Water Oak Aikikai October 2007 - 1

Weddington, North Carolina www.water-oak.net

• Donovan Waite Sensei, Chief Instructor, Aikido of Center City

On September 8th Water Oak Aikikai hosted a seminar featuring Donovan Waiter Shihan. The event was a resounding success. It was attended by Aikidoka from across North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee (Nashville) and Louisiana (New Orleans).

Waite Shihan began the morning class with ukemi training. For some of the participants this style of soft, circular, fluid ukemi was brand new. While others have been working on it for some time now. In both cases Waite Shihan worked to polish everyone and bring their ukemi up a notch or two. We then moved on to technique instruction.

Lunch was catered by McAllister’s Deli. As we have come to expect the sandwiches were fantastic and the sweet tea was very refreshing. Since we didn’t have to hustle out to a restaurant we were able to stay at the dojo and have a relaxing lunch with Waite Shihan and chat with each other.

After lunch we started the afternoon with a weapons (bokken) class out on the lawn. The weather treated us like best friends; a light cloud cover made the training very comfortable and allowed us to enjoy the natural settings as well as the instruction. We then moved back into the dojo to finish off the day’s last class.

We want to thank everyone who attended the seminar and made it such a wonderful event. In fact, things went so well that Waite Shihan was already talking about coming back next year! He did have one suggestion for us though; next time we will have a barbecue party at the dojo on Saturday night.

You can see more snapshots at www.water-oak.net/aikikai/Snapshots/Snapshots_List.aspx

Mark Your Calendars! WOA 2008 Fall Seminar w/ Donovan Waite Shihan October 17-18, 2008