Tae kwon do, class #2

I survived yet another tae kwon do class. How did it go? Well, this summarizes it pretty well:

Sunday is planning and organizing day!

In six days I'll be in the O2 again, seeing Depeche Mode! I'm leaving for London in 5 days, and this lazy Sunday has mostly gone by writing mails and messages to various travel companions, and making various arrangements.

Me and a few girls are going to an afterparty directly after the gig, and since the club can fill up fast and we have to get there sharpish we decided to splash out on booking a taxi with a chaffeur service. Directly after the gig the taxi company will call me and arrange a meeting spot, and we will be picked up at the O2 and driven straight to the club. It only cost us 25 quid or so, well worth it considering the tube that normally services The O2 will be closed on that date, and the only way to get home from North Greenwich is via riverboat or various buses -which will be a nightmare considering it 24,000 people.

Finally I can relax, knowing that everything is booked and prearranged. Hotels in London, Denmark and Düsseldorf are booked, as are flight tickets, concert tickets and afterparty tickets. I have sorted how I'm getting to and from the airport in Norway, Denmark and London, as well as taxi from the O2 to the afterparty. When I arrive in London my concert ticket will be waiting for me at reception. Honestly I'm pretty good at this whole travelling lark, if I do say so myself.

Tomorrow I am starting my internship, luckily we have a short day, we will be given our work schedules and a tour, that's pretty much it. And I have tae kwon do class in the evening. Will definitely take it easier this time, trying to avoid getting as asthmatic as I did on Thursday - I can still feel it, the smallest amount of exertions causes me to cough, I've ended up throwing up a few times today. Not good. Luckily I'm going to the doctor on Thursday.

Harsh wake up call.

As you probably have figured out, just by reading this, I survived Tae Kwon Do class. But just barely.

A usual class starts off with a rather hefty warmup, which means running in circles while doing various things (touch the floor on command, wave yoru arms around, jump sideways etc etc). Today we also did things like using our belts to hold each other back while trying to run forward, doign that wheel barrow thing, stuff like that. And my physical condition and endurance is virtually non-exsistant, and I knew that, but I still feel really embarassed about my poor shape. But what really scared me was how heavy my breathing got. Seems I can't deny it anymore, I have asthma, at least of the exercise-induced kind. Being short of breath is normal when you exert yourself, but coughing, wheezing and feeling your bronchi constrict, isn't. I vowed to myself as I ran around panting that I would quit the damn smoking. Luckily, the master, Patrick, is a really sweet guy, and he told me while we were running around that I could ease off, take everything in my own pace, just walk if I felt like it. I told him asthma runs heavily in my family, and that I more than likely have it too, plus that I haven't exercised properly for 4-5 years. I always feel like I have to explain myself, give some kind of excuse. But the fact remainds that I am in piss poor shape, and I really really hate the warmups. I get dizzy, can't breathe, I sweat, I feel like I have no energy at all, and about 5 minutes into class I felt like I had a Gollum inside of me, screaming:

"why are you hurting us??! We could be home, in our preciousssss ssssofa, watching Dexter! We don't want to do this anymore! It hurts us, it's uncomfortable, we're sweating, we can't breathe, we have bloodtastes in our mouths and everyone else is running past us! This is embarrassssssing!"

After the horrible warmups comes the parts I like - we usually do a series of stretches, and then we start with the fun stuff. Kicking, punching etc. We learned the beginners fight "pattern" today, I remember most of it from last time and I love doing them. It's a series of 18 movements, different blocks, punches and kicks, it's supposed to be like an imaginary fight in which you attack and defend yourself from enemies. After the patterns we spent the rest of class doing various kicks on kickbags (which kinda hurts after the 20th kick). These are all parts of the training that I love, learning the routines and the movement, feeling the difference in the power of punches and kicks as you learn to do them correctly. Classes usually end with some strength exercises, push ups, sit ups, stuff like that, and I'm not fond of them either but I'd take that over warmups anyday.

But I remember now, why I used to love Tae Kwon Do. The patterns, the routines, and the feeling you get afterwards of having used your body, exerted yourself. Now I just hope I will have the motivation to keep it up. I like the taekwondo-club, the trainers are authoritarian, as they should be, but they can still joke around and be friends, which makes it a bit more relaxed and casual. All martial arts require a fair bit of discipline, in TKD we have to bow as we enter or leave the training hall, you should obey commands and not fiddle around, pick your nose etc until you're given a command much like that "at ease". The TKD-club I trained at 7 years ago was much more hardcore, we did pushups on our knuckles on bare asphalt for crying out loud. I'm not that hard-core. Patrick said he recommended me staying in bed or in the sofa over the weekend, as I would most likely be unable to move. He has a sense of humour, which is good.

Tae Kwon Do practice turned out to be a harsh, unexpected wake up call regarding the state of my lungs. I expected the shortness of breath to ease off when the practice ended, and that it would go away completely after a while, but I spent most of the night wheezing, coughing and feeling like I didn't get enough oxygen. Of course this gets worse when I lay down, so I ended up propping a duvet and three pillows under my back, and let me tell you - sleeping in an almost sitting position is not fun. Not that I got much sleep, either. Seems I will be giving my doctor a call and ask if there are any meds I can take before or after training to help ease my breathing, otherwise these classes are going to be even harder than I imagined. If that's possible.

In 10 days I'll be back in London, hopefully standing in front of these two gorgeous men. Yay!

Also, I never went to that Tae Kwon Do practice, had a hefty migraine that morning and felt groggy all day. But I AM going tomorrow, I've even invested in a sports bra to prove it! Am sort of looking forward to it, actually. My neighbor Johanne said she'd come with me, partly because she's curious about the sport, but mostly to be a moral support for me.

I've been sat here with medical calculus problems the past two days, trying to get my head around it. I have an exam on friday, and I have to score 100% on it, or I'll fail. Luckily we get 5 attempts. It's not the math in itself that's difficult, it's mostly add and subtract, divide and multiply, and usually with easy numbers. The problem is managing to recognize what is the amount, what is the dosage and what is the strength of the drug. For example " 1ml morphine with the strength 20mg/ml is added 3 ml of fluid. What is the strength of the diluted solution (mg/ml)? I think I've got it now, finally. But I guess only the test will let me know for sure.

Countdown calendar is back!

In just 13 days I'm leaving for London and the last leg of my own little Tour of the Universe! Squeeee!

Bad, bad blogger.

As some of you have pointed out to me over and over, I have been a horribly bad blogger. What to blame this time?

The excuses
Well, first of all I've had the traditional Great January Winter Depression. Most people gets excited by starting a new year, they like new years eve and am generally positive. I am not. Maybe it's just the innate pessimist in me, but I find starting a new year kind of exhausting, it takes me a month or two just to built momentum and get going. Hence the winter depression, which always renders me totally apathetic, steals all my creativity and leaves me sad and lonely.
Secondly, I've been in some post-pre-Depeche-Mode concert euphoria that has made me totally useless, I can't seem to keep focused on anything for more than 30 minutes straight. I had these grand plans about writing long and great blog posts after my concerts, bragging about how great they were and what I had experienced, and show off photos. And they were great, but when I come back I'm always so tired, drained and lost for words I have no idea when to even start.
Thirdly, I had two exams in January, and am supposed to have a third one in less than a week. I passed the practical one, and anatomy, which is great news. Am not so stressed about the medical calculus I'm having on Friday, I have 5 attempts on it and right now too much is going on. Am going to try to pass first time though.

The Internship
In a week, on February 15th, I'm starting a 10 week internship at a nursing home in my home town. Now, I've worked in nursing homes before, I've even worked in this particular one, hence this shouldn't scare me at all, but it does. It's been a few years since last time, and even though working with diapers and other disgusting stuff didn't bother me as much as I thought it would back then, I'm horrified at the idea this time too. I already know that geriatrics isn't my favorite field, and isn't what I want to work with, I'd much rather work in the other end of life, helping babies rather than old people who many of them are just waiting to die, it's too depressing for someone who is melancholic by nature. I have infite respect for those who work in nursing homes. Maybe it's just the prospect of 8 hour working days 4 days a week that scares me. School days are shorter, and not nearly as physically demanding as a day in a nursing home can be. But on the other hand it will be a nice change of pace from sitting in an auditorium or playing around with plastic dolls, hospital beds and needles.

The Martial Arts
Tomorrow, however, I am going to do something I've been thinking about for 7-8 years but always chickened out from: Start training Tae Kwon Do again. I trained it for a while back in high school, and in elementary school, and it's the only sport I ever found remotely fun to do, that and squash. Starting up again scares the shit out of me, I'm terrified, I can just picture all the running and sweating, being surrounded by young people who are very fit, gracious and healthy. But as the trainer said in his mail: the physical fitness will come, the point is to just get started. About once every hour I decide I won't go. But then I change my mind again. I want to do this, and I should do this, for my mental and physical health. It will make me stronger, have more energy and maybe give me more self confidence. *chants self-motivational mantra*

The Tour of the Universe
In less than two weeks I'm leaving for London, departing on early friday and coming back late on sunday. While I'm there I hope to fit in some general sightseeing and shopping with Julie, a pleasant dinner and drinks with fellow Depeche-fans, a Depeche Mode gig on the 20th plus subsequent afterparty. I'll get back home late on Sunday, work for a day and then be off again very early on tuesday morning, this time heading for Copenhagen and ultimately Horsens in Denmark, then zooming down to Düsseldorf until Sunday. This is going to be epic. But I am already terrified of the post-tour-depression that'll hit me on Sunday the 28th. Because that means this is over, the tour is over, no more last chances to go to a gig on some impulse. They'll go back home, rest and relax and Mart will hopefully write songs, and all will be quiet from Depeche for a year or two. And god knows they deserve it. I just need to find something to fill the "void" while they're on a break.