i've been working out, although not consistently, so i could be all "bikini ready"... in the fall/pre-winter. but my body/the scale is not cooperating. oh well. supposedly, charlie likes me for who i am. right? o__o
tonight was gymnastics and it was fun, of course. we worked on back handsprings (on mat with yuriy spotting us and on the tumble track) and front handsprings onto a mat. yuriy's ukranian! i'm glad i found out without having to ask him. he's a cool guy. he randomly did one of those handstand thingies that guys can do on the parallel bars and then decided to do a standing back tuck i think. jo ling's so graceful on her front handsprings and i think i just muscle them around. hmmm.. nastia/shawn anyone? hopefully i don't run like shawn! she then taught me the beam routine after i worked on my bars. i can do a pullover, cast, back hip circle. i worked on my single leg cut backward. it's crazy how fast you go. i can only imagine how the olympians feel, it must really feel like flying.
less than 2 weeks to hawaii! can't wait!!!! and yet i'm scared at the same time, but life goes on.
can i just say that i had soo much fun. although, my levator scapulae is now sore, it was totally worth it. we got the the gym and met yuriy - hybrid bela karolyi and valeri liukin. i fell in love. sorry, charlie. he told me and jl to do handstands and walk across the floor. jl and i were wondering how in the world that was gonna happen. so we tried. wiggled our way down and doing a new handstand every 2 hand-steps. 4 was an accomplishment. then he came over and said, "ok, forward rolls." i couldn't tell if it was because our handstands were so horrendous or if he just wanted to see where we were at. we did that, dive rolls, which i had never done. then we did cartwheels on our good and bad side. my bad side was an epic fail and i need to work on squaring off. did some round offs. same squaring issue. he told me i had to be careful otherwise, i'll go on the tumble trak and fly off or into the wall, neither of which is fun. then we did some front handsprings on a mat and by some divine miracle i nailed my first one. nailed a few, squealed and fell on a few but such is life. then i did a drill to work on...??? i have no idea. i think on being hollow bc i'm pretty sure that's a problem of mine.
then we went and played on bars. yayy!!! i have the first move down, well, not when i focus on keeping my legs straight. and we did 3 casts to a hip circle things. i was going so fast. more screaming. then, i tried the one leg over thing and that didn't go to well. i fell a few times and the only times i got around, he was definitely helping a lot. then we jumped on the tumble trak. i tried a front tuck twice and didn't nail either of them. i fell out of one, landed on my head for the other. oh well. then we stretched. over all, it was tons of fun.
these 2 girls had a beam routine to airplanes and i really liked it. i've decided i need to put together a routine - level 3 is fine. then i can pretend i'm cool and can say i've done gymnastics :)
kayla williams retired. first us vault champion at worlds. it was an awesome vault. i remember watching her dty and dropping my mouth. it looked damn near perfect. well, she's decided she probably won't make the worlds team so she's focusing on college. cant be surprised with the competition being so much tighter in the us than the past.
i immediately thought "omg! alicia can make it now!" everyone kept saying the only thing stopping her was williams but that was a big IF. no if anymore. i'm excited for alicia and i think marta will give it to her. i'm more curious about kytra hunter and where that puts her. i know we think of aly raisman as alicia ii but what about kytra? she's an everything but bars girl. she has awesome tumbling. she's STRONG in the 3 events she does. i think she deserves a shot.
only time will tell.
i wanted to write an article for the couch gymnast on adult gymnastics but i see someone has already done that. maybe i can do it from the perspective of someone who has never done it? i dunno. i just looked and there are adult classes in hanover. well, actually in vermont but only 10 minutes from dartmouth. the downfall is that it's just a 1 hr class. the class at mit was 2.5hrs! i'm curious how much you stretch and how much guidance you get. the class at mit was also a lesson. we all learned pretty much at the same time. maybe we worked on different things or the same thing but doing drills at different levels but it was still instruction. i'm not sure if i'll get that anymore :(
just saw despicable me! it was lovely. a good pg movie. definitely pg for rude humor, i mean, russel brand is in it! but cute movie overall. when we left, the moon looked orange. i said maybe it was vector's jumpsuit. next, i wanna see ramona and beezus. maybe i'll watch that on my computer when it's available and skype chat with my sis. i miss her. i leave for dartmouth on sunday! excited, terrified, anxious, and curious? all at once.
back now! school is finally out of session and i'm glad. I've graduated and I will be heading off to medical school next year.
Posted my first gymnastics video. I'm really happy. Let me know what you think! It's the first one, so I'll gladly take criticisms.
I started to go to that gymnastics class. I will have gone to 10 classes by the end of this week. I like it so much. I can do a cartwheel, pop cartwheel, and round off. I've been working at my handstands. I'm not used to getting up in the air so I'm at that point where I'm in handstand and don't know what to do so I fall over.
Right now I'm watching the 2004 women's team finals. I can't believe I don't remember what happens. I vote US Silver. I'm actually shocked at how poorly Carly performed (I haven't seen floor yet) considering she got her act together to win the AA.
Home now for spring break! Hopefully, I'll be OK and there won't be too much fighting. I think I'll be going down to NYC for at least one day and hopefully I will get to see Sharon. I have a bit of med school stuff to do - accept/withdraw schools, find scholarships - clean my room, start packing for next year and organizing, all that good stuff.
I've been watching a lot of gymnastics lately. I've watched the 2006 aa and the 2007 worlds team finals. The 2006 aa was kinda underwhelming. I'm happy for vanessa ferrari considering that was her first worlds but overall, there was nothing to interesting. I found Isabelle Severino again who is in Stick It - she plays the main character's gymnastics double. Her floor music was the black eyed peas! How awesome is that?
I'm watching the 2008 pac rim's now. I wanna see what people were saying about Sam Shapiro's floor music. I read somewhere that they were comparing her and Jordyn Weiber to Nastia and Shawn respectively. We shall see. I can't believe we're nearly half way through the quad, I'm so excited for the olympics already! To be honest, I hope Rebecca Bross isn't our AA hope. I need to find a new favorite and fast. I wonder if any of the young Chinese will be returning. I really loved Jiang Yuyuan at the Olympics. She is just too cute.
How does that not make you smile?
I went to my adult gymnastics class on Tuesday. It's called FOCA gymnastics - google it. It was fun! We worked on candle sticks, front and back rolls, and the beginning parts of a handstand. We'll be doing handstands, cartwheels, and I think round-offs in the next 2 classes. After that, I think I'll start going to the advanced class. I'm lucky I'm doing this while I'm still young and still have some of my swimming strength and flexibility, hence why I want to go the advanced class. It's 1.5 hours of instruction and 1 hour of open gym. During the open gym, I walked along the balance beam and pretended to do jumps, chalked up my hands and I went on the uneven bars, and ran towards the vault but didn't actually jump onto it haha. It's actually kinda terrifying. Hopefully this is something that I can continue at/after medical school!
less than 2 weeks to hawaii! can't wait!!!!