We just finished booking all our tickets for the trip home. We had the Shanghai to home booked a few weeks ago but now we've got the Chinese leg of the trip taken care of too. We have to stay an extra night in Shanghai to save money (440 CNY each) but that's fine. Less time to pack but more time for travel should make the process a little easier, hopefully. This summer when I had to renew my passport I also realized something about Shanghai, they have good bread. Sandwiches, croissants, bagels, pizza too. Most of China has really weird imitations of western style breads, super sweet and fluffy, like crappy cake. Maybe it's due to the french influences in Shanghai but they know what real bread is.  I pretty much have a one track mind about travelling now. What to eat? That's what I want to know. Shanghai is Pete's Tex Mex, Vancouver airport I've already decided to get a bagel with cream cheese ASAP. Mom's making chili and cornbread for dinner the first night. First breakfast is pancakes with maple syrup. Oh man! Only 2 more weeks! Mel and I have already been looking up recipes for what we're going to make at home too. yum.....

One thing that I'm grateful for is that living in China has given me an iron stomach. At first eating the food here was rough, I got sick a lot and when I ate western food, I got sick again. It was a sad time. Now I can eat almost anything as long as I don't stuff myself too much. I can't drink an entire movie sized root beer with ice though. I learned that one last year! haha. There is one thing I know I won't be eating at all this break.....white rice!

We're back into training normally now. We spent the past week reviewing our forms and now we're going to start the 2nd half of the staff form. It's very long so they teach it in 2 sections. Saturday I hurt my knee a little so I've had to take it easy and wear a knee brace again. I forgot how much it sucks! It's feeling better now though and I'll be careful not to push it too quickly. I really want to be able to enjoy these last 3 weeks. Only 3 weeks until the break! Yay!!!!!

Today I had to do some filming for T.V. which I normally don't like but this time it ended up being pretty cool. We went up to the 5 dragon temple which is not a tourist spot (yet) and still has all the old original buildings. It's so beautiful and peaceful there. I was also doing the filming the our Grandmaster so I got to spend some time around him without huge crowds of people all over the place. It was really nice, he's so sweet. I'm sure his students would laugh to hear me describe him like that but in accordance with Chinese tradition we call him 'grandpa' and that's really the way I feel around him.....like maybe he'll reach into his pocket and pull out a Werther's Original!

Overall I had a great day.

Well that performance and the following Tai Chi tournament are finished, thankfully, and now I'm in the process of recovery. The experience was pretty exhausting so I'm trying to sleep as much as possible and be really gentle on myself. I caught a bit of a cold the other day but managed to keep it to just 24 hours of unpleasantness by taking really good care of myself. Half of our class is off to another tournament elsewhere in China (optional, thank god!) and so those of us who remain are mostly left to practice on our own. It's been great! I know I said it in my last post but I just love practicing alone. We don't get enough time for it, so I'm trying to make the most of it.

The weather has been nice. Very cold at night and in the morning but it gets sunny and warm during the day. Really good training weather.

I'm learning a snake form now, it's not actually a wudang form but something that was brought here by our shifu. It's an 'extra'. It's fun and challenging and, I must say, I really enjoy the animal style forms. It's so fun to try to embody an animal in your movements and get into the spirit too.

I know I'm overdue for a post. Things have been busy busy around here. There's been a Taoist conference at the temple so we're training at the school now. Space is pretty limited but the conference will be over on the weekend. We got to go to inside though and see the opening ceremony with Taoists from all over China and the temple is all dressed up. It looks really cool.

We also have a tai chi competition coming up in a few days and about half our class is going to another competition in a different province the week after. We've been practicing mostly for that and although I generally dislike competition practice, this time it's been ok. I feel like I know the tai chi like the back of my hand so it's not stressful at all and because the people who are going to the 2nd tournament are being corrected lots, I get a lot of time to myself, which I LOVE! There is just no comparison between the quality of my practice with the group versus the quality when I'm on my own.

We also have to participate in a performance for....yep, you guessed it: the opening ceremony of the local competition and that means lame rehearsals. Seems like every little thing in China has some elaborate opening ceremony attached to it. They're pretty much all super boring too, at least once you've seen a few, so having to do that is always a chore. Not looking forward to that at all.

So overall, we're super-busy. I have had very little time to study Chinese or even watch the show I'm into now (Star Trek: Enterprise) but luckily that sweater I'm knitting is portable so when we have to go wait around for 7 hours or so like we did yesterday for that performance thingy, I have something to do. I'll bring a book next time too.

I've started a new knitting project, my first sweater! I'm excited. Yesterday I bought the yarn a needed. Today I did my gauge swatch and started the ribbing at the bottom. Hooray, hoorah!

The pattern is from knitty.com and it's called flugel if anyone cares. I hope it'll be easy but also interesting and, with big needles and yarn, fast too.

Not much else to say. We finished learning our form. It's long. There's a tai chi tournament at the end of the month that we'll probably start training for soon. I've never done tai chi in a tournament before, should be interesting.

mmmm.....

Just got back from a massage and I'm still floating. There's a pretty good local massage spot that we all frequent from time to time and I just decided to pop over tonight before starting a new week of training tomorrow morning. After all the performance stuff we've been working on, getting back into doing kicks again has been causing some soreness. The massages here are clothed, with a lot of pressure and some stretching stuff. I definitely prefer a western style oil massage but for the equivalent of 8 dollars, one can't really complain! These people also know us too and so they know we train hard and where we need them to focus. It's pretty nice.

I really want to go to Thailand someday and just get awesome cheap massages everyday.

I'm writing this post from a hotel room. We've been practicing for this big stage show/performance in the city near us and so we're staying here instead of driving an hour each way from the school. We did that a few times and didn't get back until after 11pm. This is much better. We also don't have to get up at 4:50 am which is really nice. These performances are generally really stressful and though this one has certainly had it's share of that, it's better than most. They're definitely feeding us enough! The show isn't until Thursday so we have a couple more days of this. Then 2 or 3 days of training, then the holidays (Moon festival and the PRC's b-day) so things aren't going to go back to normal for a while. I always really look forward to getting back to the routine after something like this but I'll just try my best to enjoy it while I'm here and try to stay calm.

whew, tired legs!

The weather had really cooled off this past week or so (which is awesome) and as a result we're training a little harder in class. It's fine with me, summer is so hot that we generally take it a little easier and it's still exhausting. Now that autumn is here, we can get back into the swing of things. I'm actually enjoying myself again! What a concept. Well as a result most of us have some sore, tired muscles. Feels kind of good.

We're doing some performance thing soon. Yuxu gong (the temple we train at) is turning 600 this month and there's going to be a big celebration. Of course they want the token foreigners involved but at least we're doing some kung fu in this one! haha. Well we're going to be practicing for that and also preparing something fun for the full moon festival party here at the school so things should be pretty exciting around here in the next few weeks.

Updates to follow.

I'm not sure what to write this time.

We've started learning a new empty hand form. It's really cool and quite a treat after so many consecutive weapons forms. I didn't realize this but apparently it was made by our grand master, which makes sense because it kind of has a little bit of everything from our system. It's fun to learn and very long so it'll be grueling to drill later on but that's ok. We're getting pretty close to finishing the forms, hopefully we'll be done by Christmas. Here's a link to a video of Shifu doing the form:


Xuan Wu Chuan


Speaking of Christmas, I'm really starting to get excited. Can't wait to come home this year!

The weather really cooled off last week. We were all really excited and I was sleeping so well and actually enjoying training again.....then it got hot again. ARRRG! When will summer be over?!

I've been fantasizing about snow.

I'm overdue for an update.

I've been dealing with some problems with my neck and shoulder (a result of all those kip-ups a few weeks ago) and thus have fallen waaaay behind on my bridges. It's a bit disappointing but these things happen. I still intend to complete the project but doing so before the end of August is starting to seem unlikely. My intention was only to motivate myself to practice more and that has already happened so it is not a failure or a waste of time, just a challenge to work through.

Something I've learned here is patience. In the west we say "patience is a virtue" but it doesn't seem as if it's a quality that people try to cultivate in themselves or expect others to have. We value efficiency, hard work, intelligence, and a load of other things, patience......not so much. Living here I have learned to be patient. It was a tough process though. Basically I've had to deal with tons of frustrations, complete powerlessness, total ignorance of situations, and little guidance. Patience is sitting in meditation posture every day for 3 years with very little information or teaching. Patience is learning that things will happen here when they happen and there is nothing you can do to expedite it, so you'd be better off to not get frustrated and just find a something to do while you wait. I was raised to do things "right" and expect that from others but here, nothing is done "right" and culturally it's just not important so it's impossible to change or to force others to see it your way. You just have to accept it.

I'm not saying I love Chinese society and culture, in fact, living here has made me appreciate certain western values like honesty and forthrightness so much more, but patience is something you can really develop in a place like this.

So I'm rambling but basically my point is that even though I can't practice bridges when I want to, I've developed enough patience to accept that and just plug away slowly when I can.

The bridges are going fine. Despite falling behind a little while I was sick, I'm on my way to catching up and, just as I'd hoped, it's starting to get easier to do them.

I've also started studying Chinese again, after not studying AT ALL since last year. I can't explain why I've been so lax on that this year but whatever it was, it's changing now. I used to want to only study spoken Chinese because I thought it was more practical for someone living here in China and I didn't study characters at all. Last year I finally started learning characters and trying to catch them up with my speaking. Now I find all I want to study is characters. Weird. I'll just go with it though. In the future I'd like to be able to take a poem or Taoist scripture and translate it myself. The entire library of Taoist texts is huge and 99.9% of them have never been translated into English so if I want to read them, learning characters is a must.

Over the past month or so the structure of our class has changed a little and it's been more loose with a lot more self-direction.The training is almost exactly the same, it's just the atmosphere that's changed. I'm really enjoying it, after 3 years of intense discipline it feels great to follow my feelings more. I'm not sure I'd have created this bridges project for myself or started studying again if I still had that mental pressure on me. There's just no space for that stuff the way we were going before. I feel more like myself now and though I think those 3 years were invaluable, I'm ready to move on. I think in order to develop the super-human self control of a master it's important to have both external discipline and also to learn self discipline.

I'm sitting in my room with a cold today. I hate having a cold when it's hot outside but what can you do? I've got some vitamin C, lemon and honey, Vicks vaporub, and a huge pile of used tissues; Should be feeling better soon. It comes (as always) at an inconvenient time because I recently set a goal for myself to do 124 bridges (from standing position you bend backwards and put your hands on the ground) by the end of August. It works out to about 5 each training day with a few less on Wednesdays (half day) and though I managed to squeeze out 3 yesterday in spite of the cold, I think today will be a bust. Luckily, I started 2 days early so I got a bit of a head start and I have some breathing room. A month or so ago when we did our stretching test, I was one of only 2 people who didn't pass on the bridge because I couldn't get my hands close enough to my feet. I decided to do some extra work on it but it was hard to motivate myself because...well..it's hard. I suddenly realized the other day that I've done this kind of thing once or twice before and I have the perfect method for setting goals that are clear and measurable, making it public, and not quitting. So 124 bridges it is. I sure have learned a lot from Shifu Jeff Brinker. My advice to everyone in the UBBT now.....listen to him, he's done this before and he knows what you're going through.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8cNagcxhEs&feature=related

This Saturday our evening class was a little unusual. First we sparred, then we did throws, then Shifu had us practice a bunch of different falls and tumbling stuff. I can finally do kip ups! If you don't know what they are, watch this youtube video. I've practiced them before but never really got   it....I managed like 2 successful ones in my life. This time I just walked up there and banged out 10 in a row! I was surprised but also super excited, so excited in fact that I got carried away and ended up with a doozy of a stiff neck for the rest of the week. My neck was so tight that I was really dizzy for about 3 days afterwards. I think the muscles were pulling on the bones in my inner ear and if felt really gross. So I took it easy and got Mel to massage it for me every day. Kind of a waste of the rest of the week, next time I'll just do a few of them. Simon also massaged it for me yesterday and since we were staying in a hotel to celebrate my birthday, I took a bath afterwards. That finally fixed it and I feel all better now.

I really enjoyed getting away from the school for a day. It was so nice to sleep in a nice, soft bed in a lovely, clean room with air conditioning. It's wonderful to live like a westerner again once in a while. It's so far away but I'm already looking forward to December.

On Monday I celebrated my 31st birthday. I can't believe I've been alive for that long, it seems like the blink of an eye. In our traditional class, I'm the second oldest member but I rarely feel old. In fact, in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm getting younger and younger the longer I stay here. I'm sure I look older (especially with all the sun exposure we get) but I've gotten so much stronger, healthier, and more flexible that physically I feel younger than I did when I came here. Slowly old injuries are being healed and I feel vitality in a way I'd never experienced before. Don't get me wrong, I still get really tired sometimes and wonder if I can even go on, but the good days are starting to feel pretty amazing.

Friends my age at home are settling (or already settled) down. Buying houses, getting married, getting divorced, having kids, well into their career paths. I'm here with no stuff at all, with people a decade or more younger than me, just completely focused on myself and kung fu. I sometimes feel as if I should want more.....but I don't. I know that I'm in exactly the right place for me right now. Sometimes I want to leave but I know that dissatisfaction is a part of the process. Being here is very challenging but I know it's what I need to become the Brandi I was meant to be.

So I'm getting older.....and feeling more and more confident about my choices in life. What more could one ask for?

I just got back yesterday from a whirlwind trip to Shanghai to renew my passport. I left Monday afternoon, took the overnight train, stayed 2 nights and then another overnight train back. It was pretty crazy and I didn't have a lot of time there for much fun stuff but I did enjoy eating some delicious baked goods. Overall I found Shanghai really expensive (more than any other city in China) with not much to do. It was scorching hot though, otherwise I may have walked around a bit more. The food was also expensive though of a pretty good quality. I enjoyed a bagel with cream cheese and a beet juice on the side, butter croissants, and a lovely ciabatta sandwich with a yummy belgian beer to go with it. Everything else was...meh.

Glad to be back but still a bit worn out from so much travel in such a short time. We're starting ba xian gun (eight immortals staff) this week so I'm looking forward to that.

We finished learning spear last week, just in time too because it's been raining a lot an we've been doing most of our training indoors these past few days. It's a really fun form to practice but mine still needs a lot of work before it'll be up to par in my opinion.

Friday we had a stretching evaluation where our class, together with the Chinese students, showed Shifu a variety of different stretches and either got a 'pass' or a 'fail'. It was kind of fun to watch everyone do their very best stuff, pretty inspiring. Even though I technically failed a lot of them, I did my personal best on a lot of the stretches so I'm pretty happy with that. Shifu's standards are very high. I'm really happy with how much my flexibility has improved this year, hopefully it continues.

This week was our first week of the summer schedule. Spring here was quite cool and comfortable, normally we would change the schedule a month or 2 earlier. We now get up at 4:50, start class at 5, have breakfast and 7, train again 8-10:30. Then after lunch we nap until meditation at 3:30, dinner and 5:30,  and then we have class again from 6:30 till 9. Last year we were training later until 9:30 and even though it's only half an hour, getting a little more sleep this time is great.

Generally we don't like the summer schedule because there's less time for sleeping but so far everyone seems ok. We'll see how things are going in a month or so! Things can get pretty grouchy around here come July.

I find myself really missing home now. Summer in Canada is so nice and comfortable and I haven't seen one in several years now. Another 2 summers here and then I can finally come home.

mmmmm.... A friend brought pistachio chocolate from Turkey and it is delicious! It's so nice that people bring us treats when they come back to the school.

This week has been pretty alright, it's gotten very hot but other than that training is good. Feeling very flexible again too.

After the tournament we trained for a day and a half and shifu announced that we would start the 3 days of meditation. It didn't make any sense to me because between our trip to Guilin and getting ready for the tournament we hadn't meditated in almost a month. I think it showed too. Some of us had a hard time sitting still the whole time and Shifu was pretty disappointed in us as a class. So that spanned our usual day off and then we trained as usual for rest of the week and everyone was pretty exhausted. By the time the next day off came we were all right on the edge of breakdown. Add to that the fact that Shifu was so unhappy with us and it's a wonder we survived it....but we did! We made it and I had an amazing day off on Thursday just relaxing and resting a lot. I'm really happy to be on the other side of that rough patch. Hopefully next time we do the meditation, we'll be more prepared.

Summer is in full swing now which means, it's hot, humid, and buggy and the school is packed. We're learning spear too and a lot of the movements involve sliding the spear shaft through your hand or against your arm, pretty much impossible when you're coated in a sticky layer of sweat, sunscreen, and bug spray! haha. Grossed out yet? haha.

Here a few pictures from the competition as promised. It was a crazy time during which we had no day off then we got back, trained for 2 days, and shifu announced we'd do the meditation retreat so we again had no day off this week and meditated Wed, Thurs, Fri and back to training Saturday. I've been super busy and I'm also tired so I'll write a much better post soon on the day off. Until then.....I'm going to sleep!

I'm still not used to this new blogger format. I sign in and it takes me a few minutes just to figure out how to write a new post. I'm sure there are all sorts of wonderful features that I am not using and know nothing about. I just want to log on, write my post, and log off although I admit it does seem like uploading pictures goes a lot more smoothly now.

This has been a weird week. We've been preparing for a tournament that starts the day after tomorrow and we also had a performance to do yesterday. The performance was especially lame, we practiced about 15 seconds of Tai chi for a few days in a row and then on the day of the performance there were so many photographers on the stage that we couldn't even do it. Big waste of time but it didn't take much physical or mental juice so all in all, no big deal.

The tournament is kind of a mandatory thing but it is free so I'm happy about that. Shifu just told us that we should each enter and do one weapon form and one empty hand form.....so we did. I'm doing dragon sword and ba gua zhang. I picked them because I enjoy practicing them a lot and I wanted to be better at them. They're not the forms I feel most confident with, in fact ba gua is just the opposite, but after a week of intensive practice and a little feedback I'm really improving. Essentially we've just been doing the forms in front of each other all day every day and pretty much everything else is taking a back seat to that. It's working, I think we'll do well, but it gets pretty boring after a while. We're not physically tired, the training is much easier than what we're used to, but mentally it is tiring. I'm glad the tournament is starting soon. It'll just be nice to do something different for a while.

On another note, we made the medicine for our meditation retreat but still no word on when we're going to start.

Next week I should have some photos or video from the competition.

Playing Jenga in the hostel....fun!

Mantou the cat

Eating banana pancakes, yum.....

The scenery in Guilin was gorgeous! They have a saying that the Guilin scenery is the most beautiful under heaven. 

The view from our hostel rooftop in Yangshuo. My classmate dressed as Winnie the Pooh....don't ask, Chinese girls have strange fashion. 

Overall the trip was great. Relaxing and beautiful with lots to do. I had a wonderful time. 

My classmate has started  new project. We're going to try to make a movie about our training.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1852558216/wudangswords

Hopefully we can get this thing started as planned. Check out the link to find our more.

Also, on Sunday we're going on a short trip to Guilin in southern China. I'm really excited! Next post should have some stories and pictures from the trip.

Not too much to say this time. We got to go on a class trip to a park about an hour and a half away on Monday. It was nice to just relax, have a picnic, read, play games, and lie in the sun. I felt so good afterwards. Not to mention the fact that we got to sleep in that morning, yeah! From all the splits stretching we've been doing I've been having some restless nights. My legs are so tired and sore sometimes that I just can't get comfortable. Even last night was tough (usually Wednesday nights I pass right out) so any extra sleep I can squeeze in is welcome. Tonight I'm planning to turn in before 9 pm to try and catch up before getting up at 5:30 am for another week.

I, along with thousands of other Canadians, sent a letter to the Leader of the opposition in regards to comments in the government demonizing Canadian environmental charities and received a response email with a link to Jim Cowans' speech to the senate on this matter. I was so impressed with the speech and I have included a link to it here:

http://www.liberalsenateforum.ca/In-The-Senate/Statement/15902_Involvement-of-Foreign-Foundations-in-Canadas-Domestic-AffairsInquiry

It's long but really well written and anyone interested in this topic will surely find it engrossing.

Another cool week. We've continued our super intense stretching and I'm still improving, though I am getting more and more sore. I know it'll just take time and perseverance before it gets a little easier. We also started learning Dragon Sword! It's a totally AWESOME straight sword form that I've been dying to learn for what seems like forever. I imagine my classmates were getting tired of having the exact same conversation all the time:

me: What do you think we'll learn next?

them: ummmm, I dunno, maybe spear or something........

me: I hope it's dragon sword! I mean I guess anything is good but dragon sword would be amazing. What do you think the chances are of us learning it next? Oh man, that would be so great! It's just so cool.....etc, etc.

Well now the time has finally come and it's every bit as cool as I thought it would be....maybe even more so! I'm really enjoying learning it, it's taking my mind off the pain in my hips and legs.

yay!

I am not only really tired but ridiculously sore (hips, back, ankles, shoulders and chest). It's been a very challenging week....and a great one! It's not often that I have weeks like this and it makes me really happy to experience it.

On Friday I swallowed big gulps of air which is something I've been struggling with for almost 2 years. We practice a technique called tu gu na xin (swallowing air) that really helps clean the digestive system and is one of the basic building blocks for internal training. It's been so frustrating to try to get it for such a long time but thanks to a tip from a friend, I've finally started to get the hang of it. yay!

I also had my best splits day EVER the other day. sitting relaxed on the ground for the flexion splits (one leg in front, the other behind me) and touching my inner calf to the ground in the adduction splits (both legs out to the sides). yay again! This year we have a different coach leading our basics practice. We only learn new stuff from shifu but we have a senior student lead us for the practice of basics (kicks, stances, etc) and drills our forms sometimes. Well he is amazing. This week he really pushed us in our stretching and everyone improved so much. Last week it was jumping. I can see that if we continue training with him, we'll go through a quantum leap of progress. He's my new favorite! This is a photo of him.

It's raining outside with thunder, lightning, the whole deal. Even though we don't have heat in our rooms this kind of weather always makes me feel cozy inside. We do have hot water bottles and warm blankets. It was getting pretty warm for a few days there and then things took a turn for the worse and we're in winter again. Spring and fall are such short seasons here, summer and winter are both too long.

This week I did something to my lower back so I've mostly been taking it easy. It's been a lot of tai chi and bagua walking and although I never enjoy injuries, it has been nice to practice more internal stuff. I think my posture has improved in just one week of concentrated practice, even Shifu commented on it. I also love the feeling I get from doing bagua walking (circle walking) for a long time, it's euphoric. Although I've never experienced runners high (I dislike running), I imagine it's a similar experience.

Well, time for some hot tea. Hopefully spring comes soon, here and at home for you guys!

We had our disciple ceremony on Friday. It was such a great experience in a way that is so hard to describe. Up until that day I'd kind of been worried that a lot of the tradition and meaning had been lost by including so many people but that turned out not to be the case. Not for me anyway. I really felt like I was making a serious commitment and being accepted into a very special group. We took an oath and did some ceremonial bowing, presented Shifu with an offering, received a booklet with our Taoist name inside as well as a ceremonial sword with our Taoist name inscribed into the blade. Then we bowed to our kung fu uncles and the next group went up. Doesn't sound like much I know, but for me every part of it was infused with weight and magic.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikonfreak/6820741300/in/set-72157629182053122/

This is a link to a classmates photo of me in the ceremony.

This week not much happened. I was pretty tired for our Wednesday evaluation so I just went with the old stand by sword form that I like. It's hard to hold on to a weapon when the weather is so cold though, I dealt myself a glancing blow to the forehead at one point! Luckily I don't think Shifu noticed and it wasn't painful, just a little silly. Here's a picture of me.

It's almost the end of February already! Where does the time go? Somehow I've managed to get through a whole 3 weeks of training and I'm still happy to go to class. haha.

Things are going quite well though. We've started learning Dragon Fist bum bum buuum! We're about a third of the way through it and although it's a form that requires a lot of juice to get through, it's really fun. There is a lot of unique body techniques that are really cool looking and also difficult. Here is the link to a video of one of our older kung fu brothers performing the form several years ago. He's really good at it, check out his stances! It's too bad the video cuts out before the end of the form.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cobcTvougfo

When we were in Hawaii I got a really nice ukulele and I've been learning to play that. I like! Easier to learn than the guitar and much more portable, plus I think the ukulele sound is really cute. I think I'll be spending a good portion of my free time this year on it.

Back at the School

After a truly wonderful break we're back in Wudang. This break felt almost like 2 breaks, we got to go home fro Christmas and see our loved ones, then we got to go to Hawaii for 2 weeks. It was amazing. I highly recommend the island of Kauai for anyone looking for a laid back place with gorgeous natural scenery and tons of outdoor activities to do. I had so much fun and I didn't want to leave.

On our way back we stopped in Hong Kong for a few days to get our Chinese visas which ended up being really crazy and stressful. Although Wudang was freezing cold the day we got back we were so relieved to be finished with all that visas, catching flights stuff that it felt good to finally arrive.

Shifu has been surprisingly gentle with us this past week. He's been mostly letting us practice on our own and giving us a few tips on how to build our stamina back up. He's easing us back into practice in a way he's never done before. Last year we did frog jumps, duck walking, and sprints every single day for the first week. We all could hardly walk up or down the stairs. This year has been nice. Of course we're still sore, it's to be expected but overall, it's been a really nice transition.

The other day he was giving a few of us some help with our tai chi, pointing out a few mistakes and polishing it a bit. He said we've reached a level where he can get into the details more and really help us perfect our form. I'm excited about that, I hope we spend some time working on that stuff over the next year.

I already miss my parents and it's pretty cold here but it feels good to train again and things are going well so far. It's been a good week.