Day 4

"Life is not how it is supposed to be. It is the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference."-Anonymous

From now on I will have the word of the day. In the last blog I learned thank you which is XieXie.

Today’s word of the day is Hello. Ni Hao. (knee-How)

Today is the last ‘rest’ day. Training starts tomorrow. Talked to a few people last night about the different kung fu styles. A couple from France are here after staying at a two other Chinese academies. They said this place is the best they have seen. They do Wing Chun here and I think that’s the style I want to do. My roommate Sam wants to do MMA so he does a lot of the Shaolin kick boxing.

I asked a few other guys why are they here and most said to get away from work or come here before college. I asked my roommate why he is here he said he wants to open up his own martial art studio. I wonder what the other students’ reasons.

This morning my roommate and I walked down to the store. The students at the academy call it the “Everything Store”. They say it has EVERYTHING. I asked my roommate, “Is it like Walmart? That place has EVERYTHING?” He said he’s not sure they don’t have any Walmarts in England. Well I was hoping this store had everything, because I didn’t have an international plug for my laptop and it died last night. Luckily I found a international plug! It’s fun trying to communicate with the store owners. I had to tell them I wanted the plug by pointing and gesturing what I wanted. A lot of items were crowded on the shelves behind the counter. It’s hard to find things in there, so when I was looking for the plug I felt like I was playing a game of ISPY. When I ask for the price they would type the number on a calculator. I bought a couple more snacks for my room. I bought a yogurt type of drink and some crackers. They had boxes piled on boxes in the middle of the store. Made it kind of hard to maneuver around. They even had milk crates full of EGGS! Some were even cracked!!! It’s like a whole different world!

While we were walking back to the academy my roommate was telling me about how the farmers here wrap bags around each fruit to keep bugs and birds out. That must take hours to do. I even saw a farm with the bags on the apples. Also on the way I saw a lot of spiders! Well my roommate said they are spiders…I would personally call them ALIENS! They are huge and have so many different colors!

We walked to a nearby restaurant for lunch and they were closed so we went to the room I tried out my plug and it worked…obviously since I am writing this! After a little rest time we went back out to see if they are open. The ordering here is bizarre. They have a menu on the wall and we just point to what we want. I ordered fried rice, chicken wings, dumplings, and bread. After lunch we went back to the room and relaxed. I guess a lot of the people relax on weekends. Downloaded Tosh.0 (American comedy TV show) and have been resting and watching a couple episodes of that. I just went to dinner with Sam, my roommate. Met a new student that came today. One was from England and only here for four weeks. Dinner was ok. Vegetables, chicken, and rice again. Didn’t eat much today. Went back to the room and now getting ready for bed. Start training tomorrow. Kind of scared and excited. Can’t wait!

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-Scott