A small 'l'equipe hollandaise' left for the south of France on Friday. Everyone arrived on Saturday and we put
up our tents. The rest of the day we mainly relaxed, explored the Auchan and had dinner.
Traditionally Sunday is the day for excursions and wine-tasting.
Hedwich, Evelien, Dennis and Hugo made an excursion to Sarlat, a delightful medieval town.
This year, however, we had a novelty: organising a drink to break the ice during the enrolment early Sunday evening.
The drink proved to be a huge success. Unexpectedly, almost everyone was present!. The self-imported Dutch cheese
turned out to be to everyone's liking.
The 'stage' started on Monday. There was a fairly large group and we started with the usual exercises
(tai sabakis, te hodoki waza), followed by the Shodan Kata.
The free training sessions in the afternoon were a bit more structured than in the previous years.
The instructors (Phillippe, Philippe, Richard) each took care of a one-hour training session.
The following hour was a true 'free training session'. In hindsight, this was a successful set-up as it yielded good results.
The training sessions during the other days were excellent. We worked in a good pace without too many long
interruptions. Nidan and Yodan Kata were the subjects of the week and thanks to the rehearsals during the
free training sessions we are now capable of executing these katas quite well!
The lunches at the Commandarie were good. Creating a balanced vegetarian meal,
however, is still beyond the capabilities of French cooks. I was personally annoyed
by the lack of a decent amount of vegetables in the meals.
During the week there was some commotion when the Spanish equipe decided to
lunch separately from the rest of the group. As the French and Dutch continued
to improve their social interaction during the week, the Spanish became a bit isolated as a result of this.
On Tuesday the local evening market at La Parade was on the agenda as usual. Despite the rain
in the beginning it turned out a huge success as anticipated. Great food, an abundance of wine
and lots of dancing. Ivo's famous 'under-the-shower' vocal talents ensured a position as band
member of the duo Pee Wee, now known as Trio Pee Wee Voo.
The French invited us for a drink on Wednesday evening. Despite us turning up more than an hour late we
still had a great time!
On Thursday we had a BBQ at the centre. The location is always beautiful,
the food simple and the happening a great success! After the BBQ we had some champagne and a small
delegation of the Dutch accompanied the French to admire Luc's magic skills. Later that evening 'keymaster' Dennis
appeared to have forgotten his duties as such but, apart from Ivo, no one lost any sleep over it.
There was no afternoon training on Friday. After the morning session we took some pictures.
After lunch we said goodbye to the French and the Spanish. Hans (by bike), Aarti and Hedwich
left for the Netherlands in the afternoon. This is why they eventually missed the highly
entertaining get-together with Gardien Roland at the camping in the evening.
On Saturday the rest of the gang went home. As we watched the photos and films of the previous week we washed away our sorrows of the stage's ending in Lemmy's the next day. See you next year!!
Later videos of the stage were uploaded on youtube:
nihon tai jitsu second kata dutch and french at temple 2007
nihon tai jitsu dutch bear technic at temple 2007
nihon tai jitsu kata shodan fontaines temple sur lot 2007