MMA

Today was my first MMA class!

I was a bit excited yesterday and am again excited tonight - it's a pretty awesome class!

I mean, yeah, I missed three weeks or so of instructions, but I was paired with this really nice guy (remember, it's a class of only boys) who walked me through a couple of moves.

It's something different, especially in Canada where everybody seems to be so touch-shy (except if you know the other person really well and also except if you're greeting them/saying bye).
It's fun, because you do things like sit on the other person's chest while hugging them (starting position) and trying to choke them (end result)... okay, the actual desired result is to make sure the other person can't move anymore, and you achieve that for example by locking your feet around their head, or pinning their arm at their neck and leaning forwards with your full weight, or by stretching their arm until it hurts...
But as you can imagine, it's a bit awkward being the only girl...
I hope I can simply ignore that.

I also got my mouth guard today ... It molded to my teeth, but it keeps reminding me of the mold I got to make the replication of my teeth ... and it keep triggering my gag reflex ...
It's also a bit lopsided, which could be held accountable for the gag reflex, but it's manageable - we need them tomorrow, as we're doing boxing or so - and I'm gonna ask my teacher whether I can reheat it or just have to suffer through it.
I hope I can reheat it!

Anyway, I am in the same class as two of the boys from the Entrepreneurship project, and I don't really get along with one of them.
He is a rugby player, a bit jealous of the Rockets (or so it came across when I mentioned them) and he overreacted like I am only used to from the bitchy girls I can't stand:

Kevin, the other (and more experienced) MMA  fighter and I ended up doing most of the work, because all three of the boys tended to chat more than anything.
And the guy clearly hadn't paid attention - we were talking about mats covering the floor, and he was asking us "what?" after we had explained it three times or so, so I said, maybe a bit sharper than intended, "You know, that stuff covering the floors?" And now, in retrospect, it might be that he simply had not anticipated me "speaking up" - I'd tried to be quiet, hold back, but I was just fed up.

So he starts laughing really weirdly, ignores me and says to his friends, as though I had wounded his pride mortally, "Can you believe she just said this?"

Come on, guy. That was intended as a joke, and judging from the initial reactions from the other two, after they had stared for a moment that I had dared speak up, they got it.
Why do you have to get so upset about it? 
Am I threatening you? Am I too sure of myself? Or is it because I, a girl two years younger than you, have dared criticize you?
Whatever it is, I hope you get over it soon.
Because otherwise working together will be a pain in the ass.

Excuse my  word choice, but it's true.

And I regret not saying exactly that to him, but I think that might have only made it worse. And we still have three months or so of working together in front of us...
Although most of the "working together" was done by Kevin and me.
I just work better with only one person, so I talked to him about what I should do and then did it.

And for some reason, nobody is really volunteering to lead this group - Kevin is doing it rather reluctantly, but I think that guy's reaction has proven that I can't do that job.

I honestly don't know why, but the reaction leads me to believe that I have somehow wounded his pride.
What even?
He has nothing to fear from me, I don't know what his problem is!
I just hope it's resolved soon.

I happen to like both Entrepreneurship and MMA, and I would loathe to have both ruined just because this boy has a problem with me.

Okay, enough rant...

What else is new?
My stamina is gone. As in, completely absent.
I used to be able to run almost half an hour, and today I had troubles after quarter of one. Hmmm.
I have 114 days to get back in shape - I hope it'll be enough!
The next big hurdle will be the holidays...
But I'll power through (I hope).

I got one more "chapter" for my project written, and maybe I'll attempt to whip it into shape until my mom comes online.

I'm skyping everyday at the moment, just because I felt pretty down.
It does, weirdly enough, not facilitate homesickness - I'm feeling better than I have in a long time.
I just need somebody to really talk to, heart-to-heart, because sometimes writing is not enough, and I miss the familiarity I have with my parents.

I talked to Lydia again today - thank you so much for your time! - and I'm feeling really euphoric right now!

Tomorrow is a short day, as there are teacher parent interviews, so we have every class only 62 minutes (it's such a weird number because school finishes exactly at 1.30 p.m.), and I'm gonna catch a bus to the mall afterwards.
I have a couple of things I need, and I expect to spend about $100 - toothpaste, hand lotion, gym shorts, a notebook ... it will amount pretty quickly!
Fortunately, I barely spent anything in February, so I can get away with it, even though I am saving the money for San Francisco. Because I need souvenirs (and birthday presents :) ). Yep, I only have to pay the courses and the necessities, and the rest is all going towards the trip.
I think I'm pretty well within my expected savings - I even have spent way less than anticipated! (As I said, I'm saving it for the big trip)

I'm still waiting for my mum, and even though I got a fair bit of exercise today and am hurting all over, I won't go to bed until I have talked to her.
But at least it's a good ache, a I-have-done-something-good-today ache and not a OMG-shoot-me-now-my-knees-are-killing-me pain. Talking about knees, they were suspiciously quiet today, both during my run and during MMA...

Oh, one thing left:
We had our Math test today.

I didn't really do anything for it - I did my homework, but I had (wrongly) believed that the review questions were optional, which they were not, so I was in a hurry yesterday to get them done, until I got the first two homework stacks back.
10/10, and for neither did I do the review questions... So I didn't do them either today.
Especially as he said "This is a great example."
Thanks, I tried. Just not with the review questions (it's also kinda funny that he told us we would basically fail the test if we did neither the review nor the practice test questions.
Well, I didn't ace my test, but I'm far from failed.) and so I went into this test, had a short panic attack because I didn't recognize one of the terms, made sense of it, solved the exercise which also made sense, so I must have done it right (I hope) and then went back and double checked some of my answers ... So I don't think I failed it, and the most important thing, as I have finally realized, is not that I can prove that I have understood the topic, but that I know that I have understood the topic. It's not as though these marks count...

So, yeah, I'm signing off now because I want to get something done, but I'm sure you'll be back tomorrow - or at least at some point in the future.

Love y'all!

Julia