DAY FIVE‏

Evening all,

Just finished our 5th day here (fourth day of training that is because we hit Prague yesterday). It has been another awesome day of hard work with Master Jedut who took classes that have been building on the themes of previous sessions while adding more free / semi-free sparring exercises into the mix. I have to say that this experience has been very satisfying. I think we have already learned a lot more than we would have attending several large scale competitive events and we still have several days of training to go.
I'm really looking forward to implementing some of the ideas we have been introduced to and taking the time to figure them out for myself.

As I mentioned today we did a good deal more semi-free sparring with all sorts of different partners. This gave me a good opportunity to identify who I would get the most out of training with for the next few days.
I think Mark in particular is enjoying being able to work with lighter, quicker guys around his size. As I am with some of the larger / taller ones. There are a couple with whom I am well matched but still have good control in spite of our friendly competiveness which is sweet.

Yesterday's trip to Prague was beautiful. Having only visited Prague in the winter I was happily suprised to see just how nice it is in the summer. Very very pretty.
The only down side was our hyper Polish tour guide who left us with no translation and moved at such a quick pace we constantly got told off for lagging behind the rest of the group. Ok, there was one more down side too - the drive from Nowa Ruda (where camp is being held) to Prague was a little longer than expected... We were told 3 hours. It turned out about 4 and a half which made for a long day. I guess nothing compares to long haul flights from NZ though right guys!?

On a different note, I should mention just how Taekwon-Do obsessed some of the people on this camp are. Like I said before, you have Jedut who really does seem to be a Jedi master who doesn't need to sleep... but now you have students who seem to miss out one of the three vital components to life here at camp. Our lives revolve around sleep, food and training. But for the dedicated few, eating can be done right next to the training hall at the sport cafe type facility that feeds several hundred of us and sleep? Who needs it when you can train until the wee hours of the morning? Finally! I have someone to share my martial arts obsessions with... Some of them kinda scare me though to be honest. I had one of the smallest junior female fighters catch me with a mean overhand right today and my jaw was aching all through dinner...

Time to settle back into the cycle of existence - sleep is next on the list.

Dobra nots... zzzzzzzzzzz

Carl VR