I know I'm overdue for a post. Things have been busy busy around here. There's been a Taoist conference at the temple so we're training at the school now. Space is pretty limited but the conference will be over on the weekend. We got to go to inside though and see the opening ceremony with Taoists from all over China and the temple is all dressed up. It looks really cool.

We also have a tai chi competition coming up in a few days and about half our class is going to another competition in a different province the week after. We've been practicing mostly for that and although I generally dislike competition practice, this time it's been ok. I feel like I know the tai chi like the back of my hand so it's not stressful at all and because the people who are going to the 2nd tournament are being corrected lots, I get a lot of time to myself, which I LOVE! There is just no comparison between the quality of my practice with the group versus the quality when I'm on my own.

We also have to participate in a performance for....yep, you guessed it: the opening ceremony of the local competition and that means lame rehearsals. Seems like every little thing in China has some elaborate opening ceremony attached to it. They're pretty much all super boring too, at least once you've seen a few, so having to do that is always a chore. Not looking forward to that at all.

So overall, we're super-busy. I have had very little time to study Chinese or even watch the show I'm into now (Star Trek: Enterprise) but luckily that sweater I'm knitting is portable so when we have to go wait around for 7 hours or so like we did yesterday for that performance thingy, I have something to do. I'll bring a book next time too.

I've started a new knitting project, my first sweater! I'm excited. Yesterday I bought the yarn a needed. Today I did my gauge swatch and started the ribbing at the bottom. Hooray, hoorah!

The pattern is from knitty.com and it's called flugel if anyone cares. I hope it'll be easy but also interesting and, with big needles and yarn, fast too.

Not much else to say. We finished learning our form. It's long. There's a tai chi tournament at the end of the month that we'll probably start training for soon. I've never done tai chi in a tournament before, should be interesting.

mmmm.....

Just got back from a massage and I'm still floating. There's a pretty good local massage spot that we all frequent from time to time and I just decided to pop over tonight before starting a new week of training tomorrow morning. After all the performance stuff we've been working on, getting back into doing kicks again has been causing some soreness. The massages here are clothed, with a lot of pressure and some stretching stuff. I definitely prefer a western style oil massage but for the equivalent of 8 dollars, one can't really complain! These people also know us too and so they know we train hard and where we need them to focus. It's pretty nice.

I really want to go to Thailand someday and just get awesome cheap massages everyday.

I'm writing this post from a hotel room. We've been practicing for this big stage show/performance in the city near us and so we're staying here instead of driving an hour each way from the school. We did that a few times and didn't get back until after 11pm. This is much better. We also don't have to get up at 4:50 am which is really nice. These performances are generally really stressful and though this one has certainly had it's share of that, it's better than most. They're definitely feeding us enough! The show isn't until Thursday so we have a couple more days of this. Then 2 or 3 days of training, then the holidays (Moon festival and the PRC's b-day) so things aren't going to go back to normal for a while. I always really look forward to getting back to the routine after something like this but I'll just try my best to enjoy it while I'm here and try to stay calm.

whew, tired legs!

The weather had really cooled off this past week or so (which is awesome) and as a result we're training a little harder in class. It's fine with me, summer is so hot that we generally take it a little easier and it's still exhausting. Now that autumn is here, we can get back into the swing of things. I'm actually enjoying myself again! What a concept. Well as a result most of us have some sore, tired muscles. Feels kind of good.

We're doing some performance thing soon. Yuxu gong (the temple we train at) is turning 600 this month and there's going to be a big celebration. Of course they want the token foreigners involved but at least we're doing some kung fu in this one! haha. Well we're going to be practicing for that and also preparing something fun for the full moon festival party here at the school so things should be pretty exciting around here in the next few weeks.

Updates to follow.

I'm not sure what to write this time.

We've started learning a new empty hand form. It's really cool and quite a treat after so many consecutive weapons forms. I didn't realize this but apparently it was made by our grand master, which makes sense because it kind of has a little bit of everything from our system. It's fun to learn and very long so it'll be grueling to drill later on but that's ok. We're getting pretty close to finishing the forms, hopefully we'll be done by Christmas. Here's a link to a video of Shifu doing the form:


Xuan Wu Chuan


Speaking of Christmas, I'm really starting to get excited. Can't wait to come home this year!

The weather really cooled off last week. We were all really excited and I was sleeping so well and actually enjoying training again.....then it got hot again. ARRRG! When will summer be over?!

I've been fantasizing about snow.