As I sit here with around 60 minutes left of the holiday we call All Hallows Eve, I thought to my candy-stuffed, pizza-satiated self, this year's been a pretty good one. No offense to Japanese Halloween of course! You guys are really good at decorating for the occasion! It was just nice to have a pumpkin carving party, give masked children candy, and pay $20.00 a pop to get the skittles scared out of me by teenagers jumping out at us with chainless-chainsaws.
Boudin also had a good time it seems. She has fallen in love with our pumpkins, and has taken on the appearance of an eerie soul-less demon-cat for the occasion (awww! so big!!!).
I highly recommend the 13th gate. In case you guys are ever in Baton Rouge, LA. It is a pretty cool haunted house with different floors, inside and outside routes, an actual scary waiting area, and people who love doing their creepy jobs. It was extremely well made and on a whole quite enjoyable. Plus, I hear in November they will be re-opening the place for two nights but without lights of any sort. Everyone is armed only with a flashlight. I kinda wanna go through wearing all black and turn my light off, just to see if I could be sneaky enough to pass undetected by all the staff... but Sam says that's dumb... and I must admit that it would most likely be a terrible waste of $20.
Though by far some of the scariest things I witnessed this year were, oddly enough, at Boo at the Zoo. For those of you that don't know, Boo at the Zoo is a program instituted by many zoos across the country to pass out candy to children in a safe environment. Well, I was there volunteering to help with the candy dispersal, and I must admit that the costumes this year were pretty awesome. While there, I saw about 30 batmans, 8 iron mans, 20 spidermans, 7 wonderwomans, and one remarkable joker whose costume was complete with a Heath Ledger mask:
Me: "Nice costume man! Have some candy!"
Kid: "Want to see me make a pencil disappear?"
Me: "..."
Anyway, after my shift was done, as I had never actually seen the Baton Rouge Zoo before, I decided to walk around and check out the animals. But then as I strolled past the primates I caught sight of something strange: a gangly young teen-aged boy leaning over the railing, trying to hand a monkey what appeared to be a grape lollipop. Instinctively, I said, "Hey, don't do that! He could choke on it or something." ...not that it mattered, his arms were way too short to reach the monkey's bars anyway. But then something really concerning occurred. His mom suddenly picked him up at the knees and hoisted him over the bar, nearly toppling him into the enclosure! She shouted at her son "Here! Now see if you can reach 'im."
...
Needless to say, I found this very bizarre, and dumbly said, "If someone calls a keeper over here, you'd probably get in really big trouble you know."
No one seemed to be paying attention to anything I said (or so I thought), but they eventually gave up with the lolly pop, so I shrugged and walked off to go check out some horn bills. About ten seconds later, I hear:
"HEY! TURN AROUND YOU LITTLE %*^#!"
When I looked to see what all the commotion was, I caught sight of none other than that monkey-feeding, teenager-flinging, irresponsible, female parental unit, flailing two fists in my direction, while shouting:
"DO YOU WORK HERE!?... I SAID DO YOU WORK HERE?"
me: "Who? me? no."
woman: "THEN WHY DON'T YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH AND MIND YOUR OWN ^*& $(%* BUSINESS!?"
me: "actually, I wasn't planning on going to tell anyone. I just-"
woman: "WHAT!? I CAN'T HEAR YOU! WHY DON'T YOU COME OVER HERE AND SAY THAT TO MY FACE!?"
She put up her fists again and took some sort of strange fighting stance and bounced up and down a little, I guess in attempts to scare me or something. Several kids in their Halloween costumes stopped to stare at us.
I turned and continued walking in the opposite direction.
woman: "OH THAT'S RIGHT YA LITTLE CHICKEN! YOU BETTER GO AND WALK AWAY! YOU KNOW YOUR A WUSS"
Just then, a golf cart full of security guards rolled past me and screeched to a halt, causing the strange woman to immediately stop yelling as they surrounded her.
...
Some people are REALLY weird.
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My last bout of undergraduate midterms is over! Thank goodness! I don't know how I did for most of them, but I know I at least passed... I think.
As for the tournament, I had a blast. I got to hang out with my good friend Candy, practiced my shoddy formal Japanese with some famous sensei, and I even got to wear a gi for nearly three days straight (if I could, I'd wear mine every day). It's always fun to fight with new people too. I was pleased to meet karate-ka from as far south as Puerto Rico, and as far north as Alaska.
As for the results, both John and I did very well. It was a good training.
But you know, tournaments aside, being a low-ranking young black belt with no family in the dojo never fails to put me into very interesting situations. I guess I've stuck around long enough that people don't feel the need to shoo me out of meetings. Yet I'm still enough of a beginner that I am seldom the bearer of any sort of responsibility for giving input. This gives me the wonderful opportunity to spend my time as an observer of transpiring events in the complex world of karate. From becoming designated sake-pouring girl for a party of shihan in Osaka, to being in the back of the room when international heads of organizations make sweeping changes (like last weekend), I am pleased to forever be that inconsequential person that plays witness to it all. For all that karate has given to me, I hold this in highest regards. I have had the pleasure of seeing many great things and people, and traveled the world to do it. I think it's safe to say that my life would not have been the same without karate.
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