Go green!

I'm not sure if I ever mentioned that I started (yet another) hobby. I mean, it's not completely different it's just at a new location in addition to all the other stuff. I started going to another martial arts place doing their "fusion" program, which is a mix of all the things I've already been training, or have trained in the past at my first gym, plus one other discipline. (Muay Thai, Jiujitsu/groundwork, lameco escrima, plus taekwondo which is new for me)

I'm still going to both places, I get something different out of each of them. The new place has a belt system for their program which is more motivating than I thought it would be. Since I was new I started at white belt even though I knew almost all of the curriculum from my previous training. But, I was content to be a white belt as long as they let me train some things with the higher belts so that I didn't get bored. So that's what I've been doing so far.

Belt testing was coming up and they were talking about skipping me up past my next belt (skipping orange and going straight to gold) so I could train a little higher in general, but I wasn't able to learn the forms that I needed to test for that belt (completely out of my own lack of trying harder) so I was fine just moving up one belt under the premise that I would still be working at my level regardless of my belt level. 

So, Saturday we did the belt test. At the end we were all sitting in our lines, eyes closed, "calming our breathing... reflecting... etc", while they placed our new belts in front of us. I opened my eyes to find a green belt sitting in front of me! That's three belts higher! I guess they decided I was ready to move up anyway.  There is a little bit of video I'm working on editing that Monkey took on his cell phone. You can see the instructor make a "sneaky-excited" face to someone off camera as he placed the belt in front of me. Then you can see me not-so-slyly checking the belt wall to confirm that I really did get skipped up that far. I almost didn't believe it for a second. I think my brain thought "oh I guess there is another color before orange". Nope! :D  

You can see the orange belt behind and to the left that normally comes after the white belt. I'm trying my hardest not to have a foolish/excited grin on my face as I'm assuming there were quite a few people wondering why this white belt who's only been there for two and a half months part time, managed to jump up to green belt.

So, needless to say, I was very proud, and excited, and really antsy to get back to class with my shiny new green belt! ...but I'm sick so I'm not supposed to go spread my germs. If I can quit coughing, I think I'm going to go try and fake it tonight. I really want to be there on the first day of class this week.