I got my Shodan black belt!!

[Nighthawk]

Well, I'm back. Weekend got severely messed up- the owners of Fish Camp had our camp booked for next weekend, so we got screwed on the facility. We had people come here from as far away as Ethiopia and Venezuela, and had no facility to have the camp, so a local martial arts schools lent us their facility for the weekend, free of charge, and several of their students opened their homes to us. We didn't have the camp that we had wanted... but it was a killer weekend anyway. Sensei Justin didn't test us, as I had expected. Instead he got one of his friends to do it- and rotated four other high ranking black belts in and out throughout the test, just to throw new and different things at us. So after 4 hours of testing (pretty sure I was going to die before they were done with me) I managed to convince these world class badasses that I deserve to continue my training. I am now, officially, a Shodan (first- degree black belt) in Shotokan karate and San Ten Jujitsu.

And since my post wasn't as clear as I had thought last night when I made it (jet lagged) I thought some clarification was in order. The camp was the ISKA Sierra Camp, which was booked for this past weekend at Fish Camp, California. Here is the website:

http://mariposa.yosemite.net/ISKA/ISKACamp.htm

The owners of Fish Camp had it written in their ledger for this coming weekend, when it had been booked for last weekend, which is why there was such confusion.

And by "us" I meant that there were two students testing, myself included. Thought those grouchy old senseis were going to kill us...

Pictures to follow...