed like enough. We were always slightly upset that Anna got so much more than we did. It's not like we were getting something special by being able to eat whole wheat...why did she get the best stuff ever because she coudldn't? Most of those feelings are now gone (or at least burried rather deeply) but nonetheless I was very happy to receive my fair portion last night. :)

I am coming to hate my computer. I can't really justify purchasing a new one for at least a couple more months but I'm really sick of the fact that anything even slightly taxing throughs it into thorough and complete fits. Wanting to watch a simple movie trailer online? Good luck! Operate two programs, at the same time? Well...I'm not sure about that. And don't even think about trying anything when the anti-virus is running scans! It's highly annoying.

So, what else is new...Wednesday night was interesting at gym...my boss was a little edgy and we were a couple teachers short...not all that fun. I wish I wasn't a floater...I don't have any classes that I am actually in charge of teaching...but I'm in charge of making sure that each class is covered and dealing with absent teachers, etc. This means that most of the time I end of running all over the gym, jumping from class to class.

Wednesday night I stayed for tumbling class with Ethan. Wow...I haven't tumbled seriously in a very, very long time. I am way out of shape for that kind of work. So I've started doing a little bit each night...ouch! I'm not used to this. It's so easy the first night...it's two mornings later that you feel it!

I'm reading the Book Thud! and enjoying it a lot. It's awesome.

And now I have to go get my hair cut. Fare well, fair readers. (And good luck to those of you with darker skin, too.)

Pearls Before Swine rocks. So much more than For Better or For Worse or Cathy. Those are horrible. Pearls Before Swine is the way comics are supposed to be.

So I've completed two days of my internship. Yesterday was really, really boring. The students were doing worksheets all days, so I got to stair at the tops of their heads as they leaned over their desks and wrote. For six hours. Yea...it was boring. Today the lesson was on subject verb agreement...I watched two classes of that and then asked the teacher if I could try my hand at it. Technically I'm supposed to observe the first week and then start teaching the second, but I was already getting bored. S/V agreement is not my favorite topic but it sure beats sitting. So I taught that...and actually had a good time doing it. We did a fun activity with people reprenting nouns and verbs and passing an s back and forth between them.

The sad part of all this is that I can no longer teach the homeschool gym class. :( I'm really going to miss that class...

In other news...last night at karate we had three of the Garza blackbelts show up! Mr. Garza and three of his kids were some of my first instructors and I have a lot of respect for them and their skills. The incredible thing was that when we lined up at the end of class I was standing in between Christina Garza and Josh Garza! That was...amazing and scary at the same time. (not scary as in "they're going to get me!" but as in "I'm in the same position as them and the lower belts are looking at my like I used to look at them!")

I'm going to get off now...there is more to write but I am very tired. Good night.

Cool new look. And comments are back! What think ye?

Happy new year to everyone! I've been working on making the comments work again but instead they have just disappeared. Gone completely. I'm hoping that a new post will bring them back to life.

Christmas was (is) wonderful. We decided to wait until the first of January to celebrate this year, so that we could take advantage of after Christmas sales when buying presents. We had intended to open presents this morning, but after staying up to welcome in the new year everybody wanted to go ahead and open presents then. So we didn't get to bed until about 2 am, but it was certainly a lot of fun. I got two CDs (the newest from Brave Saint Saturn and Nickleback), a Monet calender (I'm a huge Monet fan), lots of various eatable stuff, new pj pants (very comfy) and the whole family got a bunch of DVDs. Then we all went to bed and slept in until very late. It feels great.

So Monday I start my full internship. I'm both excited and scared to death. I met with Susan, the teacher I'll be working with, on Monday and we discussed some things about how we will go about working together. It looks like my first week I'll just be observing and I'll do some teaching the second week and then start to take over by the third week.

Monday morning we were working with the level 6s on the dance portion of their floor routine. Now, understand that the bread and butter of coaching gymnastics is yelling "Get tight!" every few seconds. A loose body is out of control: all good gymnasts maintain a tight body throughout their skills. So at any rate, Jeniffer is trying to get Hope to do a dance move correctly. Finally, in frustration, she says "Would you just quite being so tight?!" My boss and I literally collapsed laughing. It's just not the type of thing you hear very often from a coach. Perhaps it doesn't sound so funny on my blog, but it sure was at that point in time.

I guess that will be it for my new year's post. Hope you guys all have a wonderful '09!

I'm getting excited about next summer. I don't know exactly what I'll be doing or where I'm going to be, but from what I know I'm already excited. I'm going to learn the basics of playing guitar. Odd as it may seem, I'm actually looking forward to that. I like to kid myself that I'm at least slightly more mature now than I was at the age of 12, so hopefully I just might have enough perseverance to actually practice.

My other big plan for the summer is to start some serious study of wrestling and grappling. Ideally I will find a place to learn bjj. My goal has always been to get my black belt in karate and then try to learn more about fighting on the ground, and now that I've actually got the belt I'm getting pretty excited about learning something really different.

Last night Anna and I went to an end-of-semester party that some fellow English majors at NSU got together. It was at a bar...not exactly my first choice for a place to get together with friends but I don't have any moral objections to it. The funny thing was that when we walked in I had to show my id, but they let Anna just walk right in!

Why is it that some of the best music has some of the worst lyrics? I love the song "Undead" by Hollywood Undead. I really, really like that style of music. So why do the lyrics have to be so incredibly trashy?

I turned in my two weeks notice on Thursday for my weekend job. I'll miss working with Donald and Corky, but of course I'll still stop by their house now and then and visit them. Since I'm gong to be working forty hours a week with my internship and still coaching in the evenings I don't think I could really keep that job. There are only so many hours in a week.

I'm looking forward to being back at karate class full time on Monday nights. I haven't been able to go to first class and help teach all semester because I had a class until 7:10. Now I'll actually be able to help teach again. I talked to Luke a few weeks ago about the kids program and I think sometime soon he and I and Josiah are going to talk to Mr. Murry about making a couple changes to the program. I know Mr. Murry's heart is in the right place but I really hope he let's us make these changes, 'cause I feel we're being very hampered by a couple of things. (how was that for being vague?)

Well, a friend is throwing a Christmas party that is starting in about 20 minutes, so I probably should see about getting my shoes on. Y'all have a great Christmas!

So I've been promising for while to post the story I've written for my creative writing class. So here it is. However, let me first give a disclaimer.

Kayla's character is based very much on a level 5 I currently work with (no, her name is not actually Kayla). Kayla's mother, however, is not based on the mother of my real student. I don't even think I have met the real Kayla's mother. So if the mother of the real Kayla or someone who knows her reads this, please understand that I am making no comment whatsoever on her as a person or a parent.

So, without further ado (sp?), here it is!

Kip

“Linda!” Bruce called out as a short woman in a bright purple coat walked past the make-shift desk covered in catalogues, springs of various sizes and nuts and bolts off various pieces of gym equipment. Her tall heels made a loud click, click, click sound on the unfinished concrete and Kayla began to wonder if this was the best idea.

“We’ve made some really good progress today and Kayla wanted to show you something. She’s a little tired now, but wanted to try and let you see it before y’all go home.” Bruce ran a hand through his silver hair. “She got her kip without spot today!”

“Well, it’s about time!” the woman exclaimed, rummaging through her bag and producing a camcorder.

Kayla stood, eyes focused intently on the wooden bar in front of her, trying to ignore the pit in the bottom of her stomach. Her mother stood a few feet away, smiling tensely over the camcorder viewfinder. “Come on now Kayla, let’s see the big move!”

“Pop your wrists over the bar instead of pulling it to you and you’ll have this,” Bruce said quietly.

Leaping forward for what seemed the millionth time that day, Kayla seized the bar and swung beneath it, pushing her toes forward until her body was straight and almost horizontal to the floor. Pulling her feet back towards the bar, she waited until her shins had almost hit it and then, squeezing every muscle in her body, she pulled the bar towards her. “Pop!” Bruce yelled and her mother let out a squeal.

Then something went wrong, and Kayla’s chest was slamming into the bar and her hands were in the wrong position. With unstoppable force, gravity was pulling her to the floor and no amount of effort from her shaking muscles would bring her back to the bar.

“Ok, ok. That’s good for today.” Bruce motioned her away from the bar. “You’ve worn yourself to a frazzle.” He turned towards the woman. “Mom, she’s going to sleep well tonight!”

Kayla winced at the sound of the camcorder snapping shut. “I did do it earlier,” she said to her feet. “Bruce didn’t even touch me and I got all the way up on the bar.” She looked up hesitantly.

“Well, that would have been a good step two months ago.” Her mother’s lips were pressed together in that way which always meant a chewing out was on its way. “But with your first meet this weekend, one time during practice isn’t going to cut it, don’t you think?”

“Now, Linda,” Bruce stepped in. “The kip is a very difficult skill and…”

“I know how difficult or not difficult a kip is,” she replied icily. “And I was doing my kip when I was eight. Kayla is nine now, and I expect her to get this.”
Bruce took a small step towards the woman. “Kayla, go change. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Kayla hurried back to the locker room, not wanting to hear her mother argue with the coach again. Two rows of lockers lined a brick wall and a single, paint splotched bench ran down the middle of the room.

“Did you get it?” Brittan, one of Kayla’s teammates, asked. Brittan was a level 7, an optional gymnast, who could create her own routines for competition and could do giants on the high bar. Plus she was twelve, which made her very cool. “You did a really good job earlier in practice.”

“No, but I think I bruised my chest.” Kayla flopped down on the bench.

“Well, hey, that’s not bad. I mean, you’ve only been working on it for, what, three weeks?”

“No, more like four months. I’ve just been here for three weeks. I started working on it at Flip Gymnastics.”

“But I thought you came here from Top Form.”

“I did. I took classes at Top Form after we left Flip. We…well…I’ve been at a lot of gyms.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I don’t care what that man says, she has to do a kip twice in that routine. And I’m not going to sit by in the stands while everybody sees my daughter scratch on bars.”

Kayla choked on her broccoli. Scratching meant not competing on that event at all! “But I’m not scratching on bars! I did my kip today! And even if I don’t have it I can still do my routine!”

Kayla’s mother glared down the table at her, her fork held like a weapon in her right hand. The table, jammed into the kitchen too small for its size, left Kayla’s seat shoved against the refrigerator and at times was almost claustrophobic. The house was silent, except for the sound of Jerry Springer coming from the television in the living room.

“I know how the competitions work, Kayla. I was level 7 state champion. And don’t interrupt me when I’m talking to your father.” She turned to the man sitting across the table. “Do you have any idea what people will say when they realize my daughter can’t do a kip? Maybe we should have her compete as a level four this year.”

Kayla blanched. “I was a level four last year! And Bruce said I should move on.”

“Kayla! I’m speaking to your father!” Mrs. Burns turned again to her husband. “I said, maybe she should be a level four again.”

Kayla’s father looked over the top of his Sports Illustrated. “But she did great as a level 4 last year, so why shouldn’t she move on? I mean, how else is she going to learn it?”

“Steve, maybe you don’t realize it, but the gymnastics community is very small. When she walks into that gym, everybody knows she’s my daughter. Everyone knows I was state champion, and they will expect the same from her. If she doesn’t look like a champion I’ll never be able to go to a meet again.”

Steve picked his magazine back up and muttered, “Well, maybe if she stayed with one coach for more than a few months she could learn something…”

His wife slammed her fork down on the table. “Kayla, it’s time for bed. Now.”

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Kayla was walking down a long, long hall. At the end, she knew, was the room where the meet was being held, but no matter how long she walked it seemed the room never came into sight. Every door she passed was closed, and those that had windows were frosted and only let in a little light. It was cold. Didn’t they have a heater in this building?

Foot steps sounded behind her, and another gymnast walked up beside her. She was dressed in black warm-up pants and a leotard and carried a gym bag over one shoulder. The girl smiled at Kayla.

“Hi, are you competing in the meet?”

“Um…yea.” Kayla smiled hesitantly at the girl. “Are you?”

“Oh yes!” she replied. “I’m so excited! Who do you think will be judging?”

“I don’t know…I just hope they’re nice. I don’t like grumpy judges.”

“Like Mark Troller? Did you ever notice that his name is almost Mr. Troll?”

Kayla giggled, and glanced over at the girl. She had a pretty face. “What level are you?”

“Oh, I’m a seven.” The girl tossed her braid over one shoulder. “I was state champion last year.”

“Oh.” Kayla said quietly. “I’m a five.”

The girl looked questioningly at her. “How long have you been a five?”

“Since this summer. How long is that?” Kayla tried counting off on her fingers from May, but couldn’t remember what came after August. The other gymnast was quicker.

“About five months. So, you can do your kip then, can’t you?”

“Well…” Kayla looked up and was surprised to see they were just outside the gymnastics room, and a small crowd of gymnasts had formed around them, staring intently at her. “You know, it’s my first meet as a level five and…”

“But, come on, you’ve had five months.” Now her voice was cold like the rest of the building.

“I’m working on it!”

“You mean you can’t?” The girl seemed taller now and her face wasn’t nearly as pretty. “But you have to do a kip!

“I’m working on it!” Kayla pleaded. “I got it once!

“Once?” the girl shrieked. “You can’t be a five! Mr. Troll! Mr. Troll!”

Mr. Troller stepped into the hallway, but he was a troll, with a huge ugly face and green slime on his teeth. He leaned forward and Kayla could smell his foul breath as he grabbed her left arm and began to drag her out of the building. “No meet for you today. You would be an embarrassment.”

“But I got it!” Kayla tried to tell him, though it seemed he didn’t hear. “Really, Bruce didn’t even touch me! I got it all by myself!”

Her bedroom was dark when Kayla woke with a start, trying to pry the troll’s fingers from around her arm.

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“And now the gymnasts from Thomson’s Gymnastics!” the announcer called out. Kayla walked robotically into the room behind her teammates, oblivious to anything but the set of bars that stood ominously by the far wall. The gym where the meet was being held was large, with bleachers set up downstairs and upstairs for the hundreds of parents with cameras. A large blue spring floor dominated the center of the gym, next to which were several competition sized beams. The vault was against the left wall, the long blue runway looking like a tongue coming out of the vault board set up at the end.

“So these are our level five gymnasts for today,” the announcer called out, while cameras flashed and the long line of competitors saluted. “Coaches, you can start warming up your students and get ready for the first rotation.”

“Ok people!” Bruce called out. “Let’s look alive! Get yourself warmed up and start stretching. We’ll be warming up on bars in about twenty minutes.”

Kayla sat down on the floor and reached for her toes. Her mom had said nothing on the drive to the gym, but the silence itself had been enough. Breakfast seemed to be caught halfway down her throat, where it had formed a hard knot that pushed on her heart and made breathing difficult. She wished Brittan were there, but the seven’s didn’t compete until the next day.

All too soon Bruce was leading his team to the bars, Kayla dragging along at the back. The judge’s seat was empty as the girls began warming up their routines, Bruce giving correction and advice to each student.

“Bruce, you’ve got 5 minutes of warm-up time left.”

Kayla looked towards the voice and froze. Sitting down in the judges seat was a tall, grim figure with a face that looked like it had just eaten several dozen crab apples. Mr. Troller. Kayla’s breakfast suddenly dropped to the bottom of her stomach, and seemed to keep on falling.

“Bruce!” she almost squeaked. “Can’t we switch rotations? Can’t we start on beam?” Frantically she looked towards the bleachers. Her mother sat upstairs, camcorder gripped tightly in her hands. “I can’t do bars right now.”

Bruce sat down on a mat and motioned Kayla to him. “Sit down Kayla.”

Kayla sat and stared at her feet. Breakfast was pushing on her heart again. “Bruce, I can’t do my kip,” she whispered.

“I know that, Kayla.” Bruce was quiet for a minute. “What did she say?” he finally asked.

“That if I couldn’t do it I might as well scratch.”

“Do you want to scratch?”

“No.”

Bruce pulled his glasses off and wiped them on his shirt. “Well, Kayla, if you don’t try something difficult, you’ll never know what you can do.”

“But she was level 7 champion! She knows what she’s talking about, and she knows I’m not good enough!” Kayla’s throat hurt and she blinked hard to keep her eyes dry.

Bruce was quiet for a while again. “So she knows what she’s talking about because she was a champion, and she thinks you aren’t good enough?”

“Yea.”

Bruce sighed. “Kayla, your mother was a great gymnast. I always loved watching her compete. It made me proud.”

Kayla looked up at her coach. “You knew her then?”

Bruce laughed. “I was her coach for 7 years! She was my first state champion.”

“You coached my mom?!”

“Is that so hard to believe?”

Kayla looked at Bruce’s gray hair. “You’re old!”

He laughed. “Kayla, when I watch you, it’s amazing how much you are like your mother. You’re a great gymnast and don’t you let anybody ever tell you something different. Now get up and warm up your routine.”

Kayla stood up in shock and walked to the bar. Bruce had coached her mother. The level 7 state champion.

“Wait, Bruce!” she turned back to her coach. “If mom was your first state champion, how many have you had?”

Bruce grinned. “Thirteen. So far.”
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Kayla jumped and grabbed the bar, stretching her toes forward, trying for the millionth time to do a kip. But this time it didn’t matter. Bruce Thomson, who had coached thirteen state champions, thought she was great. Who cared about kips?

The sign above is supposed to say "Friends snack shop". But apparently two characters were switched, and the signs says "eat little children."

Wow, I'm really tired. I don't actually know why. But I'm really tired.

Tuesday I met with the lady that I'll be working with next semester during my student teaching. I think God must be trying to teach me something with this internship: I'm going to be teaching 6 periods of 8th grade grammar and writing. I hate grammar. I think a lot of what is taught in a grammar class is useless. So I'm going to have an interesting time. The good news is that I will only have to make five lesson plans per week. Plus I'll be teaching some writing, which will be fun.

We had breakfast at the Teague's house this morning and then followed it with Bible study. It was good. While driving out there the little crack in my windshield got bigger. I'll need to get some windshield repair glue or something and take care of it. If it just wasn't so cold outside I'd not be so upset about it.

My friend Andrew, who formally was the Kinmen team leader, is graduating with a Masters of Education in about a week. Congrats to Andrew! He'll be returning to Taiwan soon.

Anna is having a tough finals week. It seems she's put off a couple projects because of working on the elections and now it's coming back to bite her. But it should all be over in the next couple days. Add oil, Anna! 加油!

Monday night we tried doing team sparring. It was interesting. Basically it just like normal sparring, except there are four people trying to hit each other. Or actually it's two teams of two people trying to hit each other. A lot of fun.

I'm just grasping at straws right now trying to come up with something to write about. Perhaps I should just close this post and write a different time when I actually have something to say.

Ok, a long overdue picture post. These first pictures are from back in October when we had a cook out with our good friends the Teague family.

This is Stockton, his little brother Phoenix (isn't that a cool name?), Joshua and Ethan.

He's got the guitar, he's got the hat, he's got the shades...that is one cool dude. A legend in his own mind.

He's swollowed a pencil!

Moving on...November. Here is Nicole, finally getting her black belt from John Burnett. Nicole is a blast to hang out with and compete against at tournaments and when I heard she was going to be promoted I took the evening off at gym to go watch. Certainly a very well earned belt. Congrats!

While I was there they also held a small tournament for the little kids. This is Elizabeth, one of my students in the homeschool gymnastics class. Elizabeth won "best illigal shot of the night" with a straight right bomb to the other guy's nose. It was beautiful, even though she wasn't actually supposed to hit him in the face. Her siblings James and Emily also competed and both did very well.

Moving foward to...today! We had our third TAG meet of the season at Jenks. Pictured here you can see our levels 1 through 6 team. Naomi is hidden behind Merideth's face, but you can just barely see her in the back. All the kids wearing the read outfits are from our gym.

Merideth and Abby, the two level sixs I've been working with a lot lately. They both had an excellent meet today: Merideth stuck her back walk over on the beam, and had a beautiful vault and Abby did the best beam routine I've ever seen her do.

Here is Hannah, who has enough personality for about three people. She was very proud of her four blue ribbons today!

Another person with huge personality, Kimberly is one of the sweetist kids you'd ever want to meet. I'm not entirely sure why, but she has always called me "Mr. Samuels".

Lexi, Katie (top), Cameron (bottom) and Sam. I thought this was a really great picture.

And that's that! I'll try and post pictures a little more often. Now that we have the high speed connection is isn't nearly as much of a hassle!

Hello faithful readers (aka Chera, Anna and Mom). I'm not sure how much of a post this is going to be. Earlier in the semester I would write posts during the lecture portion of this class (because the prof. is a VERY boring lecturer). Now we are doing writing workshops during the entire class and it's a lot more interesting. So I'll try to get a post written, but it might not cover much.

Ok, let's start with gymnastics. The co-worker who had been causing trouble has been fired. It's a real shame that things worked out that way, because she had the ability to be a really great teacher. But she simply wouldn't follow directions and refused to act professionally in front of the parents. So now she is gone. The end result is that we are very short handed, but classes have actually been going very well. We've hired a new teacher who is still in training but I've been very pleased with her work so far. I think she'll be a great replacement. Hopefully once we get her trained a little more I can go back to working with team a little more.

School is very close to finished for the semester. We've got our first meeting for our full time internship next semester coming up tomorrow. It's hard to believe I'm finishing my last semester of formal classes. I think next semester is going to be a very big stretch for me but I think I'm really going to learn a lot.

Jason talked to me Monday night about a mission trip he is getting together for next summer that would be two weeks of teaching English camps in China. It would be a really, really cool trip. Plus I could be a big help, since I've got a lot of experience in that exact type of thing. It'd be a chance to visit China, which I have wanted to do for a long time. But it's exactly at the same time as the trip to the Phillippines that the Browns are planning. And then it throws a wrench in plans for Taiwan next summer as well. And it costs $3,000. Plus I still don't know if I can even do anything overseas next summer...I might have to do pre-training for whatever job I got. Soo....pray for direction for me.

Wow...I just realized something. Sunday I asked my Sunday School class to pray that I would get direction for next summer...Monday Jason brings up a totally new mission trip that I hadn't even considered. Is this a sign? I don't know... I'll have to pray. And talk to Mom and Dad and my siblings...

Monday I taught a lesson for one of my methods classes. It was a lot of fun. The teacher said she wanted something that would hook the class, so I opened by doing a two board elbow break. I played it for everything it was worth and then used that to have my classmates write about it...from there we went on and talked about point of view. I think folks enjoyed the lesson.

I'll be posting my short story from this writing class soon. I've got a few errors I have to fix first...then you folks will be able to view it in all of it's glory.

I've started working more on my juggling in the past month or so. I'm starting (just starting) to get a handle back on five clubs. And my four club tricks need a lot of work...a lot. Last summer I realized my juggling has really fallen from where it used to be and unless I do something it will get to the point that I'm not performance ready even with basic stuff.

Did I mention my big project for this coming summer? I'm going to learn to play the guitar. I'm going to learn a bunch of chords and how to use them to lead a song. I don't really enjoy playing music but having watched Daniel and Megan make really good use of guitar in their ESL classes I have decided it is a skill I should gain.

Ok, I'm logging off now. Talk to you folks later.

You guys should all be very proud of me. I just spelled the word claustrophobic all by myself, and got it right on the first try! I'm happy!

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!