Purple point five

For those of you who don't know I've been studying the martial arts for a couple of years now. It started with me becoming an Uke for my friend Earl for a self defense class. An Uke is essentially the person that gets beat up in order to demonstrate a technique (it is also one of the best ways to learn). We would get together informally in the wee hours of the morning (between 1-4am) and work on things. After about a year of doing that inconsistently, he was telling me about a martial arts camp that he holds every year where a bunch of the members of our system show up and train for 3-4 days. Last year I went to the camp as a white belt, and after getting heat stroke (didn't drink enough water) and attempting to rehydrate I managed to make it through the camp and rank up to my yellow belt. Since then I've gone to orange, and again to my purple belt. After moving away I was no longer able to train so my progression in rank came to a standstill. I knew that there would be a camp again this year, and I would do my best to make it. While traveling 3 hours for 2 hours of class isn't really do-able, driving 3 hours for 4 days of training is much more worth it. Unfortunately the time I put in at camp wasn't enough time to let me reach my next rank, but I did go up half a rank. I look forward to being closer to my teachers and being able to train more so that I can get that rank. The next post will be about one of my experiences at camp....