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.

Last week we spent 3 days just on meditating, eating lightly, and taking some Chinese herbs to build our chi. Our class has been talking about this for almost two years now, it was supposed to be something we did semi-regularly but we just now did it for the first time.

First Shifu bought all the herbs which we dried, steamed, and dried again several times before grinding them into a fine powder with this really ancient looking piece of machinery. Then we melted honey and some weirdly congealed bricks of donkey skin (Yes, I'm serious, it's supposed to be a blood cleanser) and mixed it with the powder and rolled it into 9 gram balls. Each day before meditation we would eat 1 to 3 of these "pills". We spent around 6 hours each day meditating. Morning session was 2 1/2 hours, afternoon was 2 hours, and evening was another 1 1/2 hours. We were allowed to eat fruit, a few cooked vegetables, and some special porridge that the cooks made for us with rice, barley, corn, beans, and lentils. I actually enjoyed eating only healthy foods for a few days, although I was dreaming about home-baked cookies from time to time!

I knew this was going to be challenging and it definitely was. The second day in particular was quite rough for me. I was in a lot of pain in my legs and feeling very discouraged pretty much all day but then in the evening we learned a really cool lying down chi gong which helped renew me for the next day. I woke up on day 3 feeling good and I really got a lot out of the meditation. I felt relaxed and calm, I was able to really focus on my dan tian (lower belly) and I think if we'd gone for 4 or 5 days, I would have had some powerful experiences.

Getting back to training has been interesting. I felt really good the first day, relaxed and soft and full of energy, now I'm pretty sore but I still feel more healthy and vigorous. I think we really did build up some chi over those 3 days, I just have to not waste it and continue to build more now. Although it was very hard, I'm looking forward to the next time we can meditate for 3 days, I hope each successive time will be a little bit easier and more rewarding.

Chengdu Trip

We got back this morning from our holiday to Chengdu. Some of you may remember Chengdu from the big earthquake that made the news several years ago. It's a lovely city with a small town feel and the people were quite friendly. We saw a lot of the local sights like temples, the tibetan district, parks, etc but the two main highlights were the pandas and Emei shan.

The panda breeding centre is on the outskirts of the city in a lovely scenic area. The place is full of flower gardens and pretty walking paths as well as adorable pandas! I was worried that the living conditions for the pandas might be inhumane (China is not big on animal rights) but it seemed really great. They had plenty of outdoor space, with lots of bamboo and it was very clean. The pandas seemed really happy and healthy and we got to see babies, teenagers, and adults. Seeing them on a television screen really doesn't do these sweet animals justice. They really were enchanting, even to the more stoic members of our group. We spent about 3 hours there but I could have stayed all day.

Emei shan is the name of a mountain we went to see that was about a 3 hour bus ride from the city. It was absolutely gorgeous scenery and the air was so fresh and clean. Apparently this area is where a lot of scenes from the movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon were filmed. There is also a famous kung fu style that originated here and is still practiced today. The Fuhu Temple was incredible in itself and the surrounding beauty just added to it's magnificence, I really hope to take my parents there when they come to visit. Unfortunately we only had a day and a half here and so we saw less than 10% of the mountain, I'd love to go back and stay for 3 or 4 days to have the chance to see everything.

Overall the trip was great and we all had a really fun time. It does feel good to be back though and I'm really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight, sleeping on the train sucks!