Fireworks, Magic and Kung Fu

January 24 2011


Been busy this past week. I have been training with Lu PIng after dinner every day this past week and i have been exhuasted and unable to write in my blog which is why i am a bit behind.

A quick recap of this last week. Almost done with my Baji form so by next grading i will be able to grade. In Wing Chun i am half way through the wooden dummy form. It has really helped me increase the speed of my reflexes as well as improve my footwork.


On Monday after dinner Kyle bought a block of fireworks for Ben's birthday and lit it. It was so LOUD AND BIG! The box itself was small but the fireworks that went off were Huge!! The block had many fireworks shoot out one after another. That one block lasted a long time. Sometimes it would pause and we would think it was over and we would go close and then another rocket would go off! At the end I said to Ben, "Dare you to touch it." He started walking towards it and i pulled him back right when another rocket went off. So we all decided to throw snow balls at it and still wait 3 minutes with no more rockets before approaching it. If one box of fireworks can be this exciting, I cant wait to see the fireworks on Chinese New Years here.


On wednsday in afternoon class i showed Lu Ping a magic trick with a coin. He was so amazed. So i told him after dinner when we finish training i will teach him a couple tricks. When I was in the US, I spent a lot of time and money learning magic tricks. I did tricks to friends and classmates, and used magic as an ice breaker to meet girls. Several times I even traveled to San Francisco to attend evening lectures by professional magicians. I say this just to explain that I really do know some cool, professional magic tricks.


Wednesday evening Lu Ping and I trained then after dinner I taught Lu Ping a couple coin tricks and even showed him a few card tricks. He asked me if i knew the trick how to put a coin into a bottle. I knew how but i have not done that trick in a long time so i told him i will show him tomorrow because i have to practice. All day Thursday i was practicing the bottle trick. Finally after we trained i showed him the trick. He could not believe it. It was funny to see the amazement on his face. He has spent his life learning about physics and gravity and the limits of the human body.... so when he sees an invisible coin snatched out of the air and materialize into a real coin in a closed bottle.... His expression of surprise must have matched mine when we practice and he make a small shift of his feet and I go flying across the room.

He When i finished the trick i handed him the bottle with the now visible coin in it and said 'Ok goodnight' in Chinese and started to walk away. I gave him the bottle because it really is an ordinary bottle and an ordinary coin. After looking at the bottle for a moment, he ran after me and asked me how i did it. Well, he begged me to tell him how I did it. I tried to run away but that was impossible. He looked really bothered because he could not understand the trick. So i taught him the trick and we walked around downstairs showing the bottle trick to the translators, some other students, and even a couple masters. It was a lot of fun.



Friday, After class Kjetil, Jacob, Ash, and I took the bus into Yantai to have a nice meal and relax at the bath house. We all decided to eat at my steak house. Had a T-bone steak. It is nice to eat a nice piece of meat after eating Veggies, Chicken, and RIce over...and over....and OVER!
Had a quiet weekend with cleaning and lot of laundry being done. It was really warm on Saturday and the snow began to melt. A few guys were talking during lunch how it must be the end of winter. Thank you global warming! Unfortunetly they spoke to soon. All day sunday it was snowing...snowing hard!


Lu Ping left yesterday.We all got to say goodbye before he took off. He will go home for new years and then go back to the Shaolin Temple for 9 more months. He might come back here afterwards. Hope i will be here when he gets back. Before he left, we wrote down the workouts we have been doing so when he leaves i can still workout on my own.


I also started watching a new American TV series on DVDs i got from a friend called 'Modern Family'. Its about a crazy family and it is hilarious. I sometimes watch it just because it reminds me of my family and helps me be less home sick sometimes.




Monday
After this week of training we have a week off of training due to Chinese New Year. During morning class Master Guo explained to us that right now is the coldest point of the year. Right now our muscles ache, we cant stretch far, we sometimes don't have a lot of energy, and training overall is hard. He said If we can train and focus through the cold weather, by the time spring comes everything will seem much easier and we will see major results.


For Chi gong class this morning we did it inside bedrooms in the academy because it was snowing badly outside and the wing chun hall was too cold. We all split up into 4 guys in each room. I taught one of the new students who never done Chi gong before how to do it properly. He didn't seem too interested in it. I told him if he does it correctly he will feel less pain when we condition our bodies later....he didn't listen. When we started hitting our hands and each other he barely participated.


After lunch i learned two more moves for my Baji form. I am 3 moves away from finishing my form!!! I know the last three moves but i can not show Master Guo that i know them because Mat taught me and Master gets mad when other students teach moves he did not show us yet. I hope i learn the rest by the end of the week!


Sam has been wanting to get a six pack so i told him i 'do abs' after dinner so i would be happy to help him if he would like to join me. We worked a bit of upper body first then finished the night off with abs. We did around 300 abs tonight. I went easy on him tonight. Did not want to kill him the first night, still he looked pretty worn out by the end.


After that i talked to one of the translators to give me private language lessons. I recognize and understand a lot of Chinese words during conversations but i do not know how to write in Chinese. I asked Jenny, the translator, if she can give me private lessons and i will pay her. Fortunatly she said she will teach me for free. So today she taught me how to write 6 characters. Seems like nothing but IT WAS HARD! Took me a little over 20 minutes to write the first character correctly. I learned how to write, Ni Hao Ma? Wo hen hao. Which means-How are you? I am fine. After an hour of lesson, we dicided to continue tomorrow.



Goodnight

-Scott