Not in the Christmas spirit.

I'm almost finished learning the sword form now and I've got my next form lined up to start right after that.

It's really strange being here at Christmas time. It just doesn't seem like It's only 5 days until Christmas. It hasn't snowed here and I don't see it happening anytime soon. The supermarket in the town here has Christmas decorations up though, it's kind of strange but I guess they have a lot of us foreigners as customers.

I'm missing my friends and family a lot too. My favorite part of the festive season is spending time with the people I love so I'm sad to be missing out on that and also really grateful that Melanie is here. I hope that everyone knows how much I love them and miss them. It makes me question whether I would be able to manage several years here away from my loved ones. I still bliss out on the training though. It's so amazing to practice kung fu all day. In class sometimes I just stop and look around and am blown away. Here I am in China, doing kung fu at an ancient temple ruins, outside in december in a sweatshirt. WOW

thoughts!

I'm now about halfway done learning the sword form that I mentioned in my last post. It's so great! As a weapon I think it suits me pretty well and a couple of people here have mentioned it too. It's quite a lot of work especially on my right shoulder but I'm already starting to get stronger too. I really like the crispness of the movements and the grace of the form itself.

Mel's learning the horsewhisk form too and it looks really hard! She's been practicing a lot though! I'm really proud of her. I would also like to learn that form too, maybe Mel can teach me when we get home.

There's something so wonderful about being able to just practice kung fu all day, every day. In all my life there's nothing that's made me happier than kung fu and being able to focus on just that is pretty much a dream come true. I would love to be able to live like this at home. They are starting a 3 year and a 5 year program here that starts this September that I'm seriously considering doing it. So is Mel but it's a lot of money to save up all at once. Looking at room and board and training and all that at it's actually quite cheap but it's a lot of money to save up in about 6 months and a long time to spend in China away from everyone that's dear to me.

I'll have to think very seriously about it. I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do with the rest of my life since I got here. Spending so much time doing what I want to do has made me wonder why I've been wasting so much time on other stuff so far.

Finally!

I apologize for not posting in such a long time. For some reason I can look at my blog but I can't always sign in. Ah China....

Things here have been really interesting. Our first week here I was incredibly sore. Pretty much my whole body was one big sore muscle. We work really hard here. Our warm up is usually an hour or two of kicks, stretching, stances, running up to the temple on some stone stairs, and some "internal" stuff like tai chi stuff and meditation. Then we work on forms for about an hour. That's one class and after lunch we do it again too! We also do Qigong and meditation for an hour each per day. it's pretty intense!

Now we're starting to get used to it and though we still get sore we can kick high again (for a while it was a struggle to get my leg waist height) and I'm picking up the form really well. It's kind of a cross between tai chi and a kung fu form. It's really cool! Next form i'm going to learn is a straight sword form that looks so cool! I'm super excited!

My training goals are going well. Some goals I'm getting ahead on and others I'm lagging a bit on. I figure that it'll even out in the end though and some of my goals are already done! Today I did 500 situps and we run every day so things like that I'm way ahead of the game on.

I really starting to miss my friends from home. It's quite tricky to stay in contact sometimes but I hope you all know that I miss you and think about you all the time.

Lots of love, hopefully I'll be able to post again soon.

Ordeals in China

So I'm realizing that we've been really spoiled so far.

We've been travelling in big cities with lots of other foreigners where many people speak at least a little english. The hostels were awesome and helpful and clean. Right now we're in Luoyang which is near the Shaolin temple which we're going to see today. This city is not like the others! It's dirty and very Chinese. We had an extremely difficult time trying to buy our ticket to get out of here yesterday. Our chinese is apparently so bad that noone could understand us and we couldn't understand them either. We were reduced to pointing at the words in our lonely planet and my mandarin phrasebook. It was really frustrating and also kind of lonely. i'm so grateful that Mel and I are together to make things like that so much less scary.

I can't wait to get to Wudang and start training. Traveling is fun but I'm used to getting more exercise and I'm feeling a bit out of sorts. It's also weird having such unstructured days. I don't think I like it. Luckily we will be there tomorrow. Yay!

Adventures in Shanghai

So we have spent a couple of days in Shanghai now. It's an interesting city. There are such contrasts in the different areas. From poverty to affluence, modern to old, you can see a cross section of all kinds here.

Traveling has been really good. Mel and I have managed to get around really well (with lots of help from the staff at our hostel) and everything is going much more smoothly than I'd prepared myself for. It's even been really easy to find vegetarian food so far. We were both really jet lagged until about today and actually bickered a lot yesterday while making our way around on the metro. I'm surprised and things are both not at all what I expected and at the same time exactly what I would have imagined. It's really hard to explain....

Today we went to Yufo temple which is a buddhist temple in shanghai with a jade statue of the buddha that was apparently brought back from Thailand by a local monk way back in the day. We couldn't take pictures of it but trust me when I say that it was beautiful! There's definitely something about that particular statue. As we stood and looked at it I felt very moved, almost to the point of tears, which is odd for me. I don't consider myself to be buddhist but there are certain things about buddhism that I've always liked. The buddha said to find your own path and that is what I try to do. He also said not to worship him and so I've always thought that people praying to statues of the buddha went against what he said. Today though I found myself very moved by one of these statues. It really spoke to me. Does that mean that I've been wrong all this time. Perhaps there really is something to traditional buddhist practices? It's really given me something to think about.

I'm reading Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh and there are certain things in there that I'm feeling confused by. I'm definitely not an authority on buddhist thought but I always thought that the idea was to neither avoid unpleasantness or be attached to pleasure. In this book however he speaks of cultivating pleasant feelings and the positive impact you can have on the world by doing so. I've found this a bit hard to understand. It seems contradictory to me but perhaps this is this mans particular way of living and he's following his own path....?

Anyways, with no work or distractions in my day I'm having lots of time to contemplate. It's really nice. Tonight we head off to Beijing and I am excited to see how it is different.

Until then...

Tokyo yo!

So we are here. We finally made it after about 20 hours in transit. We were so tired last night that we checked in to our hostel and then just showered and ate and went to bed by 730. We wandered around a bit looking for a place to eat and came across this totally awesome little noodle soup place where you order and then stand at the bar and slurp your noodles. They didn't speak any english but we managed to order by pointing and gesturing and saying the few words we know in Japanese. Soba! Tempura! yeah.....

Today we have big plans to explore a bunch. We're really excited! I do not have words to express how incredibly massive Tokyo is. We took the train from the airport for an hour and a half and still haven't even made it to the heart of the city yet! It's absolutely insane!

But we must begin our day. Miss you all already!

whew.

Ok so I leave in 3 days and although I'm still nervous, I'm feeling better. Yesterday the bank called me because there was a problem with the money wire that I sent to China. I was so worried! I managed to work myself up into a pretty anxious state thinking about all the things that could go wrong from there and lots of what ifs. It turns out that the money is already in China but they can't release it unless they have the correct name for the recipient. So I got that information and it should be all good now. I had myself all worked up over something fairly minor. It's funny now.

Yesterday a co-worker gave me some very helpful words. She said that the reason traveling changes you so much is that it takes you out of your comfort zone. You have to be flexible and open to opportunities and changes because things don't always go the way you planned. She said that sometimes you may be disappointed if something doesn't work out but it may create a whole new adventure for you that you'd never imagined before. She said that dealing with these challenges is what makes you grow into a better person and growing is often uncomfortable. She said that this was the beginning of my adventure to deal with the bank and that the changes were already starting. It made me feel a lot better to hear that. She's right, I'm going to have to do things that I don't like and I'll be better for it. So I guess I'd better get used to it now!

Also thanks Sifu Playter for your comment on my last post. I keep reminding myself to be bold, it helps.

Overall everyone has been great. Very supportive. I'm going to miss you all and be really excited to see you when I come back!