This week we took a short trip to a temple nearby. The temple is called Wu Long Gong, Five Dragons Temple, and it is still inaccessible by road. The government is building a road to it but so far you still have to hike in. Wednesday we got up early and took a bus to the end of the road and from there we walked in. We had a nice group lunch that the people who live there prepared for us and then hiked up to the top of the mountain. It was thankfully overcast and though still hot, not as punishing as it has been of late. Then we had dinner and relaxed for a few hours before bed. I slept terribly on 2 beds pushed together for 3 people, no pillow, no mosquito net, no door and in my sweaty clothes. Then we got up, ate breakfast and hiked for about 5 hours or so to another temple. This temple is on the main tourist route and we took a bus back from there.

Though it was a challenging hike, we all made pretty good time and enjoyed ourselves. The worst part was definitely the lack of a view. In Canada a day of mountain climbing has lovely scenery, cool mountain air, and a feeling of accomplishment upon reaching the summit. This was more like hours of hiking through a humid, buggy jungle. The plant life is so thick, you can't see anything that's not right in front of you. Some parts of it were so thick, you could hardly see the trail under your feet.

Though it was tough, we all managed to get through it together and Shifu gave us a day off today to recover. I'm actually not sore at all! It's strange, I was expecting at least my knees to be sore but I feel completely fine, just tired. It's a pretty cool sign of how much stronger we've all gotten and how much more stamina we have.

I'd still take a nice hike in rockies over this though. Sometimes I really miss Canada.

It is hot!

Summer is here in Wudang and man is it something. I remembered reading that we were in a mountainous subtropical region but in the winter when it gets cold enough to snow sometimes that's easy to forget. Well not only is it scorching hot (around 40) but it's also really humid most of the time. We just had a week of rain and now this week the temperature just shot up. The perfect recipe for buggy, muggy, hot weather. Normally I really enjoy that we train outside in the ruins of a really cool temple but there have been more than a few days lately where I wished we had an indoor training hall with good old fashioned ceiling fans. Alas, that is not the case. Luckily Shifu is merciful and we usually save our most rigorous training for the evening class. Morning classes end at 11am and then we take a siesta until meditation at 3:30pm so the hottest part of the day we're inside. It's still pretty rough on a couple of pale Canadian girls though. I've managed to avoid sunburns so far but I sure didn't avoid getting eaten alive. I'm currently sporting about 30 black fly and mosquito bites which is pretty uncomfortable at times.

Well that's enough complaining for now. I hope to become accustomed to this in another couple of weeks. We've been working on perfecting our forms lately and improving our sidekicks. It's been good training, not as exciting as learning new forms but just as important.

Until next time.

We are putting in a new concrete training area in the courtyard at our school so these past 3 days we've been helping out with that instead of training. It's hard work but a nice change from our usual weekly schedule actually. It makes training seem so nice too. When you're practicing for 8 hours every day and each week is the same, sometimes you forget how much you love it, a little absence makes the heart grow fonder though.

However, I really don't have much to say again! I'm going to buy a bicycle to ride around our town and I'm pretty excited.