Instructors

I love our instructors. We have three. The problem is that quite a bit they're difficult to read. Mr. F is a 5th degree black belt, and the school owner. He rarely teaches class, but is usually in the school whenever we're there. He's the hardest to read--I don't know if I'm pissing him off or bugging him or what. Sometimes we have great conversations--other times I feel like he's angry with me for asking him a simple question. SW's suggestion is that we don't talk to him unless he talks to us first. Mr. N is the school's chief instructor, a 3rd degree. He normally teaches all of our classes. He's normally pretty nice, but lately he seems to be losing patience with us and is in a bad mood pretty often. I think he's about as old school as you can get--studied at the Shaolin Temple, been taking martial arts pretty much his whole life, not very concerned with rank--the only problem with that is that we don't have the time to dedicate that I think he expects. And whenever we ask ATA-specific questions (like "can I enter the tournament in forms only?") he gets irritated. Again, kind of hard to figure out. Ms. C is the youngest intructor, a 2nd degree and World Champ. She is easily the most approachable--partly because she's only 19, and partly because she has grown up with the whole ATA experience. She absolutely loves our kids, and is a perfect mentor for Princess. Lately, though, even she has been a little impatient. All in all, I really like our instructors--but they appear to be overworked. For example, in last night's class they were teaching us the #2 One-Step, and were annoyed that we didn't know it. I'm assuming that they didn't realize that SW and I had never been taught it. It would be nice if this was our only commitment in life, but that's just not the case. We're overstretching ourselves as it is going there three nights a week. We leave for the Pheonix tournament tonight. Princess will be doing her form, with help, with the Tiny Tigers and I have decided to wait until the next tournament to enter as (hopefully by then) an Orange belt. I'll pass an update (hopefully with pictures) on Monday.