Happy Wednesday Everyone!
This week I took my first class as a part of the Tae Kwon Do Society here at Trinity. It's been a while since I've been to a class, much less where one tells me to put on sparring pads and get into fighting position. It felt wonderful, actually. It was a beginners class so I ended up fighting with a lot of people that had great power, but no control. I got kicked in the back twice and once really hard on my right elbow. The other interesting thing is that you're allowed to punch AND kick to the head in this program (at my school, we didn't allow punching to the head, only kicking). The techniques were really different, and even the names of kicks varied, but that's because it's a slightly different style of martial art. I studied under the World Taekwondo Federation, or the WTF, and the classes I'm taking at Trinity are a part of the ITF, International Taekwondo Federation. Either way, I go back tonight for my second class, and I'm bringing the heat.
Did quite a bit of studying over the past several days, and I am enjoying my classes more and more. This week, we got to talk about Phenomenology in Theatre. Not only is it amazing theory, but it's also a blasty blast to say Phenomenology and Phenomenologists. It's almost as fun as saying Semiotics and Semioticians (both phenomenology and semiotics are theories of analysis in theatre, and it's been really awesome understanding this world).
My friend Moira and I performed our comedic writing yesterday, got some fantastic criticism, and we will continue to work it through. We also saw a bizarre children's production last night called Goodbye, Mr. Muffin. Spoiler Alert! Mr. Muffin is a guinea pig and he dies. The End. I sat there and watched this play, and I knew within the first 5 minutes that Mr. Muffin was a goner, but what struck me was that a play like this probably wouldn't be acceptable in the states. It was a VERY small scale 40 minute show with a guinea pig puppet and one guy telling this story and acting out Mr. Muffin. It never occurred to me to use theatre to teach children about death and dying in such a way. It was a wonderful concept, but I did feel it was a bit too dark to be called children's theatre.
Anywho, I must be off now. I have to open an Irish account. OH! And people out here don't call the Irish language "Gaelic." They call it Irish. In fact, it's almost a bit offensive to call it Gaelic. I thought that was interesting...
Love you all!
