When I was in Cuba, one of my cousins did karate, and I went to his classes. When we returned to Tucson, I told my mom one day, “I want to do karate,” and kept saying, “I want to do karate.” When I was four, I started doing karate. One of your goals when you’re in karate is to be a black belt. There are different belts: white, yellow, golden, orange, green, blue, purple, red, brown, black. I’m a blue belt.
In karate you have to listen and pay attention a lot. At the end of the class, they always say, “Do your homework,” even though it’s not school. It means do the kata. When you’re a white belt, you just practice throwing your punches, upper blocks, and kicks. It’s not like the kata you do in yellow belt. You have to practice your kata again and again, to get to a higher belt.
-Mariana