Karate Writing Task

There are a lot of things I like about Karate, which is why I keep doing it. I used to have a friend that did Karate as well and I found it really interesting. I went home that day and asked mum if I could join. Mum thought it was a pretty good idea because my whole family knows I'm not a really healthy person so Karate would probably help a lot. Dad agreed to let me try out and if I like it, then I could continue. I was in Cairns at that time and didn't have many hobbies or out of school sports. I found Karate really fun and easy to learn, all I needed to do was learn the basics and keep practising. My parents are the type of people who like to be certain that their children really have the heart to go and learn something. They kept telling me it would hurt a lot, I'd get tired, and a lot of other negative things about Karate. But I told them I didn't care. I had a thing for Karate.

I'm a visual learner so I could basically do something straight away as long as it was performed in front of me, which it usually was. I became really good at Karate and came 1 st in a competition against other clubs in Cairns and received a trophy, medal and certificate. My favourite has always been kicking. Found some use for my abnormally long legs.

Winning that competition made me want to train even harder and family members were always asking me to perform things for them so I always wanted to get better. Not become the best, but at least get better.

I didn't train for very long in Cairns because my parents wanted to move down to Brisbane so that I could do the rest of my schooling years here and eventually find a job. I told mum I still wanted to do Karate and she said that was fine, and that we'd find an academy once we move down.

It was at least half a year before I actually joined a new club but I still kept practising at home in the rumpus room because I still wanted to get better.

Mum started checking the Yellow Pages to look for Karate academies. She nearly gave up because there aren't that many clubs near our place. But I told her that I wanted to keep learning because it's fun, you can meet new friends, keep fit, learn self discipline, and defend myself if anything happens to me while I'm walking along the street. She agreed to drive me further out as long as I was willing to keep training.

We found AAMA and I tried it out. First, I didn't find it as fun as I would have thought, but my parents told me that it would take time to be able to find new friends and get used to a whole new style of Karate. I also thought that even if the styles were different, they were still pretty similar (in my world anyway) and kept going to training. Eventually, lesson after lesson, I gradually got used to AAMA.

I got used to the way students and teachers greet each other, I met new people, and learnt how to train differently. I remembered that at first, I thought Sensei talked too much. But then I realised that if I had bothered to listen properly, then I would have found out a lot earlier, that everything Sensei said, was really useful, not just a load of rubbish. Sensei was really helpful and was always asking if anybody had any questions and helped every student. I liked how you could have a casual conversation with any teacher.

I remember dropping back a bit when I joined AAMA because I didn't like it that much at first, but now I've gotten a lot better and once again, I find Karate really fun and useful.

My younger sister saw how much I liked Karate and asked me to teach her. I tried teaching her but just ended up frustrated and walking off. At that time, I really wondered how Sensei and Sempai dealt with the younger kids and if they were ever short of supply on Panadol or other headache or painkillers.

There was a time when I was practising kicking in the backyard, and my sister sat down on the ground in front of me and asked me a question that stopped me. It was a really simple question but yet it still hit me pretty hard for some reason. She asked, “Why do I like Karate so much?” When she asked this, I was about to answer with “Oh I dunno…go away.” But then I thought of what would have happened to me if I had said this to Sensei. I had learnt so much self-discipline and realised that “I dunno… go away…” was not exactly an appropriate answer. My sister seemed to think so too. Where had she gotten so much knowledge? I really wanted to know.

I stopped kicking grass into her face and stood there like an idiot. She told me that “I don't know” was a silly answer. Then she asked me if she could join as well. I told her to ask Mum. She asked if she would like it as much as I did. I told her that if she actually listened for once in her life, to a teacher, then she'd learn a lot of stuff and would become really good one day. I remember her frowning at that comment but didn't say anything.

She ended up asking me a lot of questions about Karate: whether it was fun or not, if I had lost the fat on my stomach (hhmm…), when I was going to grade, and a lot of other questions. I remembered that a lot of the stuff I ended up telling her, were a lot of things I had to go through to get to where I am now.

I told her to go back inside and ask mum if she could go and do Karate. Later on, I went inside and my mum asked if Susania really should go do Karate and a lot of ‘what if' questions. I told her that I had to go through all those ‘what ifs'. Mum told me that my sister was still really young. I told her that she might, and just might, need a bit of pushing to keep going at first. I know little kids inside out; I know that it's extremely easy to meet someone new on your first day of something if you're a little kid. They're always running around screaming and playing games, and sooner or later one at least or 2 of them would come up to you and ask what your name is. Being as tall as I am, I constantly tower over little kids at parks and stuff, watching them all interact as if they're brothers and sisters. The same thing happened at the AAMA dojo.

In conclusion, there are basically a lot of things I like about Karate, but they're hard to explain because they're all gradual changes, and that everybody has to go through a ‘down' before they can reach an ‘up' which is what my Mum always says. I never really thought it made much sense but I translated it into my own language. I always used to think she talked too much too…