Last night I snapped a few photos of where we train and also snapped a few team shots. I’m omitting the latter because of privacy issues but I will show you our “dojang”.
The first is a picture of the hallway. Normally the building is a chaotic mess of high school ballet students. Needless to say we stand out. When I snapped this one everyone was in a studio so all you see is a big ‘ole mess of gear. (you can barely see two dancers if you look hard)
The second is a picture of our studio. The ballet railing is nice for stretching. However, don’t let that floor fool you. It’s covered with some sort of funny rubberish covering that is better-suited for ballet shoes than bare feet. My first six months resulted in a lot of bloody feet from torn calluses (sometimes it still does). In addition, under that covering is some very hard wood.
Oh yes, the whole building often smells like feet. I kid you not. I guess it’s a ballet thing.
Funny story from this semester: I was practicing Koryo in an empty studio before the next class arrived. Well just as I got to the last arc hand throat strike with ki-hop! part a male ballet student sauntered in. This guy was in brightly colored tights and I’m guessing is a college student. Well my ki-hop and pose scared the crap out of this poor guy. He literally exclaimed “my goodness!” and dropped his books.
I had to take great pains not to laugh. I also apologized profusely.
Past that I’ve been given a choice: Test for first dan next week or wait until January 7. So, Bob has to mull that over.
Addendum: I’m starting to lean towards next week.
~BCP
2 responses so far ↓
John // 12/14/2007 at 5:29 AM
Good luck on your black belt test, whenever you go for it. btw, nice new look with the blog.
bpatterson67 // 12/14/2007 at 11:26 AM
Thanks John!