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Hello Everyone!
It's been almost a week since my last update and life has been slipping by day by day. Sometimes I sit at the restaurant and wonder if I'm really here. Even after two months of being here i is hard to believe that I'm here. I still think Brazil is one of the best places, if not the best place on the planet.
Training has been interesting since I got my brown belt. I've been doing noticeably better against some of my grappling partners. I'm not sure if they respect the belt more, or I'm just less likely to let myself be dominated by them...either way it's kind of nice to be a brown belt. I feel a sense of responsibility to put my best foot forward because I don't want to let Gordo down. Obviously he saw something in my grappling abilities to promote me to brown and even if I don't see it I want to be the best grappler I can be.
I still have problems with some of the higher ranks and one purple belt in particular. This purple belt passes my guard like I have no legs...it's kind of frustrating and I give our grappling sessions more thought than I probably should. I don't know what he's doing differently than other people but I have more problems with him than I do most of the black belts. Let's hope that I get that problem under control...I'll keep you guys posted.
I registered for the Rio Open which will be on the 25th of this month as a Brown belt in the 94.3-100kg category. I have a week and a half before the tournament and I'm weighting in around 92-95kgs without the kimono but you have to weigh in with it. I really don't want to get disqualified for being over weight and I don't want to stress about it so I'm going to hydrate up, carb up and sport a couple different patches on my Gi. I also rationalize it by saying I will have less fights in that category...who knows only time will tell if that was the right decision. Like I said before I'll make sure to post the videos so that you guys can get a look at me in the brown belt! As a side note I also registered for the open division, so that should be fun too.
This week has been kind of slow as far as training is going. I've had that back pain nagging me all week and I ended up taking off Thursday-today. I dont like taking off the time but I'm thinking in the bigger picture of the tournament. I figure I'll be 100% (or as close as I can get) when I start training and I'll put in 10 hard days and relax for two days before the tournament. I'm hoping that I can get two or three technique sessions in before the tournament.
I rencently got a new bed which is nice. I went from a very cramped small bed to a twin size...maybe slightly bigger and it is a really nice treat to be able to roll over in bed and not have to do "shrimping" drills in bed LoL. I am thinking that the new bed will help out with the back issues also, let's keep our fingers crossed on that one.
We've had some new additions to the house which is always nice. For now we have 3 more guys from England (one brown belt and two white belts). They are very serious about training and eager to learn. They make great training partners and as always its interesting adjusting to someones accent. I do spend half my time wondering what they are saying and the other half of the time asking them to repeat themselves.
Apparently the brown belt had been following my blog prior to coming and was delighted to meet me. He even bought one of my patches and he's going to put it up at his school....it almost makes me feel famous. It'll be interesting to see how many people will want me to come to their schools when I come home, perhaps I'll compile a list of people and visit one a week...I tyipcally travel to other peoples schools as regularly as I can. If you guys are interested in having me come to your school please drop me a line in the thread or PM and we'll see if we cant make it happen. Also if you guys want patches let me know, I can probably make that happen too.
For those of you who dont remember I have an instructional DVD out. It was part of how I raised money to come down here and I'm having each move broken down into an mpeg file and I'll upload a couple of them to see if there is interest. I'm always open to critisim and advice. Here is one of the videos that I posted earlier just to show you what the other 32 techniques are like, the level of the instruction and sound.
I havent had a chance to get any pictures of me in the new brown belt yet, but I'll try and get one of Dennis and I both sporting the new belts. I think we both still have the grin stuck on our face from an unexpectd promotion.
My newest plan or learning Portugese (and meeting women) was to purchase Scrabble. You would not believe how difficult it was to find this game in Brazil. The thought pattern was to play the game on dates and have my date use Portuguese words. Then when they play them they can explain to me what the words mean, the I can look them up. This allows me to easily learn new words that I would not normally encounter and readily get the definition. In addition I play with both English words and Portuguese. The only problem is there is no "y" in the Portuguese version and there is two different versions of "C". This can be a small pain in the ass but it's still a good time. I'll keep you guys updated on how this plan goes. So far Gisele and I have had a great time playing.
I wish I had more to report for this evening but it's been a slow week. I havent gone out and I'm kind of babying my back for this up coming tournament. Things will pick sure and I'll keep everyone informed.
Alrighty everyone'll talk to you next week!
The Gerbil
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If violence wasn't your last resort you probably didn't resort to enough of it
Last edited by Gerbiljiujitsu; 07-11-2009 at 05:47 PM.
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I'll go back and change it. Thanks for pointing it out.
