Last month the other members of the Cedar Ridge Karate Team and I got ready to go to Salt Lake for a variety of activities planned for the day.  We were all going to train with Sensei Amadou Niang, fifth degree black belt, and his students at his dojo in Salt Lake, which for me was an exciting experience that I was more than ready for.  I began having mixed feelings of excitement, and worry after I had noticed myself getting increasingly sick.  Despite this, I was still determined to train and get as much as I could out of this experience as I could. 

 The bus ride over for me was a time to catch up on some rest in an attempt to feel better or even just have more energy so I could push myself through the four hours of karate that was planned.  Most of the other people attending this seemed to have strong feelings of excitement, laced with a small amount anxiety for whatever their reasons may be.  Conversations about any subject that came to people’s minds were basically the whole bus trip for the majority of us while a few people had a more therapeutic tone to the conversation.  This continued for the whole three or four hours on the bus, not including the bathroom stops we occasionally made, until we arrived at Amadou’s dojo at a Salt Lake City recreation center

    Before everyone got off the bus, Nicolette and Sensei Rob gave us some pointers based off their past experiences of training with Amadou.  I appreciated some parts of this, like the tip of not telling the Sensei if you were tired because his response would be telling you to do five hundred jumping jacks.  Other than this, we discussed what would be considered disrespectful in the dojo and how we could avoid it, which to me was something I wanted to avoid.  We got off the bus, walked into the rec center and into to Amadou’s dojo.  I was a little surprised by how small this was after being use to training in a full size gym and wondered how this was going to work with all the people who were there.  I soon found out that it was more than enough room, given the amount of people, while I observed everyone beginning warm ups at Amadou’s instruction. 

    After taping my ankle up, I jumped into the training, beginning with laps around the dojo.  With my sickness this was a difficult task to keep up with the running, the suicides, jumping jacks and even some of the stretching.  My drive to do karate kept me going through the first part of this workout; however, I ended up with a pretty bad fever and some breathing problems so I had to sit the rest of the time.  This was a huge disappointment for me considering this was something I was looking forward to the previous two weeks.

     I sat on the side watching everyone else participate in the training, and I thought to myself, ‘There’s still quite a bit of knowledge I can get out of this experience just by watching.’  With that in mind, I continued to watch each of the different stages that Sensei Amadou took everyone through.  The first of these stages was some combinations for freestyle sparring.  A couple of these combinations I remember learning from Sensei Rob, but the others were new to me and it was fascinating to learn these new techniques.  After some practice with that, they started up the freestyle between two students at a time.  This part of the training was the most fun for me to observe, and the subtle differences between our two dojos was noticeable to me.  After all the matches, I still had my feelings of disappointment, which was soon gone with Amadou approaching me to ask me what was going on.  His appreciation for me coming and the thoughtfulness he showed was something I did not expect and it was much more than a pleasant surprise for me.  Feeling even better emotionally and physically, I continued to watch with increased interest while Amadou instructed them through the kata, Heian Godan.  It was cool for me to see his feedback on the kata and it was something that I planned to apply the next time I performed it.  

    I wanted to join in with the training since I was feeling better, but the next break that there was for me to ask, was the end of the training.  Everyone was told to sit down and Amadou began to give out different items representing an achievement for each person.  One girl got her certificate for her first black belt and another boy got his second junior black belt which is one away from his full black belt.  Everyone from our dojo got a red stripe on their belt for coming out to the training and to my surprise, Amadou called me up first to get mine.  I felt so good about the fact that he would do this for me even though I was not able to participate in the full training.  I guess I learned that people notice a lot when I push myself although I may not be aware of it.  I ended up getting quite a bit out of this experience, learning that I could learn without doing and actually be recognized for it.

    The rest of this trip was not as meaningful to me as this specific event was, but I enjoyed the time to kick it nonetheless.  We ate dinner at the Chinese Gourmet buffet, which was definitely a nice change from eating at Cedar Ridge.  I’ve always enjoyed some kind of change in the routine every once in a while and this was just that for me.  I ate probably more than I should have there, but what can I say, that kind of stuff happens sometimes.  I enjoyed all the conversations I had with people like Jamie and Nicolette about the day and different things that were on my mind throughout the time on the bus and at dinner.

    Now it was time to go to the Energy Solutions arena and watch the Jazz play the Thunder.  This was my first pro basketball game and I was excited to say the least.  We had forty minutes to wait until the game started so I decided to kick back and listen to some of the music that was being played.  After some time to think to myself, I sat up straight in my chair to watch the action down on the court. The start of the game was great seeing as I was rooting for the Jazz.  They were consistently ahead of the Thunder the whole first half of the game and this was my expectation for the rest of the game.  My hopes ended up being crushed though by the Thunder hitting like sixty percent of the threes they shot in the third and fourth quarters.  This was disappointing for me, but the experience is still one that made it all worth while.

    We left the arena to get back on the bus and drive back to Cedar Ridge.  I ended up falling asleep most of the time back and I went straight to bed when we arrived back at my home.  This is an opportunity that I would never choose to pass up and I hope there is more similar to this in the future for me.  It was nice being able to relax, talk to people who I don’t usually get to talk with and to learn about different aspects of karate that I was not aware of.  Overall, I’m appreciative that I got to go on this and I hold onto those feelings whenever I think about that activity.