These are a few photos from the competition a few weeks ago. Me, Mel, mom, and dad cheering everyone on and one of me helping out in the pre-start mayhem. I was sure glad to have my parents there, it made the whole thing a lot more fun!

Well after all the excitement of my parents being here and the competition this week has been kinda bland. We're all waiting with bated breath for Shifu to announce what form we'll be learning next but he's really drawing it out. He likes to do this, I think it's on purpose, to mess with us. If anyone asks him he's just really vague and then walks away. Classic shifu. Hopefully he'll give us a break and let us know tomorrow.

So sorry to everyone about my long silence. My computer was on the fritz and is still in the process of dying a slow death so I had no keyboard...kinda hard to write a post without letters! A lot has happened over the past month or so. My parents came to visit for a few weeks (luckily they brought me a new laptop which is what I'm using now) and we've been busy, busy, busy. First Mel and I met them in Xi'an where we stayed for 4 days. After that we took the train to Chengdu for another 4 days of touristy stuff and then we took another train to Wudang where we live. I think my parents really liked both cities and I hope they enjoyed our little town too. It was so fun to have them at class and I feel like now they understand better what exactly we're doing here. My mom enjoyed training with us, Dad, not so much. He liked watching and taking some pictures but never did have much interest in martial arts. It was great having them here though. They left early this morning and I know I'll miss them but it's only another couple months until I see them again so it seems like nothing. I haven't traveled with my parents since childhood and it was really refreshing to see them outside of their usual environment.

We also had a tournament here in town that most of my classmates participated in. I didn't have much time so I just hung out with mom and dad and we watched and cheered everyone on. Our school did really well but it almost didn't seem fair to compete with other foreigners who have jobs and families. We do this full time so it wasn't much of a contest. It was really interesting to watch though, I just hope the people who came from far away had a good time too.