monkeys and cooked karate suits

I didn't write yesterday evening because i couldn't get the computer to let me publish it. I am now writing at half past nine and am absolutely shattered. Because of this I will try not to go on about what happened today.
It is a well known fact that I am about as happy with heights as a fish is on a bicycle. Who on earth booked me in for the karate trip to Sarlat to one of these "look at me I'm fourty feet in the air held on to a tree by a peice of rope" places. I wasn't looking forward to it especially since I would be going with a load of short people about half my age and made to live in trees (direct descendants from the ape) who would show me up.
It took over an hour to get there and sitting me in a car for over an hour with my sisters a few cm away doesn't put me in a very good mood. We got out of the car and the heat hit us. It felt like someone had just pushed us into an oven.
We got our kit on and went up the trees... I only stayed on the low stuff that I could jump down off.
The heat was unbearable, typical french weather: it's been cold and wet for the past month and then on the second day of summer, all of a sudden it's 35 degrees in the shade. At five though, I was delighted to find out that we had to change out of our summer clothes into our swelteringly hot karate suits. They are the kind of thing you could wear skiing and still be warm in.
First of all we had to do the normal stuff :
-praying to the karate god
-praying to the teacher
-praying to the other students
My dad said it was all about respect, I think some of the people in the class deserve less respect than ants (I will not say any names but those people know who they are).
Then he made us jog through the forest and I was the only idiot to fall over straight into a couple of five year olds. After that we had to kick trees, then each other.
I do feel sorry for the little girl I was kicking, I think I was a bit hard on her. But I was now boiling in a saucepan full of my own sweat which is always exactly what a teenaged girl wants to do on a sunday afternoon. After a while of practicing breaking each others arms he let us go back and do it in front of the adults (yipee!)
This was followed by a very boring meeting and the belt giving. I got a yellow and white, charlotte a yellow and white+2 barettes and isobel a yellow. This now makes me the worst in the family and to top it all off my sisters got medals for their concentration... I didn't but I think I know why, I spend the classes trying to hit him and looking at him with the most attitude I can muster.
I think over all this was a very good day and everyone enjoyed themselves immensly.