The new girl on the block

To the new girl obn the block (A.K.A. Jules), so tell us a little bit about yourself and your martial arts background. I'm sure we'd all like to know more. :)
 
Good to have you with us, Jules!

I read several essays/interviews a while ago from a collection called Sharp Spear, Crystal Mirror: Martial Arts in Women's Lives, edited by Stephanie Hoppe, all of which were very high quality. (I'm sure you've already come across it, but I thought I'd mention it on the off-chance.)

No! I didn't see that, actually, but I'll go see if I can find it now. Our school blocks a lot of sites and blocks out a lot of things that are tagged to sites and it messes up our search engines. It's so hard to write a paper on this stuff when all the articles I read (all but the things I read on here) are about how women are ALWAYS these poor, discriminated people when I know for a fact that we hold strong. I've had my fair share of discrimination, too, but it's WAYYY smaller than the amount of support people give. It's a work in progress. Talking with my teacher is helping, too. Maybe I'll post up the massive wall of text called my senior paper when I'm done with it at the end of the school year. :)
 
To the new girl obn the block (A.K.A. Jules), so tell us a little bit about yourself and your martial arts background. I'm sure we'd all like to know more. :)

Well, I've only been in one school my whole 7 or so years of training in martial arts. My school is basically Taekwondo, but my instructor understands that there's things that Taekwondo just can't teach you, so he also teaches us some Hapkido (all the wrist grabs), and Han Mu Do's Utsuls (I think that's how you spell it), and a little bit of ground/grappling work. I've been to a Hapkido Seminar in Jackson, Mississippi hosted by Master Grant a couple of times, which is honestly a couple times too little. Anyone who is looking to go, should. It's very fun and friendly. I've met a few people up there that I keep in touch with. Too bad I can't afford much these days. Work just isn't giving me enough hours to be taking trips off-season. Other than going to a couple of tournaments to spar and perform my poomses, I can't think of anything else. (I think I mentioned in my first post that I'm a black belt in my school, yes??? o.0 )
 
Thanks for the warm welcome, everyone! 'Gives me the warm fuzzies. And, luckily, not the kind you get right after taking a nice shot to the head! XD
 
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To the new girl obn the block (A.K.A. Jules), so tell us a little bit about yourself and your martial arts background. I'm sure we'd all like to know more. :)

(Ok, one more since I didn't think I was gonna have time for it and since I didn't completely answer this one before.) So I said I live in Eastern NC, do TKD, mentioned I'm a senior in high school... ummm what else... I am a Pantry Chef at a four star ocean-front restaurant called Ocean Boulevard and I've been working there for about 2 1/2 years. I'm looking to go to NC State, but I haven't heard back from them yet. My dream job of all dream jobs is to chase tornadoes or fly into hurricanes- basically be a general storm chaser. I think I'm the only person I know that actually gets excited for bad weather. Good weather is boring. Yeah... okay. I've talked enough. Time for Julie to be quiet. Thanks again for everyone being so nice! :)
 
(Ok, one more since I didn't think I was gonna have time for it and since I didn't completely answer this one before.) So I said I live in Eastern NC, do TKD, mentioned I'm a senior in high school... ummm what else... I am a Pantry Chef at a four star ocean-front restaurant called Ocean Boulevard and I've been working there for about 2 1/2 years. I'm looking to go to NC State, but I haven't heard back from them yet. My dream job of all dream jobs is to chase tornadoes or fly into hurricanes- basically be a general storm chaser. I think I'm the only person I know that actually gets excited for bad weather. Good weather is boring. Yeah... okay. I've talked enough. Time for Julie to be quiet. Thanks again for everyone being so nice! :)

That sounds exciting! We have lousy weather which is why we talk about it all the time lol!

BTW talk away! Do what I do, click on to the new posts and join in everyones threads! I've learned so much doing that about other peoples arts as well as my own.
 
That sounds exciting! We have lousy weather which is why we talk about it all the time lol!

BTW talk away! Do what I do, click on to the new posts and join in everyones threads! I've learned so much doing that about other peoples arts as well as my own.

I'm such a weirdo when it comes to bad weather. I think the only time when the weather is lousy and I don't like it is if it's cold, windy, and solid colored clouds. It's cold. It's not snowing, and the clouds are lame. Where's the texture?? Where's the heavy look of importance?? It's all dim but you know that it's not gonna rain. That's what it's been like all week here ><. Hopefully it will change soon. I can't wait for spring to really come around so I can watch the thunderstorms while I try to go to sleep.
 
So what do you like to cook? I like to cook as well. I can cook just about any Chinese dish or Italian dish. I really like spicy foods. I really want to start trying to cook Thai food. I'm not that familiar with Thai food though.

Honestly, I don't think there's a lot I don't like to eat, but cooking is a little different. I'm honestly just a baby chef. Hardly one at all. Probably just awarded the name for the tiny bit of time I've put in. But what I do know how to do is make an awesome salad- including making all the dressings and crutons and other sort of garnishes like candied pecans and caramelized grapes. And I'm pretty darn good at presentation for all the plates. Headchef makes it, I'll plate it. I think my favorite is messing with the desserts though. Making the sauces, I mean. The chocolate, raspberry, anglaise, caramel and maybe some ganache. Whipped cream is my specialty. :D I can't have normal can whipped cream because of it. Tastes like skim milk and air. When it comes down to cooking I can follow a recipe, but branching super far off of one, not so well. And I don't think I consider myself an original thinker when it comes down to my "new" food ideas, but it's hard to be! There's so much good food made out there and I bet no matter how original I think my idea is, some crazy molecular chef's thought the same thing AND makes it taste better. Being a phenomenal chef is something I think is really hard. You have to be an artist who's work appeals to all the senses and then touches your imagination. Chef's are the most amazing people ever.
But eating good food, oh man, I am so there. I think I would fall into a serious depression if I couldn't taste anymore. I think I would like to specialize in some sort of oriental style cuisine. OH OH! I can make sushi! I forgot that I made sushi on a couple of occasions. It's harder than it looks, but is so rewarding. Oh man, this paragraph is all over the place. Please excuse the mess and any grammatical errors!
 
I love sushi. Will you make me some? :) My favorite is the smoked eel. I can cook pretty good Chinese food. I make you some Chinese food (whatever dish you like) if you make the sushi........lol.
 
I love sushi. Will you make me some? :) My favorite is the smoked eel. I can cook pretty good Chinese food. I make you some Chinese food (whatever dish you like) if you make the sushi........lol.

Deal! :D Do you think FedEx has anything better than overnight shipping?? lol
 
so how much tournament experience do you have? Do you do the open circuit thing or do you do only TKD tournaments? I used to do the open circuit. I competed at NASKA (north american sport karate association) tournaments.
 
Ah, well, I only do Taekwondo tournaments. There's two tournaments our school goes to up in Virginia: Grant's Friendship Tournament and some sort of Taekwondo Festival tournament. Grant's tournament is kind of a joke because they do it every year, but it's really unorganized and the people who join are in schools that are black belt machines. They just are there to pump out black belts in two years flat. Don't get me wrong, there are tons of black belts there I would never want to spar because they are so intense and they're serious head hunters. As for me, I went to tournaments 4 times as colored belts, but I haven't been able to afford going to tournaments the past couple of years. Or had the time to put aside for training. The last two tournaments though I caused a riot. There was just me in my rank division and the next higher up was either gonna be a black belt in a month (and a real one) or the person who's got their yellow belt and only been in for a couple of months. But there was boys in my age and rank range so I decided I wanted to go up against them for forms and sparring. The first time was real bad. I was gonna fight the winner of the bi, and I ended up going against this boy who was actually really good. So I got in the game and I was ready to go and the ref called in the match and we went at it. And I was seriously challenging this kid. Kicking him fast and hard and yelling right at him, so he starts pulling illegal moves. One time he grabbed my leg, ref called that one. And then all the other times he got points was because he was open hand shoving me and throwing a hook kick at my head. Open hand shoves/pushes/stops are illegal in the tournament. I remember because I got introuble for it once, but the ref wouldn't call it. I couldn't believe it! My whole school was yelling at her for not calling it. He must've done it 6 or 7 times. I was about cross eyed after the 4th. He ended up winning the match by 2 points. I couldn't believe a woman wouldn't help out a fellow girl in a tournament! She basically did the same thing when she judged my forms by giving me 2 points lower than next lowest grading judge (on a 10 point scale). Luckily, I didn't have the same lady judging my sparring match the second year I went in and did the same thing. That year I owned the ring.

I still joke on my mom for the first year though. Only a fellow martial artist would understand why my mom was mad about the boy shoving me and not mad at the boy for kicking me in the face.

Geez. 'Nother wall of text...
 
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