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.