MONDO

Of all the winter months, February is my favorite. I love that because it is so short, it feels like spring is just around the corner. March starts to get warmer here and February tends to move quick. I have two family birthdays in February (my little brother and my little sister). In general it's a good winter month which for me is saying a lot. Did I mention that I'm not a huge fan of winter?

But one of my favorite parts of February is Mondo. Every year (normally in February) the Mondo Jugglefest is held in Minneapolis at Concordia University. And snow or sleet we almost always seem to make it up. Jeff and I have been going to the convention for at least six years now. The first trip I managed to almost learn how to juggle. The friends we go with taught me with tennis balls, meaning that I chased them all over the convention floor. I was so sore that night that I couldn't move. By the next convention I could juggle three balls. Now I'm slowly working on club juggling and three ball passing. I don't practice all the time but I love that I'm able to do some basic stuff. 

The convention is pretty informal with a couple scheduled activities. There are jugglers, unicyclists, and yo-yo artists.They always play unicycle hockey and they always do either 7 or 8 ball endurance. There is always an auction. But most of the time we just stand around and learn new tricks from the people around us. If you want to learn there will always be a someone who will teach you. I am constantly amazed by all the tricks I see. The convention can occasionally pull in a big name in juggling like Vova Galchenko or Ivan Pecel. 

No matter what, every year we have a blast and I get incredibly excited about learning. I love that this is a place were failing is not a bad thing. It's just part of the learning process. I've always said that juggling is just learning to drop less. I'm sure I've dropped hundreds of thousands of times trying to learn to juggle. And this year I'll do even more dropping. And I may even learn to unicycle.