We went to Mr. B.'s dojo last night. He was doing the board breaking, self defense, and fighting of the lower belts' testing. I lost track of how many people I fought. It's fun to fight and learn i.e. get beat, and it's fun to fight and teach i.e. nicely beat up the other dude. I got to fight Jay for a two minute segment. I really can't say who won but I thought I fought good. All four of us (Samuel, Ethan, Joshua, and I) got to show Mr. B. and his brownbelts our competition katas. We got a big compliment when he asked us what Mr. M. does at Battle Creek to get such good kata. We fumbled around about his passion for it, how much it is emphasized, and how we practice stances. We decided that we'll have to toss around ideas and then write him a memo. You can never get your thoughts straight the first time you're asked a question. :)

This be from BJ's Blog

I had an interesting, but by now not at all shocking, experience at school today. I taught at Jong-Jehng for four periods this morning, then went to An Huu after lunch to teach four more periods. (Thursday is my longest, hardest day, by the way! It's the end of the week, it's eight periods, and then we also have team dinner and meeting.) Anyway, when I got to An Huu, I got out of the van and started to walk over to the teacher's office. One of the 5th grade girls called my name, though, and motioned for me to come over to the 6th grade classroom. (The 6th grade at that school is five girls, and the 5th grade is three girls and one boy.) When they opened the door to the classroom, I recognized one of the recent pop hits playing loudly inside. Just last week, when I went out to dinner with one of my teachers, it had been playing in the restaurant (sp?) and she had asked me if I knew of the artist singing it, (she called him "Alex"). I said that I didn't know of him, and then went ahead and asked her what the song was about. I felt like I'd just set off a booby trap when she told me that it was about "taking off clothses." Sometimes I'm glad that I have no idea of a lot of the stuff going on around me in Chinese! :-) So, sure enough, when I asked the girls what they were doing at the school today, they answered by demonstrating that they were using their jackets to practice strip-dancing. It was all the girls from 6th and 5th, and the one boy from 5th and a couple boys from 3rd and 4th were hanging around. The girls made a big deal of shooing the boys out of the classroom and locking the door, but then the boys stood looking in the windows and the girls acted like they thought the boys couldn't see as long as they weren't in the room. They kept asking me if it wasn't fun and I kept telling them that they were crazy and that it was embarassing (sp?), and asked where Vinco (the English teacher)was. They said she was still having her after-lunch nap. I started to leave the room, but then decided to turn around and see if I could get them to come on out with me and do something else. Just as I turned around, one of the 5th grade girls really did pull her shirt off in front of everyone, much to the hysterical delight of the other girls. I was still giving a properly mortified first response, and trying to quickly think what to do, when Vinco walked into the room. She shook her head at them and said they were crazy, like you would at some childish but harmless prank, the girl put her shirt back on, and then they turned off the music and we all left the room. Like I said at first, though, I wasn't actually shocked, even though I pretended to be. This society is just so obsessed with those kinds of things.

Isn't that sad?! And let me know if this analogy makes any sense.

Whenever we test for karate we get our blackbelts and bigger intermediate belts to brace the boards for breaking. And they actually don't get to see the break because they have to look down to prevent splinters landing in their eyes. Mr. M. said once "Guard your eyes, guys." and thatkinda triggered this. That's exactly what Dad says whenever he and the boys walk past immodest women. And lust really is like a splinter in your eye, something guys have to look away from. And the kind of girls who want their bodies looked at end up like the boards. Used once, sometimes twice, put in the trash.

The weather is positively beautiful today. I'm fighting an ear infection. Dad gets home tonight. He's been out of town again. Some of us got to talk to BJ on the phone last night. I didn't. *sniffle* Samuel quit Microtel. Those night shifts were really getting to him. He looked pale and gaunt, was sleeping 10 hours a day and still exhausted. I'm glad he quit. Now we're all praying desperately for him to get a job. I have missed teaching Isaac's his lessons several days in a row. *tisk tisk* Gotta fix that.

I better get to work. Love y'all!