Hobbies

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Other August Highlights

Posted on September 26, 2025 by Ching under Community, Hobbies, Things to Do.

August was a full month. Besides our trip to Grapevine for our 23rd wedding anniversary, I got to play a lot of pickleball and participate in several fun things. While I never get to play in the Chicken N Pickle ambassador open play anymore (because it’s on Wednesdays this year and I teach Zumba on Wednesdays at West YMCA), I always manage to stop by for the group photo. August was no different.

I also enjoyed a great month of team league with my awesome KC^2 teammates.

I played some chess at TapNPaddles.

I helped with the Dink Minor Leagues MiLP v3 presented by InPickle Nation at TapNPaddles.

We hung out with Chris Townley and Jay and Becca Dill at family fun day.

We celebrated Zach’s 40th birthday at Flight Club.

We ate lunch at Plentibloom (inside the Ruffin Building).

Brian got to try a new ramen place. I will make a separate, dedicated post about this. Stay tuned!

I played pickleball with some fun ladies.

We had our weekly InPickle Nation mini tournaments at TapNPaddles.

Lots of trips to the ballpark.

September is pretty much over so I’ll be recapping what happened this month soon. Eventually we will be completely caught up. Have a fantastic weekend!

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Brian Got Me Flowers

Posted on September 19, 2025 by Ching under Date Ideas, Hobbies, Things to Do.

A few weeks ago, Brian surprised me with this:

As you know, I’m not a huge fan of flowers. First, they’re expensive; and secondly, they don’t last. They’re a nice thoughtful gift but I honestly thing they are a waste of money. So I was super thrilled when Brian surprised me Lego flowers instead.

He thought it would be fun for us to build it together. We started on it before pickleball one night but it was more involved that we thought so we didn’t finish. Not being a very patient person, looking for all the various pieces and parts was a bit cumbersome at times.

Brian was like, “I thought about just building it at work and bringing it home to you already done.” My immediate, unfiltered reaction was, “OMG. That would have been so much better!”

He did complete building the rest of it himself and suprised me with the finished product when I came home from pickleball.

I love it so much that I decided to take it to work and display it next to my other fake orchid. Speaking of Legos, if you enjoy building Lego sets and drinking wine, Exploration Place has super fun Sip & Build events the next couple of months.

I really wanted to do it in September but none of the dates worked for us. I hope they do it again because none of the October kits were that appealing to me. I wanted to do either the typewrite or the camera kit. But who am I kidding? I probably would have just supervised and watched Brian build both things. LOL. Until next time!

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Zumba Is and Will Always Be

Posted on January 29, 2024 by Ching under Hobbies, Zumba.

I’m not sure if anyone has noticed but, now that I’m less focused on pickleball (I don’t plan to play any tournaments this year – so far so good), I’ve had a bit more time for self-reflection. Today, I thought about reflecting on my Zumba journey. I’ve had many hobbies come and go over the years but Zumba is the one passion of mine that’s always been a constant.

Now that I’m back to teaching at the Y (will expound on this later), someone in class recently asked me how long I’ve been doing Zumba. Well, I’ve been teaching classes for about 12 years but I’ve been “doing” Zumba since the beginning of time. I first discovered Zumba through an infomercial (back when those were a thing) over 20 years ago. I bought the VHS tapes and started doing Zumba at home. A few years later, in-person classes became available. Much like my pickleball addiction, shortly after attending my first class, I found myself driving all over town to various gyms just to get my Zumba fix. There was a period of two years when I was a member of both Genesis Health Clubs and the YMCA and I was going to Zumba classes at independent studios and rec centers.

As with most of my hobbies, I tend to go all in so I was completely obsessed and was spending a lot of money on Zumba wear. In 2012, my friend and Zumba mentor Gina Ann encouraged me to join the Zumba Instructor Network. I didn’t necessarily want to teach classes. The biggest selling point was the 20% OFF discount on Zumba merch. I completed my training in April 2012 and joined the network but had absolutely no intention of teaching. However, in June of that year, my friend Patricia told me they needed someone to teach Zumba at Evergreen Recreation Center. I didn’t really want to teach classes but, because I was trying to learn Spanish at the time and the rec center is in a predominantly Hispanic area of town, I figured why not? That was my introduction to teaching Zumba and I haven’t looked back since. Nowadays, I get input from class participants on what songs I should add to the playlist but, at the time when I was first starting out, I didn’t really know any of that mattered so I just built my class playlist around all of my favorite songs. When I was a student, I used to take a water break or go to the restroom whenever the instructor would play a song that wasn’t really my cup of tea. Now that I was in full control of the playlist, I found it totally liberating. I thought, “This is awesome! I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner.” I only used my favorite songs. It was great.

I was enjoying it so much that I started to add more classes. At one point, I was working for Genesis, the Y, and the city of Wichita just teaching classes all over the place. Once I was more established, I quit teaching for the city (they paid the least), and mostly just taught at the Y. My regular full-time job was also a contributing factor to giving up some of my classes. There was a period from 2015 to 2018 when I was mostly working in Topeka and Kansas city so I could only teach classes on the weekends. By 2018, that project had wrapped so then I was back to mostly working from Wichita and not having to travel anywhere for work so then I could get back into a regular routine. When VASA opened in Wichita in August 2018, I joined their team. From then until 2020, when the COVID pandemic hit, I was teaching classes for the Y, Genesis, and VASA on evenings and weekends. I peaked at 9 classes a week at various locations — a class each night on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday; two classes on Saturdays; and three classes on Sundays.

I was also so obsessed with Zumba that I attended all the conventions, went on Zumba cruises, and completed training for nearly every form of Zumba imaginable. I even got licensed to teach Strong.

When I got into pickleball in 2019, I gradually started giving up classes so I would have more time to play. I got to play pickleball quite a bit before the gyms reopened in 2020 (after the “stay at home” mandate was lifted). When the gyms reopened, I decided to only return to VASA because I wanted more free time for pickleball and they paid the most out of all the gyms. For the last few years, I had been mostly teaching Aqua Zumba because we couldn’t find anyone else available who was licensed to teach that format besides me but there were many other Zumba instructors on the roster. I enjoyed teaching Aqua so I didn’t mind but, I have to admit, when I decided I wanted to pursue opportunities to teach Zumba again it was rough. I had forgotten all the land routines so I basically had to relearn and memorize choreography again. Thankfully, it’s a lot like riding a bike and it just comes back to you naturally.

I am currently teaching one class a week. I’m teaching Zumba at West YMCA on Wednesday nights from 6:30 PM to 7:30 PM. I’ve been back for two months and I have enjoyed every minute of it. My friend Andrea Burk who was a regular at my Andover YMCA classes and also a former Zumba instructor has been coming to class and it’s been great reuniting with her. I also got a couple of my pickleball pals (Colby Fugit and Susie Ternes) to come and try class a couple of weeks ago.

Words simply cannot express how grateful I am to have Zumba as an outlet. I’ve had many hobbies over the years — hobbies that I’ve enjoyed for a time but no longer pursue (racquetball, crocheting, bowling, sword-fighting – just to name a few) — but there’s only one thing that has remained constant in my life over the last couple of decades and that is Zumba. Maybe years from now I can look back and add pickleball to my list of life-long hobbies. Check back in with me in 2030 but, for now, Zumba is and will always be my #1 passion.

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New Board Games

Posted on January 16, 2024 by Ching under Games, Hobbies.

Brian and I learned to play a new board game last week. Zach and Lisa taught us how to play Blokus, a 2-4 player strategy game using block shapes.

When Zach first told me about it a few weeks ago, I thought it sounded fun so I went ahead and ordered it (XL version) and Trigon (triangle shapes version) off Amazon. When my Trigon game arrived, we went over to Zach and Lisa’s place and they taught us how to play Blokus (that was our first time playing) and then we also played the Trigon version.

I’m not sure if this is a well-known fact but Brian and I love playing games. We love card games, board games, really any games. Brian’s actually playing chess with me again too (and kicking my butt, I might add).

Anyway, I thought I would share our most recent game purchases:

Blokus XL – This is the same as the Blokus game but with bigger pieces.

Blokus Trigon – Same as the Blokus game but with triangle shapes instead of squares.

Blank Slate – Super fun game that Colby brought to Susie’s house last month. I ended up ordering it that same night. We brought the game to Christmas Eve lunch at mom and dad’s and it was a hit. It was $25 was I ordered it but it’s actually on sale right now for $19 so if you want to buy your own game, now is the time to order it.

Qawale – This is a two player game Brian and I discovered via an online video. It’s quick and fun.

Are there any other games we should check out? We are open to suggestions. Let us know in the comments.

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Holiday Break

Posted on January 8, 2022 by Ching under Hobbies, Pickleball.

We had some great weather over the Christmas holiday. We had highs in the 70s! It was awesome! I pretty much played all day on Christmas Eve. First at Edgemoor Park with Jimmy Cho and crew and then later at Seneca Park with a bunch of other fellow pickleball addicts.

Jimmy Cho

Lonnie Lollar

I took advantage of vacation time between Christmas and New Year, and even made it to Mulvane to play some pickleball with mom and dad.

Others I got to play with during the break include Mason McCanless, Tom Pham, and Karen Fox. Mason arranged play for us at Edgemoor Park on a cold morning when we were the only people playing — five courts empty except for ours.

Here are some clips from our games that day at Edgemoor.

The next day I got to play with Jimmy Cho, Karen Fox, and Matt Nola. Matt and I are trying to get more games in together because we plan to play together in the US Open this year. That is, if we can make it through the lottery process.

I need to switch back to playing with an Electrum paddle, though.

Here are some of the fun points we had. This next video contains highlights from our 22-minute game. Would you believe all of these rallies happened in one game only? That was a crazy, fun game!