:minimalist

Tuesday, July 29, 2003

 

My flight landed yesterday at around 9:10 PM. Incredible fun. Both the flight to Baltimore and the flight back had stopovers, so I got to take off 4 times and land 4 times. :D I love flying... except when you sit so long that your rear starts to hurt. Takeoff and landing are marvelous. Especially the reverse thrust when you land... and landing when the sun is setting, when you can see the lights from the cities sprawled out across the land and the sun setting on the horizon in an orange glow. haha :)

Oh, yeah, the tournament. A little breakdown:

Thursday: Fly out in the afternoon. Read Jane Eyre most of the way there, sitting next to McKay. Fun. GML sits next to a Kiwi. Brilliant. Stop in Houston, connect to Baltimore. Arrive 1:10 AM local time. o_0 Sleep.

Friday: Wake up at around 8:30. Take a shower. QT. Eat breakfast (A muffin, a little box of cereal + milk) for under 4 dollars. Go out to the tennis courts, work a little bit with my staff and open hand forms. Go back to my room, read a little, change into street clothes. At noon, meet the Lee family (minus Collin because he was testing with Mr. Ozuna), Kevin (Schutzman), Lauren (Canas), Adam(Lathram), and Melvin (Hsieh), plus some of their parents, in the lobby, go to Obrycki's to eat crab. Lauren teaches me how to get rid of the gross stuff. He and the other guys make comments concerning some of the crab's body parts that are... bizarre. Let's just say they had a little too much fun. At around 2:30, we went to ESPNzone. Hung out with Mari Lee (Collin's little sister) most of the time. Cute kid. Went back to the hotel at around 6, had dinner with some of the guys. Afterward, they went swimming... I sat by the pool and read more of Jane Eyre. With my camera. ^_^ Most of the weekend was spent hanging out with them. Hehe :) Funny bunch of guys. (For the record, most of them are thirteen, but Lauren is my age. So no, I'm not sick.) Went back to Collin's room and watched part of Old School, got so disgusted by their views on humor that I went back to my room and went to sleep.

Saturday: First day of competition. Got up at 6:30 AM, shower, QT, a little reading. Opening ceremonies at 9:30. All of my divisions were on Sunday, so I just watched. There was a school from Florida called Wah Lum (Hua Ling)... their forms were pretty incredible. They were tossing butterfly kicks and aerials into "traditional" Chinese forms, which I thought was a little cheap... but their movement was still very nice. Collin did all of his wushu divisions... total domination. That kid is incredible. He ended up with 8 gold medals and 1 silver (some Wah Lum kid beat him once). the fights started at around 1:30 in the afternoon. Our cheering section was the greatest :D There was some team from Florida called Glenn Wilson's Fire Dragons or something cute like that... they openly challenged GML this year for 1st place (overall). It was pretty funny. Besides cheering wildly for our fighters, we always cheered for their opposition. Sometimes we knew the people, like the German team they were fighting... other times, we didn't even care, we just cheered for the opposite color. Funny stuff. I lost my voice and everything... Our women fighters did really well. Out of 5 female weight divisions, we took first in 4 of them. The only one we didn't win was the heavy weight class, and that's because we don't have any fighters that fat... o_0 Slept at about midnight.

Sunday: Wake up at 6:30 again. Shower. QT. My first three divisions are all scheduled at 9:30 in the morning. Wonderful. I did my 2-man set with Angie first... we didn't place, but that's okay, because we weren't expecting to. First of all, she had only had the form for about a month. Not too much time to practice. Second, neither of us really belonged in the adult advanced division (I'm not an adult, she's not advanced). But at least we did the form okay. Second division was traditional kung fu long weapon. I think I ended up with an 8.3 something (out of 8.5). I only had one opponent... some white girl doing her spear. Beat her. Watched Lauren do Bow Staff, ran upstairs to see if Kenpo divisions were running yet, ran back downstairs, did my traditional kung fu open hand form. Competed against two white girls, ended up with a score of 8.46. Beat both of them. Kenpo was sort of silly because I was only competing against people from my school, and they were little girls at that. But I still did okay. Right after the kenpo divisions finished (at around 4 PM), there was the master's demonstration, awards ceremonies, and the closing ceremonies. Our school took first place in Lei Tai fighting, second place in forms, and first place overall (third year in a row). And the little dragon people came out with nothing. Hm. We were definitely the most enthusiastic group, and one of the biggest groups, too. Then there was about a 2 hour break before the banquet. We went up to Collin's room again... they started watching Jackass (the movie), so I left and went to my room to read. Banquet was at 8. Collin got youth male competitor of the year, and Lauren got teen male competitor of the year (Mari and Melvin were both nominated, but didn't win). Good stuff. There was a dance afterward... but as I'm sure you all know, I don't particularly care for dancing. So we went up to Adam's room and watched X2. That movie is incredible. Much better than the first one. Went back to my room at around 2 AM, repacked my stuff, went to sleep.

Monday: Sleep until about 9:45. Got some breakfast, brought it back to my room, sat in my room and read until 11:45. A lot of people flew out with an early morning flight. Collin and Lauren and their families drove up to New York at around 11:30. Left for the airport at around noon. McKay managed to get me on the group flight, which means I didn't have to sit in the airport by myself until 5:45 PM (fun), which was the original plan (I didn't manage to secure a spot on the group flight before). First leg of the flight was from BWI to Newark (New Jersey). The flight took about... 20 minutes. As we were landing, the cockpit announced "We didn't get the name of the soccer team, but we hear you guys did well." Hilarious. I bet GML never knew he coached a soccer team. We'll be hearing about that (and sitting with a Kiwi on the way there) for the next year or two. When you take off from Newark, you can see NYC. Beautiful. I'd like to visit sometime. On the second leg of the trip, the inflight movie was Old School. Bizarre. I never heard of the movie, but in one weekend, I saw parts of it twice. I finished reading Jane Eyre and slept for most of the flight home. Good stuff.

My voice is still hoarse. But my parents are happy that I got home safely and didn't do anything stupid while I was away from home. I told them I want to fight next year. Mum says no way, dad just laughs. o_0

Goodbye, little dragon, goodbye.

bananna 11:55 AM  |