I'm overdue for an update.

I've been dealing with some problems with my neck and shoulder (a result of all those kip-ups a few weeks ago) and thus have fallen waaaay behind on my bridges. It's a bit disappointing but these things happen. I still intend to complete the project but doing so before the end of August is starting to seem unlikely. My intention was only to motivate myself to practice more and that has already happened so it is not a failure or a waste of time, just a challenge to work through.

Something I've learned here is patience. In the west we say "patience is a virtue" but it doesn't seem as if it's a quality that people try to cultivate in themselves or expect others to have. We value efficiency, hard work, intelligence, and a load of other things, patience......not so much. Living here I have learned to be patient. It was a tough process though. Basically I've had to deal with tons of frustrations, complete powerlessness, total ignorance of situations, and little guidance. Patience is sitting in meditation posture every day for 3 years with very little information or teaching. Patience is learning that things will happen here when they happen and there is nothing you can do to expedite it, so you'd be better off to not get frustrated and just find a something to do while you wait. I was raised to do things "right" and expect that from others but here, nothing is done "right" and culturally it's just not important so it's impossible to change or to force others to see it your way. You just have to accept it.

I'm not saying I love Chinese society and culture, in fact, living here has made me appreciate certain western values like honesty and forthrightness so much more, but patience is something you can really develop in a place like this.

So I'm rambling but basically my point is that even though I can't practice bridges when I want to, I've developed enough patience to accept that and just plug away slowly when I can.

The bridges are going fine. Despite falling behind a little while I was sick, I'm on my way to catching up and, just as I'd hoped, it's starting to get easier to do them.

I've also started studying Chinese again, after not studying AT ALL since last year. I can't explain why I've been so lax on that this year but whatever it was, it's changing now. I used to want to only study spoken Chinese because I thought it was more practical for someone living here in China and I didn't study characters at all. Last year I finally started learning characters and trying to catch them up with my speaking. Now I find all I want to study is characters. Weird. I'll just go with it though. In the future I'd like to be able to take a poem or Taoist scripture and translate it myself. The entire library of Taoist texts is huge and 99.9% of them have never been translated into English so if I want to read them, learning characters is a must.

Over the past month or so the structure of our class has changed a little and it's been more loose with a lot more self-direction.The training is almost exactly the same, it's just the atmosphere that's changed. I'm really enjoying it, after 3 years of intense discipline it feels great to follow my feelings more. I'm not sure I'd have created this bridges project for myself or started studying again if I still had that mental pressure on me. There's just no space for that stuff the way we were going before. I feel more like myself now and though I think those 3 years were invaluable, I'm ready to move on. I think in order to develop the super-human self control of a master it's important to have both external discipline and also to learn self discipline.

I'm sitting in my room with a cold today. I hate having a cold when it's hot outside but what can you do? I've got some vitamin C, lemon and honey, Vicks vaporub, and a huge pile of used tissues; Should be feeling better soon. It comes (as always) at an inconvenient time because I recently set a goal for myself to do 124 bridges (from standing position you bend backwards and put your hands on the ground) by the end of August. It works out to about 5 each training day with a few less on Wednesdays (half day) and though I managed to squeeze out 3 yesterday in spite of the cold, I think today will be a bust. Luckily, I started 2 days early so I got a bit of a head start and I have some breathing room. A month or so ago when we did our stretching test, I was one of only 2 people who didn't pass on the bridge because I couldn't get my hands close enough to my feet. I decided to do some extra work on it but it was hard to motivate myself because...well..it's hard. I suddenly realized the other day that I've done this kind of thing once or twice before and I have the perfect method for setting goals that are clear and measurable, making it public, and not quitting. So 124 bridges it is. I sure have learned a lot from Shifu Jeff Brinker. My advice to everyone in the UBBT now.....listen to him, he's done this before and he knows what you're going through.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8cNagcxhEs&feature=related

This Saturday our evening class was a little unusual. First we sparred, then we did throws, then Shifu had us practice a bunch of different falls and tumbling stuff. I can finally do kip ups! If you don't know what they are, watch this youtube video. I've practiced them before but never really got   it....I managed like 2 successful ones in my life. This time I just walked up there and banged out 10 in a row! I was surprised but also super excited, so excited in fact that I got carried away and ended up with a doozy of a stiff neck for the rest of the week. My neck was so tight that I was really dizzy for about 3 days afterwards. I think the muscles were pulling on the bones in my inner ear and if felt really gross. So I took it easy and got Mel to massage it for me every day. Kind of a waste of the rest of the week, next time I'll just do a few of them. Simon also massaged it for me yesterday and since we were staying in a hotel to celebrate my birthday, I took a bath afterwards. That finally fixed it and I feel all better now.

I really enjoyed getting away from the school for a day. It was so nice to sleep in a nice, soft bed in a lovely, clean room with air conditioning. It's wonderful to live like a westerner again once in a while. It's so far away but I'm already looking forward to December.

On Monday I celebrated my 31st birthday. I can't believe I've been alive for that long, it seems like the blink of an eye. In our traditional class, I'm the second oldest member but I rarely feel old. In fact, in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm getting younger and younger the longer I stay here. I'm sure I look older (especially with all the sun exposure we get) but I've gotten so much stronger, healthier, and more flexible that physically I feel younger than I did when I came here. Slowly old injuries are being healed and I feel vitality in a way I'd never experienced before. Don't get me wrong, I still get really tired sometimes and wonder if I can even go on, but the good days are starting to feel pretty amazing.

Friends my age at home are settling (or already settled) down. Buying houses, getting married, getting divorced, having kids, well into their career paths. I'm here with no stuff at all, with people a decade or more younger than me, just completely focused on myself and kung fu. I sometimes feel as if I should want more.....but I don't. I know that I'm in exactly the right place for me right now. Sometimes I want to leave but I know that dissatisfaction is a part of the process. Being here is very challenging but I know it's what I need to become the Brandi I was meant to be.

So I'm getting older.....and feeling more and more confident about my choices in life. What more could one ask for?

I just got back yesterday from a whirlwind trip to Shanghai to renew my passport. I left Monday afternoon, took the overnight train, stayed 2 nights and then another overnight train back. It was pretty crazy and I didn't have a lot of time there for much fun stuff but I did enjoy eating some delicious baked goods. Overall I found Shanghai really expensive (more than any other city in China) with not much to do. It was scorching hot though, otherwise I may have walked around a bit more. The food was also expensive though of a pretty good quality. I enjoyed a bagel with cream cheese and a beet juice on the side, butter croissants, and a lovely ciabatta sandwich with a yummy belgian beer to go with it. Everything else was...meh.

Glad to be back but still a bit worn out from so much travel in such a short time. We're starting ba xian gun (eight immortals staff) this week so I'm looking forward to that.

We finished learning spear last week, just in time too because it's been raining a lot an we've been doing most of our training indoors these past few days. It's a really fun form to practice but mine still needs a lot of work before it'll be up to par in my opinion.

Friday we had a stretching evaluation where our class, together with the Chinese students, showed Shifu a variety of different stretches and either got a 'pass' or a 'fail'. It was kind of fun to watch everyone do their very best stuff, pretty inspiring. Even though I technically failed a lot of them, I did my personal best on a lot of the stretches so I'm pretty happy with that. Shifu's standards are very high. I'm really happy with how much my flexibility has improved this year, hopefully it continues.