Olympic Hopeful

I am proud to admit that I was an Olympic hopeful (in judo). by the age of 16 I was on the Olympic track. My dad no longer put me in low level tournaments. Competing across the company and sometimes outside of the U.S. was normal.  I did judo five to six days a week and did conditioning seven days a week. Sometimes I would condition two times a day depending on my schedule and if I was cutting weight.

I missed out on a lot of things, but I gained a lot to.  I had many life experiences that others don't get to have. My friends went to college...I moved to the Olympic Training Center. I trained with some of the best athletes and met some great people. I will always cherish the memories of my training. It was hard, but it was fun. I know the dedication and time demands it takes to pursue this type of track. 

It was devastating to hear that the International Olympic Committee is removing wrestling as an Olympic event. To me wrestling is the definition of a traditional Olympic sport. "Wrestling was among the first sports in those ancient Games; wrestling was also included at the start of the modern Olympics, in 1896 (Irving, 2013)." The New York Times article, How Wrestling Lost the Olympics, goes on to discuss if wrestling is not an Olympic sport then will it impact high school and college school wrestling programs in the United States? I'm sure that it will.

Wrestling as had a long  history with the Olympics. I am optimistic knowing that this decision can be appealed. There has already been a large movement to "Keep Wrestling in the Olympics." They invite people to sign petitions, like and follow pages on both Facebook and Twitter. They also have an official website. Amazing how inclined people are with social media. I received a tweet which directed me to a French site to sign their petition to keep wrestling in the Olympics.  I hope that their Olympic dreams can live on.

Irving, John. (2013). How Wrestling Lost the Olympics. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/opinion/how-wrestling-lost-the-olympics.html

Chinese New Year Celebration

Over time my family has grown.  My cousins and  I grew up, we got married and we had kids.  Some live out of state or a few hours away.  Over the years we have spent less and less time together; even during the holidays.  Chinese New Year is fortunately a holiday which I think we will ALWAYS spend together. This is a time when we all PLAN to be together.

All of us pack in to a house. This year we had to eat in three separate rooms. As we arrived my aunts and uncle were still cooking. Another aunt and I started serving food to everyone else.  We had a choice of corn chowder and fungus soup. Following the soup, rice was served and the meal began.

This year was a little fun because we brought my husband's sister who has never had  a traditional Chinese meal.  I explained to her many of the Chinese New Year traditions. There will be clementines and red eggs which symbolize good luck. I let her know how the meal would run and that it was likely that one or two people would serve everyone because it is easier with the amount of space we have.  I let her know what everything was that was being served and what things I thought she may not eat (she dislikes ham so I told her to stay away from anything with ham.) I also made sure that she had a fork.  There was a time when only chopsticks and bowls were served.  My kids were subject to a chopstick only meal. They did pretty good.

My cousin, Steve, was hiding the lap xuong (Chinese sausage), from his sister, Heather, for almost the entire meal.  He had it in front of him, but was blocking it with a larger bowl. She had no idea it was there until Steve's wife moved the larger bowl. Then his sister swept in and grabbed the sausage.  It's a family favorite. My kids ate all of the Chinese sausage at our table.

To say the least, we had some mouth-watering food that we do not get to have all of the time.  This is sometimes unappealing to the eye, but amazing for the taste buds. It is so nice to get together with my family, enjoy a DELICIOUS meal, reminisce about old memories and take the time to catch up.