I wrote what is below last week and forgot to post it.

12-16-03

Well, hello, hello and how are you? I'm doing GREAT because as of last night I am a

GREEN BELT!

Yes, yipee and yahoo! Yay, wow, and wonderful! *super big huge grin* I guess the reason I'm so thrilled is that green has always been the color of a real martial artist, in my mind anyway. Anybody can make it to orange belt: it's when testing for green that you do your first really hard board breaks, your first back to back fighting and your first plural fights.

Well, I guess I'll tell you about the test. Last Monday night we tested on kata, techniques and Bible verse. I did real well on kata and techniques and only messed up a little on the verse. I don't know why I did, but my mind went just completely and totally blank. I know that verse so well I could say it in my sleep, but I still couldn't remember the first few words. I got it after a minute though. Our group finished our stuff before the other groups, so they asked if anybody had brought their boards to break. I had thought something like that might happen so I had brought ours and we all did our breaks. I had four breaks: a ridge hand, a hammer fist, jumping front kick and spinning back kick. All had to be done with two, 1 by 12 by 12 boards. The ridge hand was the one that worried me the most: the striking area is the side of the first nuckle of your pointer finger. But I managed to go through on the first try with very little pain. All my other breaks were pretty easy to do: I did them all left sided because I knew that I could do them with my right hand or foot: I wanted to know if I could do it with my left. BonnieJean had to break four baords: one each with a punch, a knife hand, a front kick and a side kick. She had broken boards quite easily before with her feet, but had never been able to break with her hands. A few days before the test she finally managed to break a board with a descending palm strike, but she was still pretty worried. Well, she went to do her knife hand break and BAM! went right through it, like a hot knife through butter. Punch, BANG! Perfect. Side kick. WACK! No more board. Front kick: dull THUD. No break. She tried again. THUD. Again. THUD. The dumb board just wouldn't break. Finally she tried it on a differant board and went right through. Anna, Ethan and Joshua got through their breaks with no problem, but poor Naomi really had trouble. She had to try multiple times on all of her breaks and really bruised her hand up good. But she didn't quit and broke them all herself! I was so proud!

Then last night we did all of our fighting and those who hadn't broken boards last week did theirs'. I had three, two minute fights back to back with no rest. It was actually really fun. My second fight was against a guy I had fought a few weeks ago and not done very well against, but I did much better last night. I even got him with a very good hook kick, which is really cool, 'cause I hardly ever score with that. On my last fight our head Sensie came in and fought, which of course was really cool. I scored on him a few times. But of course he wasn't really fighting with me, toying with me would be more like it. I won two of my three plural fights: one of the two on one fights and the three on one fight. BonnieJean and Ethan fought very well. Anna did ok: she really been having trouble gaurding herself lately. I didn't get to see Joshua fight much (he was in a differant group) or Naomi. But I did see Naomi do her last plural (3 on 1) fight. She had trouble picking which person to fight and instead tried to fight all three at once, so she got hit a good deal. A couple landed pretty hard in her gut but she kept on fighting!

12-23-03

Good heavens, I had totally forgotten about this post I'd started to write! Sorry about that!

I worked yesterday. We are on Christmas break, but since we were snowed out a few weeks ago we had to do a make-up day. I was there 8:30 to 2:30, teaching most of the time. The last half hour or so there were very few people left at the gym and several of the upper level gymnast and teachers did tumbling. I tried a couple new things and I think I'm finally starting to get a handle on two standing back hand springs.

Saturday I took the ACT. I need to get a 31 or higher in order to apply for a full tuition scholarship at ORU. Last time I got a 28. I'm pretty confident I managed to raise it the needed three points, but I'm not certain. Guess there's no use worrying about it now. After the test, while waiting for Mom to pick me up, I went to a nearby Denny's and ordered a milk shake. Stupidly I didn't ask what the price was: that silly milk shake cost me $3.50! I could have bought a whole gallon of ice cream for that much! It was highly annoying.

Mom, Anna, BonnieJean and I pooled our money and bought the soundtracks for Pirates of the Caribbean, Attack of the Clones, The Two Towers and The Four Feathers. Pirates and Attack of the Clones have arrived and we are enjoying them alot. In fact I'm listening to Pirates of the Caribbean right now: man, that is a cool soundtrack! I need to see that movie again. The problem is that it's not a movie we want the little guys to see, what with all the walking skeletons and all, so I'm not sure when we'll get a chance to see it.

I can't beleive it's only two days until Christmas. It doesn't seem like it. Maybe because the weather is so warm: yesterday I went running in sweat pants and a T-shirt. Anyway, I hope you all have a merry, wonderful Christmas and a great new year! God bless y'all!