Black Belt Test!!!!!

Yes, it deserves multiple exclamation marks. It was so cool! Sunday was my black belt test, and I DID AWSOME!!!!!!!!! (Don't comment on the grammar of that sentence. I know it's wrong, but I'm saying it anyway.) After waiting around for hours for it to finally be our turn, there was a group of 300 kids infront of our age group, it went by so quickly. It literally took ten minutes from when we walked into the gym until we were finished. It was the fastest ten minutes ever. I didn't have time to be nervous. First, we showed the judges three poomses (forms), and then we demonstrated some kicks, and then we had to spar twice.



Here we had just finished the first form and were waiting to move on to the next one. The judge was writing down our numbers, that's why we are all facing the side.
Demonstrating one of the forms. The uniform is not all that flattering, but it is surprisingly comfortable. I actually just got the red belt on Saturday because we don't actually have to wear them in class, so the master never bothered to give us belts. We needed them for the test, so we got them the day before. I didn't know how to tie it properly, so Master had to dress me.
Getting ready to spar. The equipment is not very comfortable and it makes it harder to move, but you can kick people and it doesn't hurt. Unfortunately, I kicked Sara in the elbow, where there is no padding, and really hurt my foot. Oh well. It was fun anyway.

After our test. We were all giddy with excitement.

This is one of the forms we had to show. There are eight forms required to get your black belt. We had to show three of them. We knew that we would have to do number eight, but the other two we found out just before we had to show them. I wanted to do numbers six and seven. I really didn't want to do numbers four and five. We got out there and found out that we were doing four, five, and eight. I was not very happy about that. I think I did okay, even if those ones were not my best.

I was going to put on more, but it won't work right now. I will put on more later.

Oooh. Pretty.

Last weekend was a long weekend, so we took the opportunity to go somewhere else. We went to a city on the east coast and were tourists. We all took lots of pictures of pretty much everything. I think the best part was that everything was so pretty and relaxing. I thought I would share some of the beauty so you can have a relaxing time, too. Enjoy. This was in a small town close to a temple. It was in the mountains and everything was so green. It was also very quiet. We all thought we could stay there forever.
This is a rice field on the edge of a forest. The trees were pretty. There were lots and lots of tadpoles in the rice field. Rachel dropped her extra camera battery into the water. Oops.
I think this was at a temple in the mountains. I took lots of pictures of walls, so I don't remember for sure. I just like this picture, so it doesn't really matter where it is. Can't you just here the birds and the water?
We found a pond that was almost completely covered with lilly pads. Here is a lotus flower. We also saw a frog sitting on the lilly pad. We were sure that frogs do that, so we looked around until we found one. I'll show you a picture later.
A drop of water on a leaf. Isn't it pretty?