Mind matters

Ugh! I slept really poorly this night. The first night in a new place I sleep horribly. Don’t really know why, but it’s been like that for as long as I can remember. I fell asleep around 01.20 am and woke up around 5 am and couldn’t fall asleep again. So I’ve felt a tad bit sluggish the whole day.

Today we trained bokken (wooden sword) in the morning, jo (wooden stick) around noon and tai jutsu (body techniques) in the evening. I’m hurting all over! But it’s the good kind of hurt, the one that tells you that you’ve been training alot!

Yesterday I assigned everyone into cooking teams (toban). The first cooking duty was assigned to me, Christina and Claes. We managed to make a decent breakfast with boiled eggs and porrige, and yoghurt and other stuff like bread, cheese and such. Tea and coffee included of course!

For lunch we made a thai inspired soup with coconut milk and curry paste. It was really good!

For dinner we made pork chops, sallad and potatoes au gratin, and my famous apple pie and ice cream for dessert! We finished dinner around 11.20 pm! We don’t usually finish dinner so late, but potatoe au gratin takes it’s time to finish.

For tuesday we decided that we’ll go to the sauna and drink a couple of beers after the evening training, and then buy food at a restaurant near the beach instead of making food. That’ll be yummy!

Now I wish to share some of the things we do as uchi deshi:

• Before and after a training we clean the dojo. We wipe the trims and vacuum the mat.
• We make sure we have changed into our gi’s and hakama’s before sensei (teacher) arrives.
• When I spot sensei closing in on the dojo, I clap my hands twice to indicate that it’s time to sit down on the mat and wait for sensei to arrive. This part of my duty as Dojo Sempai.
• Before a meal we clap our hands together and say Ittadakimasu, which roughly translates to Let’s eat.
• After a meal we clap our hands together and say Gochisousamadeshita, which I’m not sure how to translated. But it’s something about Thanks for the food.

I’ve also learned a couple more words in Värmlands-dialect:

• Töligt - Complicated (krångligt)
• Mölter - Cloudberries (hjortron)
• Kröser - Lingonberry
• Glingt - Slippery
• Klaken - Frosen [solid]
• Bönn - Knitted (e bönntröj - a knitted sweater)

Christina lent me her camera and I snapped a bunch of pictures of the uchi deshis and the dojo we’re at:

Me, acting totally normal with a knife in my hand. We’re peeling and cuting the potatoes for the potatoe au gratin.

Christina sits and takes it easy after the shower.

Claes looking into the camera, actually looking quite normal!

Zafer posing.

Martina looking michevious.

Patrik being punished by Maria for being annoying as usual!

This is Lars-Göran’s house, the senseis house. The light to the right is the light from the doorway into the common room for uchi deshis.

This is the dojo. The windows are all open since it was really hot during practice and we had to air out the dojo. The window to the right is the window into the common room.

The entrance for the practitioners and uchi deshis. The big doors on the picture above this one is sensei’s door. It’s only used by sensei. The dojo itself is to the right.

The dojo. Here we conduct most of the training.

These are the stairs that lead up to the bedroom for the men.

The men’s bedroom.

My bed! It’s my own inflatable madrass.

This is the view from the side of the dojo. Immediately to my right from where I took this picture, is the entrace for practitioners and uchi deshis. The tyre in the foreground is a tanren uchi, it’s used to practice cutting with a bokken or a jo.

The entrance to the uchi deshi common room on the left and the outdoor kitchen to the right.

The uchi deshi common room. Here we spend a lot of time, especially if the weather outside is lousy.

The kitchen next to the common room. Not used very much during the summer. We use the outdoor kitchen for all cooking and cleaning.

The shower and toilet! Oh! Maria was taking a shower!

The stairs up to the ladies bedroom.

The ladies bedroom.

The outdoor kitchen.

Mmm. Meat! Pork chops for dinner!

Potatoe au gratin, also for dinner. It was very yummy!

Now it’s definitively time to go to bed. It’s 1.45 am.

Posted in Aikido

 

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