Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting

The little man went through his first test at Tae Kwon Do last Friday. Needless to say, he passed and now has upgraded to the yellow stripe belt. How proud am I? Extremely. (I aplogize for the poor quality photos - next time I'll make sure I'm actually in the room instead of outside and having to zoom in).

It was quite a process - he actually had to learn a little routine (they call it a pattern) over the last couple of months. When it was his turn, after a half hour warm up, he was called out to the floor with two other little white-belt boys and they had to go through the pattern in front of the Grand Master, about 5 or 6 black-belts that are also instructors, everyone else that was being tested and of course, parents and siblings that are watching. It's gotta be nerve-wracking for these kids, especially for the first time.

But he did it almost perfectly (he just wasn't punching properly) - and then he had to sit around the edge of the mat and wait. And wait. And wait....while everyone else did their testing in groups of 3's & 4's.

Then, once all the patterns were complete, they lined up about 6 at a time and had their turns at kicking the wooden board to try to break it. Each person had 3 try's, then they had to sit down and wait for the others to go through. Evan had his 3 try's, but didn't manage to break his. Then, they all got to try again - and lo and behold on Evan's first try he broke it! The look on his face was priceless. It's like he almost didn't believe that he had just broken a board with his foot. I couldn't get a good picture of him breaking it, but next time I swear I'm going to video it. Give me a break - it was our first experience in this and I wasn't really aware of what we were in for.