Settling in

So I finally feel like I've settled into the school year. I've gotten into routine with my classes, I've gotten used to living with roommates again, etc.

On the TKD front, we're been making lots of progress. There was a lot of stuff that needed to get done. Since we lost our old homeschool, we basically had to sit down and make up our own system for the time being until we find someone else. That means we had to come up with ranks (how many and what belt system to use), come up with the requirements to promote to each rank, come up with the rules for sparring in class, etc.

On another note, my school is doing The Coming Out Monologues again this year. This year, I'll be helping out with organizing it. It won't be put on until next semester, but we'll be working on reading through story submissions this semester. The guy who currently runs it is graduating at the end of the semester, so I'm helping out as much as I can. It's my job to make sure that the show doesn't fall through after he leaves. This means that I'll be in charge during auditions, rehearsals, and getting things reading on the actual night. I'm glad the current guy will still be around for all the space reservations and such. I'd hate to have to decide when the rehearsals and the actual show should be all by myself.

Well, that's about it.
Later

Are you a sports fan, or a team fan?

This one's for all of the team sports fans out there.

So recently I've been comparing and contrasting one of my current roommates to one of my previous roommates. They have the same name, and both are self-proclaimed hardcore fans of American Football. During Football season, I could count on both of them to watch every game religiously, and be cheering very loudly at the tv.

Here are where the differences lie.

My current roommate has never been on a football team. He's always wanted to, but he doesn't have the build for it. He does, however, have a great build for tkd. I'm extremely jealous of his extremely long legs relative to his height. Anyway, like a lot of (probably most of) football fans, he's extremely loyal to certain teams, and hates teams that he has no loyalty to, especially the teams that are "rivals" to the teams he supports. He even has this deep hatred towards this one college team, even though he doesn't actually care for college football in general. I took this class freshman year where we briefly studied sports culture. This one author that we read explained that people tend to be loyal to teams that have some sort of connection to them. Usually, people pick teams that are from the area they live in. I asked my roommate, and he confirmed that the reason he picked the teams he's loyal to is because his dad is loyal to them. Anyway, the author explained that the reason people do this is because it allows them to view the team as a part of them. That way, when the team wins, they win. I explained all of this to my roommate, he seemed to agree with the points of the author but thought that supporting teams simply added to the experience and culture.

On the other hand, there's my previous roommate. He played football throughout high school. He is against the form of team supporting mentioned in the last paragraph. He believes that when you do that, you aren't able to appreciate the game as much. You're too busy hating one team that you ignore the great plays that they make and also fail to criticize the faults of the team you support. I should point out: he does like certain teams more than others, but he tries his best to base his opinions on how they play, and not where they're from or anything like that.

Personally, I lean more towards my previous roommate. Then again, I don't really follow team sports, so my opinion probably doesn't hold much weight. I'm curious. What's everyone's thoughts on this?

Stats

So I've been looking through my Stats application on my blog page, which lets me see how many hits each post gets, what countries view my blog and how many hits I've gotten from them, how many hits I've got from different browsers, and what methods people use to get to my site (such as using google, linking from another blog, etc). This app really isn't that accurate; according to it, I have more comments than page views on certain posts. I do get some interesting stats though. For example, approximately 1% of my audience views my blog using Nintendo Wii, which I approve of. I have a surprisingly large number of people from other continents reading my blog. Naturally, most of my audience finds me through Maddie's, BDNY's and Green and Purple's blogs (thanks guys!) One person found my blog when he seached for "gay tai kwon do top." I'm not sure if he was looking for my site or someone else's, but I thought it was pretty funny.

To any of my fellow blogger's out there: are there any amusing stats that you've been given?
To anyone reading this: How did you find my blog?

My first boyfriend

I was asked a long time ago about my first boyfriend. I thought I'd share a few things. I first met him through facebook. He and I were incoming freshmen to the same school, and the summer before our first semester started, the freshman class used facebook to contact future roommates, suitemates, hallmates, residential advisors, kids taking the same classes as them, etc. It was actually kind of cool to talk to these kids, knowing that I'll get to meet them in person in the near future. My first boyfriend was one of these kids. He and I were going to live on the same floor in the same dorm. When we first started talking to each other, there wasn't any intention of dating; he was dating someone at the time, and I was dealing with my first stalker.

This stalker. During summer orientation, I met one of the leaders who happened to be gay. He was really nice and told me that if I had any LGBT related questions about living on campus, that I could friend him on facebook and ask him, which I did. Not long after I did that, I received a friend request by this other guy, my stalker. I figured out from his facebook page that he was a residential advisor for my dorm, so I naturally assumed that he was my advisor and was going around friending his future residents. So, I accepted and he quickly started talking to me. I quickly found out that although he was AN advisor in my dorm, he wasn't mine. I asked him how many other kids in the dorm he had friended, and he said just me. I asked why me, and he said it was because he found me through my orientation leader's friends and thought I was cute. I was really uncomfortable with this, especially since this guy was a senior and I was an incoming freshman. I didn't like the idea of being someone's fresh meat, so I told him I wasn't interested in dating him. The problem was he kept persisting. It was really awkward when I finally met the guy in person and still had to tell him no. He eventually gave up. I found out later that this guy has a reputation for preying on freshmen.

Anyway, back to my first boyfriend. By the time school started, he had broken up with his old boyfriend. We hung out for a few times and got to know each other better. We had similar senses of humor and liked most of the same movies, music and video games. Most Importantly, he had a bit of a hard time growing up. Whereas my coming out story was extremely positive, his was not. I won't go into detail, but he had it rough. In spite of that, he tried as hard as he could to overcome all of that. I admired that kind of strength. I asked him out, and we became a couple. In retrospect, our relationship wasn't that great, but at the time I loved it. After a few months, we started having problems. He was a very moody guy, and I had trouble keeping up with it all. He also had major self-esteem issues, and dating me probably didn't help. People sometimes referred to him as "the bitch" since I had a more masculine personality than him. Also, he was overweight, while I was skinny and in decent shape. I often encouraged him to get out and exercise more, which he may have misunderstood as a sign that I had a problem with his weight. On another hand, he had problems respecting my opinions on things. I couldn't criticize him on anything without it being held against me, even if he asked me to criticize him on something. He'd also hold it against me if I defended myself when he'd accuse me of doing something wrong.

Anyway, we decided to break up. I didn't really want to break up; I wanted to work it out, but he insisted. We decided to still be friends and stay open to the idea of getting back together. The day we broke up, a number of gay guys on campus started talking to me a lot. They acted like they were concerned about how I was feeling emotionally, but I'm pretty sure they were mostly looking for an opprotunity to hit on me. I ended up going out with this one guy who seemed to be the most sincere, but on our first date he tried going for second base, so I decided to call it off right there.

I then started going out with this one guy who was the complete opposite. He was such a gentleman, he asked permission the first couple times he kissed me. After that last jerk, I really appreciated this. Still, as amazing as this guy was, I didn't have particularly strong feelings towards this guy. I thought it was because I still had feelings for my first boyfriend. What made things worse was that my first boyfriend confronted me and told me he wanted to get back together. I decided that since I still had feelings for my first boyfriend and didn't have very strong feelings for this new guy I was dating, I should go back to my first boyfriend. I explained all of this to the guy I was dating and he was very understanding.

In hindsight, this was probably the stupidest thing I've ever done in terms of dating. Maybe not the breaking up with the new guy I was dating, but going back to my first boyfriend. While I was getting attention from lots of other guys, he wasn't getting any (as far as I know). I imagine he was mistaking general feelings of loneliness with feelings of wanting to be with me. I can't really blame him. I've been there. After we got back together, he quickly realized that he didn't want to be with me as much as he thought. A couple weeks after we got back together, he cheated on me. He cheated on me with a guy he just met. This guy liked my boyfriend, and my boyfriend neglected to mention that he was seeing someone. When the guy found out about me the next day, he was furious. My boyfriend immediately told me everything that had happened and we broke up.

I'm not gonna lie. I think the only other time that I was hurt as bad as this was when my mom died. I was so upset that I felt numb for days, both physically and emotionally. I could say more, but I prefer not to.

The happy ending to this story is that I eventually forgave him and now we're friends again. I'm also friends with his new boyfriend

Stuff going on right now

It's been months since I've made a post about what's going on in my day-to-day life. School started recently. I'm living in this new house off campus with two of my friends from TKD. It's been interesting so far. Out of the 3 of us, I was the only one who was here during the summer (I was taking classes). It was strange when the first moved in and I suddenly had to get used to living with people again. On the plus side, I was getting a little lonely. Between my house mates moving in, and my friends moving back to school, it was nice to have frequent company again.

The first week or so of school was pretty frustrating. I've decided to change my major from chemistry to psychology, and since I made my schedule before this decision, I had to change my classes at the last minute, go a few classes without books, debate with the administration over giving me overrides into certain classes, etc. I think that's finally settled, though, so things should get less hectic.

As far as TKD goes, I am now the head instructor, however I am sharing my power with two other black belts since last year proved to me that I wouldn't be able to handle the responsibility all by myself. I'm slowing discovering how much business is involved in running a campus club that the old head instructor neglected to mention to me, such as filling out a club registration form in order to let the university know that your club still exists. Another change is that we lost our home school, so now our entire club has lost its official status as a school of TKD. This has its ups and downs. On one hand, our students' ranks will probably have absolutely no value outside of our school (which they seem to be ok with). On the other hand, we are now allowed to incorporate anything into our program that we want instead of having to conform to the curriculum of a more traditional school. Hell, we could mix in some Kung Fu if we really want to. I love the freedom we all have, but I really wish we could be official again. In the long run, a rank is just a piece of fabric, but it also represents the student's accomplishments, and it would suck if no one outside of this school respected those accomplishments.

I guess I might as well mention, if I haven't already before, that I'm single again. There wasn't any huge fight or anything. We both agreed that our feelings for each other died down, so it'd be best to call it off before some major fall out would happen. We're still close friends and hang out regularly, so don't worry. There's no hard feelings on either side. There isn't really anyone new I have my eye on. I'm not really looking either. Right now, I've got to get settled back into things here at school