Black belt testing occurred 22d and 23d June. It was good with respect to flow: there was little downtime, and I think we had a pretty good bit of exercises. I think the test could have been more difficult, but by and large the response was positive. D had some really good comments and we'll use them to improve the test next year.
Breaking was especially good. D did a box break: five boards (he didn't break into the board) with different hand positions. Very, very impressive. He also broke five boards on a side kick. It had begun raining earlier, and he somehow arranged thunder right before his kick took off. Five boards is ridiculous. J did a speed hammer, triple-front, and one-inch punch through two boards. They are the first students to come through (besides D, my master peer) that I felt did better breaks than I did through my career. I was super proud of them, and super glad to see their test. They did awesome.
Prior to test, as is our wont, we had a teaching seminar. It was also great. We went through a 45-minute lesson taught by MC on how to handle large groups of inattentive children. His skills at teaching are really impressive, and that was tons of fun.
The week following was a vacation week for L's brother-in-law and sister, with whom we had some dinner and a trip to Longwood Gardens. It was a lot of fun, and much different than the last time I was there. D is a bit of a Longwood tour guide. We really enjoyed our time there, both during the day and the evening, when they had a light display. The d7000 again did pretty well:
The week following was a Kung Fu expo, and it was awesome. Reasonably priced, 12 hours of instruction with tons and tons of different practitioners in different arts. The last hour was an impromptu sharing: three or four masters answering how they would handle different situations.
We spent time during the day with a Russian named Vladimir who was just hanging out—not teaching, just wandering around. The language barrier was tough, but his movement was sufficiently articulate to communicate without too many problems. The ideas were slippery, but the movement was a bit more graspable. It will take some time to really assimilate what he was trying to say...but we got his number.
Other highlights from the past few weeks include the new neighbors, weeding, planting the walnut tree, trips to Jersey for the fourth, time-tracking at work, et c. Highlights they are, but it's time for me to fold laundry. A day off (L doing a Pampered Chef party), as it were, included cleaning the bathroom and laundry and hair cutting and so on...
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