This week was the second stat holiday we've had in the last 3 weeks. It's been great. A few weeks ago was the moon festival and we had an extra 2 days off and then this week was "China's National Day" so we got another extra day off. Now there are no more holidays until our Christmas break so it's been a nice time. Shifu bought a fancy new karaoke machine so we used that a few times already. If they can afford it, every celebration here has karaoke and it's always on full blast!

Well the extra rest days have been needed. We've been training really hard since the weather cooled off a bit so everyone is kind of tired. Although my knees are giving me trouble at times again, I'm really enjoying the stuff we're doing now. It's tough but we've mostly been working on things which are my weaknesses so I feel like I'm improving a lot. Since we train several times almost every day, it can be hard to see improvements in yourself so I really like being able to see that right now. We're practicing a lot of speed drills for kicks, forms, etc as well as working a lot on sparring training, especially the footwork. This morning we spent a good 45 minutes just doing high side kicks (another weakness) and it was really helpful.

There's not much else to say....I really hope we change the schedule soon. During the summer we have meditation in the afternoon and then train in the evening until 9:30/10pm but the rest of the year we have that class in the afternoon and then after dinner we just have meditation so we can go to bed as early as 9. When you have to get up at 4:50am, early bedtimes are a good thing! Maybe this week we'll change it....I hope so.