mmmmm.... A friend brought pistachio chocolate from Turkey and it is delicious! It's so nice that people bring us treats when they come back to the school.

This week has been pretty alright, it's gotten very hot but other than that training is good. Feeling very flexible again too.

After the tournament we trained for a day and a half and shifu announced that we would start the 3 days of meditation. It didn't make any sense to me because between our trip to Guilin and getting ready for the tournament we hadn't meditated in almost a month. I think it showed too. Some of us had a hard time sitting still the whole time and Shifu was pretty disappointed in us as a class. So that spanned our usual day off and then we trained as usual for rest of the week and everyone was pretty exhausted. By the time the next day off came we were all right on the edge of breakdown. Add to that the fact that Shifu was so unhappy with us and it's a wonder we survived it....but we did! We made it and I had an amazing day off on Thursday just relaxing and resting a lot. I'm really happy to be on the other side of that rough patch. Hopefully next time we do the meditation, we'll be more prepared.

Summer is in full swing now which means, it's hot, humid, and buggy and the school is packed. We're learning spear too and a lot of the movements involve sliding the spear shaft through your hand or against your arm, pretty much impossible when you're coated in a sticky layer of sweat, sunscreen, and bug spray! haha. Grossed out yet? haha.