Beijing Catastrophe

I'm sorry I haven't written anything for a few weeks, our 4 day trip turned into a surprise 16 days and the firewall is a lot tougher to get through in Beijing.

Upon arriving at the train station we were informed that we'd be there for over 2 weeks instead of 4 days, someone either lied or there was some mis-communication. From there almost everything that could go wrong did. Everyday was incredibly stressful and frustrating. I don't want to go into details but suffice it to say that we were not treated very well and that I've never in my life witnessed a system so disorganized and inefficient. I've been told that it's just the way things are run in China and if that's the case, I hope I never have to do something like that again. It was a complete waste of time! Each day we spent 8 to 13 hours in a grey waiting room and practiced our part of the performance once or twice for about 15 minutes total. We could have done all of the rehearsing in our 2 week stay in less than 1 day. I was pretty miserable the whole time thinking about all the training I was missing out on.

I'm so happy to be back here! I did get to rest my body while I was away but my state of mind is a complete mess. I'm still having stress dreams and my emotions are all over the map. I hope that in a week or so I'll be back to my normal self.

Well, that's a very brief overview of what I've been up to lately. Beijing sucked but now I'm back and I just want to forget about it and focus on training.

I'm off to Beijing tonight with 9 of my classmates. We will be doing a performance there in 2 days and hopefully resting a lot too. Though I'm looking forward to a change, it sucks doing these kinds of things because there is always some modern wushu choreographer who wants to change everything we do. Ours arrived today and has basically made up an entire form in about 5 minutes with the fo chen for us to learn. The fo chen is the horse hair whisk and is a traditional taoist weapon....that we haven't learned yet. She has included all sorts of weird movements and spinning on tip toes and the worst sort of fluff you can imagine, she even wanted us to do aerials and front flip stuff but we're not a performance team and most of us can't do that stuff very well. uhhhh. Very annoying.

At least we get to go to Beijing, I just hope there's time to relax too.

I was going through everyones journals on the Silent River Kung Fu website and I have to say something.

A lot of people are not blogging regularly, I check those journals every week and I should be looking at a new entry for everyone each time...I'm not. Posting each week is really a great way to track your progress and stay involved with both your classmates and your own goals. It also helps to keep your teachers informed about where you're at in your training so they can help you progress.

UBBT members, unless I'm mistaken journaling is a non-negotiable part of your commitment. Look to the example of Sifu Freitag, while travelling all over the world she managed to blog every week. Constantly searching for a place with internet access so she could get up her posts, even walking along the side of the highway to get there, she managed to keep her commitment, one she often doesn't enjoy. If she can do that, and if I can manage to constantly find new ways to sneak past the Chinese firewall each week for my posts, I believe each of you can post from the comfort of your homes and workplaces without much trouble.

It's time to get back in the game and pick up the slack! I hope to see a new post for everyone next week.