I haven't made a front page post in a while. Nor a journal entry really. Other than that one I made when I was drunk and don't even really rememeber making much less what it was about. So I thought I'd make one today.

This weekend I did a savate seminar and tested for rank at the end. Savate is a French form of kickboxing. It's pretty neat. I probably burned 50,000 calories this weekend. The weekend was made a little more rough for me due to the fact that I fractured my fibula six weeks ago and was up for a promotion on Wednesday (that I didn't get) and so got SEVERELY roughed up, including three thai kicks to my left thigh and a bruised up nose and upper lip. I was very pretty. So I had to wrap my left thigh and left ankle for the whole seminar.

Friday night went from 6:30pm to 9pm. We were all pretty tired after two hours of drills. Then Saturday went from 10am to 6:30pm with a two hour break for lunch. We all thought we were going to die. Then Sunday started at 10am with drills and then testing started at noon.

I didn't really know what to test for as I've only really been doing savate since January and until today was unranked. The ranks go blue glove, green glove, red glove, white glove, yellow glove and silver glove. I just filled out my form, which included some ... interesting questions like "How do you promote the French culture?" I left it blank. But I should have put "I know this chick Myriam, she like, speaks French and I'm totally down with that."

By the time the testing came around I was like "I never want to do any more savate ever in my life." Everything hurt and I was tired and achy and cranky and another couple hours of jumping kicks and blocking punches didn't sound fun to me. I expressed this thought to my friend Greg who was doing drills with me and he said "You're testing. Suck it up." So they put me in the white glove group and I ended up being the only girl and thus, the shortest and also partnered with my friend Mike who is like, nine feet tall and all leg.

The whole premise of savate testing I really like, because not only are you trying to show your skills and technique, you are also trying to make your partner look good. So you don't go at it just to beat the crap out of your partner. You're both trying to help the other one pass and show off your best stuff also.



Mike and I both passed. So obviously the one foot height disparity worked for us. We were also told we were the best in our group and probably could have gone for a higher rank. But we have our White Glove. I guess the fact that I skipped to the fourth rank is pretty cool. My friend Dana tested for Silver with three other people. Only she and one other dude passed. The dude had a metal rod in one of his legs from a motorcycle accident and was doing like... these flying spinning kicks. It was pretty amazing.

So now I have a brown belt in martial arts blend and a white glove in savate. (Which means, I could officially compete in savate competitions ... if I were so inclined.)