Welcome to the thirty-eighth post of the Great Writing Challenge of 2012.
Five days a week for six months, I will be given a topic to write about. The stipulation: it must be 250 words (or more), and positive in tone. If you would like to suggest topics for me to write about, please email me at TheRebeccaProject [at] gmail [dot] com.

It has been a sad few days for my American family here, and I shall not go into too much detail for fear of trivializing things. Life can sometimes be so damned serious as an adult, and it sucks to lose people you love. But this is a fantastic, loving family, and I am so lucky to be a part.

So in light of monumental changes and reevaluation of my own life, I want to focus my attention this evening on happy things: my Life List.

When I first saw Maggie’s Life list, I was really inspired. This was more a collection of moments and experiences, and less of a Bucket List. The Life List is about the anticipation and joy of experiencing things you have always wanted to (but often didn’t know that you really wanted), and about connecting with others who can help you achieve something. It’s collaborative, and I love helping others achieve their dreams and have just had two people this week offer to help me with mine. Sweet!

Number 68: Be a Jedi for a day.

Last Sunday, the Canadian and I rocked up to a warehouse in Soma for a lightsaber choreography class. As a massive fan of Star Wars (well, the original ones), I was pumped when The Canadian told me about it. We had no idea what to expect, but ‘go we must’.

And what is involved in a lightsaber choreography class, you ask? Surprisingly, it proved to be quite the workout! The first half hour or so was some cardio and stretching to limber up before we attacked each other with lightsabers. We learnt how to do flourishes and spin the lightsaber around in our hand, and around our body. In much the same way as in dancing classes I took when I was a kid, some of the moves were fine on one side of the body but I struggled to repeat them on the other side. Sometimes left, sometimes right. Bizarro.

About halfway through the class, we started the saber-to-saber contact with the six initial moves. This is where things really started to get interesting. We switched it up and practiced with different participants, and some were a little more progressed in their saber-to-saber contact. But the Canadian and I held our own (when we weren’t beaning ourselves in the head or the shin…).

We learnt the initial 21 or so moves from the Empire Strikes Back fight scene between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, and then ended with meditation. We sat cross-legged in a circle in the darkened performance space, our faces illuminated by our multicoloured sabers.

“There is no self. Only the Force.”

All in all, it was pretty cool experience. Our instructor was dressed in full Jedi get-up and he owned it. He aims to gather a group of people to recreate fight scenes from Star Wars to perform for sick kids in hospitals and what not. I wasn’t as uncoordinated as I had imagined, and had fun geeking out. The only crazy thing was just how sore we were the following day. Beyond sore!

We’ll probably head back again next month with some other friends. I can’t have ‘Jedi Master’ on my business cards without a few more Sundays under my belt…

And what good outing with the Canadian is complete without eating amazing food? I am a terrible influence on her. From Soma, we hiked up Van Ness to Fort Mason to enjoy the delights of our favourite food trucks. We had tofu bao with miso greens from Chairman Bao (my favourite of all time!); fried plantains with honey, as well as Peruvian cookies with dulche de leche from the Canadian’s fav truck, Sanguchon.  YUM! I had not tried the food from Sanguchon before, and the cookie was so amazing I was quite literally lost for words. I can’t wait until we head back to Fort Mason there for Off The Grid on Friday nights.

Tick! Number 68: Be a Jedi for a day has been completed. Kudos to the Canadian for suggesting it and for letting me twist her arm into eating our heads off at Fort Mason.