Completion

I got my orange-green belt (sorry for taking a week to report on it). It was a good test. Everybody passed, kids, youth and adults, but only one person skipped a half-belt (adult), and she really deserved it. I was her regular training partner before and uke during the test :-) . We had been expecting Shihan J. to be on the test commission, but he didn't show. The test commission was only two black belts, our Sensei, H., and Sensei T. from out of town. I sat next to them for the kid's belt tests and called out what they were to do. I was both happy and a little disappointed in the kids: I felt most of the lower belts should have done a lot better, the higher belts, most of whom showed up Saturday mornings for kids' free training, did better (sigh of relief). For my own test, I was more relaxed than previous times and managed to recover several errors rather than ask to restart, but still not relaxed enough to remember to kia, despite Sensei H.'s reminding me to two or three times :-( . Generally, neither the kids nor I got to show off any extra techniques, which was a little disappointing: both the kids and I had trained to the green belt program, though we were testing for orange-green. The youth, with one exception, were very listless and barely scraped by - the one shining star was J., the newbie white-belt, who easily outshone the much higher belts.

The Ruhi 8 course is completed. It was interesting stuff - I'm motivated to read more Baha'i history now. I need to order some books.

In other Baha'i news, we had our reflection meeting this past Sunday. We're going to have a 3 week expansion phase instead of 2 weeks. I think that's because of an event this weekend that would distract from any events we might plan.

I need to sign off now: almost time for the devotional for the Martyrdom of the Báb.