Sometimes I am so tired that I have almost nothing to say. This is one of those times. I'm looking forward to September when my parents come to visit. Summer is definitely the worst time of year here.

Things have settled down here and we've gotten back into a weird routine. It's been raining for about a week straight which means 2 things. We get to sleep in because there's no early morning training so we wake up around 7....yay! One the other hand we have to train inside and there's not nearly enough space for everyone so our options for training are really limited....boo. Hopefully the rain stops soon, I'd really like to practice forms this week.

I have really had a terrible week. There's not one thing that happened but lately one thing after another has built up and this week was just the pinnacle of crappiness.... and it's not even over yet. The worst thing of all is that about half of our class feels really down and depressed about our training lately but no one feels like they can go to Shifu with their problems. He has been really distant and also harsh this week and he has zero patience for any of us. It's really sad. I feel so full of doubt, maybe the worst I've felt since I got here. It's not just that I'm tired, though I am, I like to train hard but it feels like most of what we've been doing is either a waste of time or taking us in a direction that I don't want to go. I've been really down in the dumps for days now and I've tried lots of different things to cheer myself up and stay positive but then I go to class and it all comes rushing back. I keep remembering how good I felt a few weeks ago before our schedule changed and it makes me so sad! I was so happy with my progress and now I feel like our entire class has taken about 10 steps backwards. I feel old, I feel tired, I feel alone, I feel bitter.... The only thing I can think of is just to try and wait it out, hopefully things will get better. I wish I had something else to look forward to. Right now all I can think about is how much I wish I was at home.

We started practicing hard qigong or iron body training. It consists of making little bundles of bamboo sticks and beating each other's torso's with them to first kill the nerves in the skin. It's pretty painful because the bamboo really stings and gives you little red bruises that can be itchy and uncomfortable. We have also got bigger bundles (about the size of a baseball bat) that we use to train the deeper tissues. There are very specific breathing exercises and you have to really flex all your muscles very hard. We will eventually be hitting each other with bags of sand and rocks but not for another few months and then maybe we'll be able to break wooden sticks on our bodies. The point of it is to learn to protect your organs from impact like a body shot in a fight, you learn to isolate an area to absorb the strike with your muscles instead of allowing it to to penetrate too deeply and cause internal damage. Eventually we will also be able to isolate our muscles to the point of actually being able to move the organs around a little inside. That's really advanced though but a big part of why I am excited to be doing this training. You basically have to go through this 'hard qigong' in order to do the higher level internal cultivation that comes much later. Well anyways, here is a picture of my back after about 4 days of practice. Pretty cool, huh? Actually this doesn't look too bad. Some people's skin marks much more easily and as a result they look way worse than I do. It's funny how many of the guys look worse than the females. You just never know how each person's body will react I guess.

whew!

Sorry about the 2 week silence, the firewall has been getting stronger (or higher?) and I haven't been able to sign in to blogger even using a proxy site. Problem is solved now though, we bit the bullet and got a VPN for our computer. This should make blogging a lot easier and more interesting. Now I can upload pictures and such so it's pretty exciting.

Speaking of pictures....here's a good one from our trip to Chengdu. This is Mel and Shifu with some pandas.