whew!

I know I haven't posted in 2 weeks and it's been rather eventful. We had a performance to do in the town square around labour day (in may here apparently) that were completely insane. There were Chinese tourists everywhere and when we arrived they completely surrounded us wanting pictures with the foreigners in kung fu gear. It was really overwhelming, the performance actually took a back seat to the crazy hoard of picture seekers. A few of the senior Chinese students made a human barrier around us. Crazy. Then a week of training. Then on our "day off" last week we had a huge celebration for the grandmasters birthday with free lunch (kinda cool), speeches (in Chinese), schmoozing, and more performances. Then yesterday instead of meditation we all had to go watch some Sanda matches and demonstrations with some of our students and some visitors from Hong Kong. It was really interesting to see how incredibly fast our older kung fu brother is compared to the other guys. They all had martial arts training but were unprepared for him and were really impressed. Pretty cool to watch and it gives us inspiration to train hard too. So basically it was exhausting and this week of training was rather difficult to get through but now it's a rainy Wednesday afternoon and all I have planned is lots of R n' R until Friday. Tonight Mel and I and a few friends are going to get foot massages. They are so great after a long week, I've been looking forward to it for days.

The other day we took a walk through the mountains and it was absolutely beautiful. Everything is so lush and green with wild flowers blooming everywhere and scenting the air. On the slope directly behind the school there are lots of orange trees with lovely white blossoms smelling of neroli (a rare and expensive oil) and all through the mountains there are wild roses and other pretty, fragrant flowers in bloom. Spring really is in the air. When we train in the evening you can smell flowers the entire time. It's really something compared to the usual Chinese smells of garbage, cooking oil, and sewage. I wish it was like this all the time.

Our traditional class has started a website, it's still a work in progress but if you feel like checking it out here's the address:

www.wudangtaoistarts.com