Tuesday, September 12, 2006
IASS 06
No, it's not a special edition of James Bond's rival, it "just" means Institute of Aikido Summer School of 2006. But I'm sure it hides at least as many secrets, if not more, than a James Bond movie :p
Summer School is the perfect occasion to bounce people on the mat and get thrown countless times both by people you know quite well and by brand new people. Even though there tends to be some slight lack of adventurism (who says I can't coin words?) since people train with their own more often than not. Maybe they're scared of the others, who knows?
This year was the least painful I've had. The first time I went I had a sprained neck - so that hurt - and the second time I made up for all I hadn't done the previous time and I remember having long warm baths to try and diffuse the pain... This time I think I was massively hit by lack of adventurism and took it very easy but at least I lived through the week fine :)
Basically how it goes is food, aikido, food, aikido, food, aikido, sleep. And sometimes you have an afternoon or evening off.
This year the cool thing was that I got to know Paul better, he's a 3rd Dan but he's only a few years older than I am and we spent quite a while hunting wild sheep and talking ourselves silly. Which rocked because Andrew was really busy doing his extra classes to have all the requirements for his shortly upcoming 1st Dan grading.
All and all, thanks to cool people like Andrew and Paul, and Trish, and Jack and Dale and Rachel and Trish and Sensei &co, it was a fun week, even though I think I lost one more layer of naiveté there and got to know a few people better and to discover the world isn't as pink and fairytale-like as I see it sometimes.
My aim for next year is to be less scared of injuries on the mat and give it more energy, without aching so badly I can't get up in the morning :p I think it takes quite a few years to find the perfect balance and I'm not there yet...
Without much further ado, the PICS of the social events. Because of course in England, whatever you do, you have to add booze at some point and that's why we have a BBQ in the middle of the week and a formal dinner on the Friday - and drunk people on the mat on Saturday.... or in their bed instead of at practice hehe
pout. Blogger doesn't want to upload them... I'll try in a separate post but if it doesn't work you'll have to go without the pics...
Without much further ado, the PICS of the social events. Because of course in England, whatever you do, you have to add booze at some point and that's why we have a BBQ in the middle of the week and a formal dinner on the Friday - and drunk people on the mat on Saturday.... or in their bed instead of at practice hehe
pout. Blogger doesn't want to upload them... I'll try in a separate post but if it doesn't work you'll have to go without the pics...
# posted by V @ 6:20 PM 
