A little update about the new club yesterday.

Our 7th dan Master, 5th dan Master, 1st dan black belt, FP the green belt and myself, red belt, all turned up at the club that has joined under us. The class was quite big, about 20 or so people, which was cool! Their grades ranged from white to green, with one blue stripe and one black belt (I think he was 2nd dan, I forget). Our 7th dan took the class, and we did a bit of everything! Sparring, patterns, padwork, drills and self defence/hapkido.

Since I was one of three seniors (masters not included), I helped out a lot with the class. A good bunch of people, actually! I really enjoyed teaching and working with them, and made a fair few new friends. They were very respectful, listening and absorbing everything I said. During the lesson I realised that our club is a lot harder than this club. They donned the whole gear for sparring (boots, shin guards, groin guards, gloves, gum shields, head protectors), while we tend to just use gloves and boots if we have them. They looked shocked when I only put on gloves. They also could take a lot less pain wise when people demonstrated hapkido techniques on them.

I don't point this out to get an ego boost, but more as a reflection of how I didn't really think we were that hardcore. I mean, because you don't know any other way than the way you train if you're new, you just go along with it. When people in the club would say "yeah we're harder than x", I used to just see it as a bit of a joke within the club. Actually we are pretty hard. But what is more interesting is that we are polite and good people with it. We never use it to exact brutality on our demonstrating partners (not on purpose, anyway!), or to be derogatory to others. In fact, we strive to teach them in order to help. Just struck me as odd.

In other news, I may have messed up again. I am good at that. However, in the last two months I've improved a lot mentally, and rather than be upset, I'm going to accept and figure out how to better my mentality further. Sometimes others need space, and can't be rushed. This is important. This is also a learning curve for me, I am bad at not-shallow relationships. That means I can act really well (e.g. for this new club, making them feel comfortable and be likeable to them), but I am very bad at real friendships and relationships. I'm getting better, hopefully. So yessss. WE SHALL SEE, YES.