On August 15 2011 I had a long day ahead of me. I woke up at 6:00 in the morning and went to go take a shower. My parents were waiting for me to come out of the shower so my mom could use the bathroom then my dad, considering I always a long time in the bathroom they kept on knocking on the door. We always go to dunkin donuts in the morning and get coffee and donuts after we were all ready. But I couldn't eat sweet stuff today because of the plans I had. My dad's friends show up, so course they sat outside and started to drink coffee and talk about stuff. My mom was in the car for at least 5 more minutes until she went out and sat next to my dad. I was still in the car with my sister and we were eating a bagel, I had a plain bagel with strawberry cream cheese. My sister and I started to talk about how she wanted to do karate too but my dad wouldn't let her because she's not really into sports. I had no time to slide anything else into my schedule. I had to go to Windham and practice for my black belt testing which was in a couple of hours with my uncle because I wanted to know everything I had to do for my black belt testing. The closer it was getting to my time to test I got even more nervous, I had butterflies in my stomach.

It was noon time, I had planned to go out to eat at Olive Garden with my parents and meet my uncle there too. I loved the smell of their bread sticks. I was waiting for them to bring out the salad and bread sticks because of how hungry I was. We were waiting for him in the parking lot and noticed he had pulled up right next to us, we didn't recognize him because of his car. Before he came to Olive Garden, he just went to go buy a new car at Honda dealer ship. My parents and I had checked out the car it was a nice car. We walked in and sat at the table, a couple minutes in Olive Garden my uncle received a call from my aunt saying " mom is having a very hard time breathing." My uncle couldn't understand because she was crying and mumbling. I ask who had called him and he said it was auntie, of course in my head thinking that there was nothing wrong. But when we finished ordering our food he had told my mom, dad and I that my grandmothers cancer is getting worse and she's not breathing well. All I could do was break into tears, I've lived with my grandparents for 14 years. She wasn't alive for that long. In Olive Garden, my uncle asked me about how nervous I was about black belt testing which was in a couple more hours. Doing karate runs in the family especially getting our black belts! First is was my dad's mom, mom then my dad's mom then my day then his brother then his kids and to me. It brought back a lot of memories. My uncle knew how nervous I was because he had went through this before, he took karate for 12 year and my dad took karate for 14 years, it runs through the family. I was happy inside because I didn't like where I had lived. When I would come over to their house and still continued bullying me. Their whole family is just something. We had continued eating and talked about random stuff like sports and clothes. Then when we are all finished eating, we left. When we were on the way home it felt like a 2 hour drive. I had a headache, and every bump we went over made my headache worse. I tried to fall asleep in the car, but it didn't work. My parents were talking and had music on.


It was 3 in the afternoon my dad had drove home from Olive Garden. I went into the house and put on my karate uniform, but my karate black belt testing wasn't until 5 I had practiced even more. I started to do my karate form in my back yard. Every karate had different techniques like using different weapons. I had used a bow staff to use to practice one of the karate forms and I had broke the tip of my stick. I was scared what would happen if I walked in and tell my dad that my bow staff had broke. Of course I was going to need a new one for my black belt testing. There were so many things that were happening, my dad had a lot of things to do. So my dad and I went to a karate store which was in Falmouth, and when we went into the store they didn't have a bow staff that was the height that I had needed they ran out of my size. My dad looked at me like I was the end of the world. I was thinking where else we could go to get a bow staff for karate. There's one more place where I could get a bow staff which was at my cousins house that was 20 mins away from Falmouth. My cousin Jimmy did karate too we were the same height but different sizes. When we got into my cousins drive way I ran into the house and into his room and asked him where his bow staff was. He asked me "why?" So I had told him what had happen and he thought I was joking around but I had it was true I wasn't joking around now he had believed me. I was relieved that he still had his bow staff. I took the bow staffed and had slid it in the trunk of my dad's sliver truck. It was almost time for me to go take my black belt test at Fournier's karate. It's was 1 hours away until I had to go for my black belt testing. My dad gets a call from my mom, "she's gone.., don't tell Tina until she's done with her black belt testing I don't want her to know yet"

I had arrived at Fournier's karate 45 minutes early. I waited until it was time, I was really nervous. We are suppose to remember a lot of things it was a 3 to 4 hour test. I had walked into the room with 6 other karate students taking the black belt test too. We walked in as a line, with white straight karate uniforms, a half brown half black belt, and bare feet. We started off with a saying. We started doing warm-up with 8 laps around the room and a split stretch. We began with a easy simple little karate forms, which only took 30 seconds there were 42 different types of little karate forms, we had to do 3 sets of each which took for ever. I had did 2 sets of 30 push-ups after 3 karate forms. I could feel my sweat dripping down my face and arms. When I was doing my push-ups sweat started dripping onto the floor. I did my push-ups to the point where I couldn't feel my body anymore. It was a hour through the black belt testing. I was so exhausted. The karate instructors were like family too me. After the first hour of black belt testing we had switched into a bigger room for more space. We were on form 4, but I had forgot the new version of form 4 which was shorter then the regular form 4, I just started it with the old form which they said it was perfectly fine. Then we had a 5 min break to get water and use the bathroom. It's been a hour and 30 minutes the longer it go the harder it would get. I was drenched in sweat, I was so tired that I could barley do a sit-up. We continued doing all the other forms, a karate student beside me had forgot the whole form of karate form 6, so I decide to help him. I showed him step by step and the instructors were happy because I had help some through a karate form. After form 12 we were done, then next would be starting to use weapons. Everybody had different types of there own at first until the instructors had pass the same one out because we had other forms with weapons in them. Passing through the weapons form it went well, no one messed up. The last thing we had to go was do our creative form, I was really nervous for that because we had to go up one by one. I was 3rd in line when it was my turn I had paused at the middle of my creative karate form but I just kept going along with it. We had to get into a line again side be side and took off our belt and gave it to the instructor and they had to tie it for us and then they went back to there tables and grabbed the black belt to put on us. I was so excited, I had a big smile on my face. Everybody kept saying congrats to the karate students. We took pictures of every student with the instructors and a picture of ourselves to put on the wall. It didn't feel like I actually got my black belt it felt like I was just dreaming. I was really excited that I had achieved and earned my black belt. When I walked out of the building my dad had drove right to the hospital, I thought we went to the hospital to visit my grandmother but it turned out to say "goodbye" to my grandmother. I cried and cried, I couldn't stop. She was wrapped in 6 blankets to keep her warm. When we went home, I just kept crying. My grandfather cried so much that his tears couldn't stop rolling down his face. A few days later it was her funeral. I walked up to the caste and had set my black belt in the coffin because I wanted to let her know that I had earned my black belt and wanted it to stay with her.