Alive and Kicking

Hey all, I've been sick for most of this week with a really random stomach bug. I didn't throw up at all, but I had a fever and felt nausous all the time... Weird... Anyway, I felt better today so I went for the self-defense/sparring class tonight. Brian taught class tonight because Mr. Coleman was sick. (I've heard TaeKwonDoMom talk about Brian A. from her school, and he always reminded me of the Brian from my school). He's not a very big man, but he's got a powerful presence and is great with kids. Rodney was there as well; I mentioned in an earlier post that he had hurt his leg while sparring. Well, apparently he hurt it pretty bad, cause he had a cast going all the way up his thigh. I feel bad for him 'cause I know he's going to miss training a lot; I hope he's back on his feet soon. Before class, Brian showed me a couple of self-defense moves that he likes, and asked me if I would help out with a demo that he was doing for the girls in his church youth group. Of course I said yes (I love demos!) so that should give me something interesting to write about later on. For self-defense I was hoping to get paired with Max, 'cause he always improvises his moves and makes it more of a challenge, but Brian put me with one of the new white belts named Matthew. I was kind of disappointed at first, but I ended up having a good time. He's about 17 years old, so he didn't have the ADD little kid personality, and he was very proficient in his moves for a beginner; I was impressed. We did pretty basic moves for self-defense, but it was still good to review the old stuff. Next was sparring, and I was paired with a purple belt, I'm not sure of his name; he's very quiet and never talks to anyone. So we started doing some drills and it was just weird. He was so constant in his movements and he didn't react to anything at all. He even had this little smirk on his face, like he knew that he was unnerving me. That frustrated me for some reason, and I started kicking harder and faster. I'm usually not very agressive at all, but I guess after three days of laying on a couch and doing nothing, I had gotten a little restless. I don't know why I got so frustrated with him, but it just kind of happened. We didn't get to free spar today, but it was still a really good workout. I can't wait for Saturday; Four hours of hardcore self-defense with Mr. Coleman and Master Lucas (and then a pizza party, but that's beside the point!)