Alexiel’s Heaven

Woops! No sooner do you look over your shoulder and turn around three times counterclockwise and Christmas and New Year’s all of a sudden haven come and gone already!
The busy pre-christmas season, an aikido seminar halfway across Germany and a week spent at my sister’s made me completely forget I have a blog to feed.

So, what happened since the end of November?

First f all, I booked my dream vacation… but that one will get a post on its own later, in order to enjoy the anticipation more. =)

Of course I’ve kept going to aikido trainings regularly three times a week and have had lots of fun, however there is no noticeable process to record. On December 27th and 28th my teacher and I took part in a Christmas aikido seminar with Yoshigasaki-sensei near Heidelberg. It was a great experience although the techniques and contents still remain way over my head (of course).

After the seminar I continued in the same direction towards my sister’s family and my cuuute little nephew – by now he even says “Haio?” (instead of German “Hallo?”) when you give him a telephone! =) After five nice and fairly quiet days – apart from that little blond whirlwind making us chase him again and again – I returned to Fürth on January 2nd.

The following weekend I spent mostly at three performances of the musical RENT, where I met with two of my best friends, who by now study in Hamburg and Vienna (one of them was part of the group himself, the other was a member of the same group until last year).

Well, and now it’s already January 2009 and everything is back to usual. Work, musical training, aikido, lots of new books, a little painting in between…

… and I was given the task to improve my overall condition/stamina/endurance (sorry, vocabulary problems) until summer. That will be hard. Jogging won’t do, as it doesn’t agree with my knees. I tried it a few times in 2007, each time afterwards being almost unable to walk for a week because my knees hurt like hell – I won’t repeat that. The alternative of going for long walks of several hours is not feasible as I simply haven’t got the time. I’ll try something different for now: repeating our most demanding dancing songs for maybe 30 minutes each day. I hope that will help, as I can’t think of an alternative at the moment. =)

Yesterday morning on my way to work I met (or rather, drove by) an elderly man with his golden retriever. I’ve seen them several times before, and as always they had just bought the newspaper – obviously, as the retriever was carrying it proudly in its mouth… =)
Or the day before: I was driving home to my apartment as I noticed in passing a child waving a conductor / train driver (sorry, vocabulary…) of a train that was just driving next to the road, and that man grinned and waved back.

Although these moments are so small and unimpressive, I love them anyway for making my everyday routine somehow bearable.

Apart from that, unfortunately we did not have any Aikido training last week – there was the yearly teacher’s seminar in Herzogenhorn – and I used the time to meet with lots of friends. However, starting today I’m finally ^^ back to training 3 times each week, and I’m really looking forward to it! And then, around the 24th of September, we’ll have our first Ki grading…