New Black Belts

Last Friday Jennifer and I had our black belt test. I took the whole day off, first I had to take Mom to the airport so that she could catch her flight to sunny California. Then came back home and just in time to pick up Gary for lunch. After lunch, Jennifer and I spent the afternoon packing up the truck with all the stuff we needed for the test and tournament. We got a motel room, no sense getting out of the test at 10:00 pm come home then get up bright and early to get back in time for the tournament. It is so much more convenient spending the night.

We got to Billings early, so we got to the school early to get a good parking space. We were a bit worried when no cars were there, but we were more than an hour early. We got our space then ran across the street to Arby's for a quick bite to eat. We were getting a bit worried when time got closer and no cars or people were coming. I gave the head guy a quick call and found out they moved the test to another location. Gary was mad because they couldn't do the polite thing and give us a phone call, after all seems like all the others knew. I told him that it was nothing to get upset over, nothing we can do. Fortunately we had enough time to get to the new location. Couldn't get good parking, so had to park across the street.

Jennifer and I changed into our uniforms and started to warm up. The test started at 6:30 and they did judo first. We just had to sit and watch. I got up to move around so that I wouldn't stiffen up. They ran the test in different groups. We originally were going to be two groups, the first group were the candidates for 1st degree. They went through all of their stuff, then it was time for our group. At first they got all the candidates for 2nd, 3rd and 4th degrees up. Fantastic we get to move as a group. Jennifer was in the front row, I was in the middle row. From there they broke us up into smaller groups. Jennifer's was up first and they really put that group through their paces. They even ended up doing some extra stuff. There was only me and another woman testing for 3rd degree. She has a back back so she couldn't do even half the stuff requried. I ended up doing just what she had to do which was 3 forms and my sword. Normally we would have had to do 14 forms and 4 weapon forms. Jennifer was mad saying how lucky I was to get out of so much. She even had to break a board for her test and I didn't.

We were awarded our new belts. Jennifer is now a 2nd degree black belt and I'm a 3rd degree black belt. Feels pretty good and glad it is over, now we just have to wait our allotted time again before we test. Jennifer has to wait 3 years and I have to wait 4. This also gives us time to save up some more money. These tests are not cheap.