Terusa rock wall

The rain stopped just in time. After church today I met some friends at an outdoor climbing wall, between a busy road and the ocean. My first time seriously using ropes & a harness, I had butterflies dancing in my stomach as I walked up to the 4-story wall.

I tried a beginner's route on the right labeled with green square stickers and smoothly got about 3/4 of the way up. Then repeated to myself:

"ao, ao, aka.
hidari, migi, hidari."

blue, blue, red.

left [hand], right, left.

It seems easy enough, but before the day finished, this same spot gave me a scraped hand and pulled me off the wall 6 or 7 times. The first time, my belayer lowered me to the ground, but the second time, he left me suspended, and encouragingly hollered, "Rest. Try again."

I still couldn't do it, so I tried a route slightly to the left and had way more success there...I reached the top & excitedly slapped the metal bar running along the top of the wall.

We stayed for 3 1/2 hours, climbing, chatting, cheering, "Gamba, gamba!" "Sugoi!" "Umai" (you can do it! wow! good!)

I always have tons of fun with this great group of mutually-addicted-to-climbing friends. On Thursday nights, we meet up near my school & climb (on a much shorter wall) for a couple hours. It seems every week I have stories to tell or funny things that happened & want to blog about, but I rarely do...

But I'll definitely post when I conquer "ao, ao, aka, hidari, migi, hidari"!! :)