Another Apology

Hello, hello, hello! So again, I must apologize for not posting. This time however, I do have a valid reason. And my reason is: School. I know everyone says this, but school pressure is actually sky rocketing. Seventh grade is hard guys! Before, I used to cruise through all of my classes. I wasn’t being challenged. But last year, we were given the option to stay with our grade for Math, or advance academically by skipping two years and going straight to Algebra 1. Challenge Algebra is a class of 7th and 8th graders who have skipped one or two years of math and are basically doing a high school math course and learning over three years of learning into one. 3 years!!!! The teachers have become a lot more tough as well. Tons more homework, and the grading system seems to crack down on on all of us. While it was incredibly easy to keep straight A’s last year, I am having to crack down and study hard just to keep from failing. Along with school, My 2nd degree black belt test is also coming up in December. I already had to retest for the second one twice, and I have one more go at it, to actually pass. If not, I am 6 months behind everyone else. Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll pass this time. Well I hope. I only have to retest on one thing, so I wouldn’t worry. I passed everything else. To emphasize my work load here is what I have to memorize and actually do for the black belt test

• 23 poomsae(known as katas in Karate and are basically combinations of 20 counts or more and each count has multiple steps usually)
• Palgwe 1-8(8 blackbelt standard ones)
• Koryo(What is known as the main blackbelt poomsae, named after the Koryo dynasty)
• Keumgang(another main blackbelt one, means diamond and is technically named after the diamond mountain, and its drilling lines correspond with the chinese character for mountain)
• Kibon 1-4(the 4 basic poomsaes)
• Taeguk 1-8(the 8 colorbelt poomsaes)
• Creative(you have to create your own)
• 40 kicking combinations(what I have to retest on. Relatively easy but hard to memorize)
• one step sparring 1 – 25(says one, but really is two or three)
• creative 1 step sparring(you make your own one step)
• 2 step sparring 1 – 15
• nunchuck 1-20(self explanatory I think, involves a lot of flipping. I got a cut on my pinky somehow during the last test)
• vocab white belt through current(21 pages of standard letter sized printer paper, word for word, thats where the info about Keumgang and Koryo comes from. I can actually recite the paragraphs word for word)
• breaking
• four way breaking (set of breaking techniques, have to break 4 boards, no stopping)
• flying back kick (running, jumping back kick)
• palm hand strike(break a piece of wood with your palm)

And that is how much I have to memorize in less than two months for an extracurricular. I don’t even have time for swim team! If you don’t think it’s a lot, trust me, you aren’t the one having to do it. So I’m incredibly stressed. The breaking part of the pretest is tomorrow, and I repeat, if I fail, I’m done until June. So I hope you understand, I really have been trying, and you should get a new post by the end of next week, probably, as soon as my first draft gets back from my editor(aka my dad), I will start working again and I promise, I will, have it published as soon as I finalize it.

                                                                                                           Para Siempre,

                                                                                                                       PB