23rd Oct 2007
New Experiences
By Pedro Villarreal
The Kenshusei program was a lot of fun and full of new experiences for me. First of all, it was my first time in Chicago so that was all new to me; I had never visited a city that dense before. As for the program, I did a lot of things we don’t get to do often at our school club, such as meditation (I never knew it could hurt that much when your legs fell asleep, heh), and much more extensive weapons training. The last few years at our club, we haven’t trained as much with weapons, but I believe we are going to fix that. I also was able to train under many different sensei and got to see their unique styles. I saw that they were all different even though they all essentially trained under the same sensei.
Learning techniques I already knew but in a unique style was an interesting
experience. The hardest part for me was training for most of the day. It’s something I had never done before, and I was surprised I was able to get through the days. I figured I’d be dead before I finished each day. Oh and sleeping on the wooden floor sucked too.
Pedro Villarreal is a 4th kyu student at the University of Houston Aikido Club in Texas.
