Yesterday were the taekwondo exams of this half year. I had the green belt and wanted to go for blue, skipping green-blue. My teacher allowed it, knowing that I already have black belt in kempo and that I participate in every Wednesday lesson (those were his words..). To cut it short: I passed, but I was told that there's a thing that I have to work on. I seem to have 'barely passed' for blue, though green-blue was no problem. I should show more spirit/force in the taeguks (kata/style form), he thought my movements were weak.

That's a bit weird because most of the time I think I'm rather forceful in my movements, I really don't experience it as weak. However, it might have been the nerves and the concentration on getting the movements exactly right that made me slower yesterday. I was focusing more on technique than on strength and speed, so that might have been the reason that things weren't as powerfull as they could have been. Well, that's something to work on, I guess. Ha, the break test went perfectly fine though! And that for a first time, I never practiced it.

My teacher told me that, now that he knows that I am able to do sparring*, he wants me to do more sparring and kicking at the training-pillows to see if that will improve my strength/power. This might be a good thing, though I dislike sparring a bit. On Monday lessons the focus is on sparring, on Wednesday on taeguks and technique. This year I could not participate on Monday because of Musilon, but that's finished next year. However, next year there's an interesting set of lessons by the Theaterobers and those are on Wednesdays. So perhaps I'll switch music and sport.

* When I told my teacher that I miss an eye, he concluded that I could not spar because it was too dangerous. So last week when there were club championships (I became first in my poule, though it was a poule of only one guy and me..) I was not asked to do sparring. I sent him a mail then to ask permission to go for the blue belt at once and in that mail I explained that I am otherwise perfectly healthy and that sparring would not be a problem as long as my left eye wasn't kicked shut. I guess that the message got through because yesterday at the exam I was asked to put on protection and do some (feet only) sparring.

So, club champion, blue belt and this Friday my last Musilon concert. After that things will get quiet because of the summer holidays, meaning that I'll have two more evenings free per week. Time to work on our tent improvement; we want to pimp our Sahara 400 tent by giving it walls, making it something like this reenactment pimped tent (see background).