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Sunday, August 7, 2011

KC's Second Blog



8-5-11

My first day

I wake up at 4:30 am and am not able to go back to sleep. I lay in bed until 5 am and decide I should take a shower and try to get ready for the day. It is sooooooo humid here! I went to sleep feeling sticky and woke up sticky… yuck. As im getting my things together for the shower my roommate wakes up. She is very nice, shes from Belgium and is visiting for a month.

I take a shower and I try to find my brother’s room. I ask 3 people if they know where scott’s room is. One person has no idea, then I ask one of the translators she looks at the book in the office and I go up stairs to look for scott. Wendy, the translator, told me Scott’s room was 303 and lucky for me the door was open. I walk in and there are two guys who are not Scott sleeping in their beds. I slowly walk out before they notice me in there. I walk down the hall and I ask a guy if he knows where Scott’s room is he says yes but he obviously doesn’t because he knocked on three doors before we found scott.

I go into the room and wake scott up it was only 5:30 am. his roommate was getting up to go to Tai Chi (Tai Ji). I ate breakfast in Scott’s room and met a few of the guys on his floor. Everyone here is really nice.

Class starts at 8:30 am. I had to go in front of the whole academy and introduce myself after that I met the different masters. I didn’t know I was supposed to bow after I met each on of them. The first master I met was master Goa, scott’s master and instead of bowing I say “Hi” and everyone starts laughing. The translator tells me I’m supposed to bow and so I bow and move on to the next master. After that we had to run two miles before we split up into our diferent classes. I ran with Scott and the first mile was really tough because it’s so hot and I haven’t exercised in 2 months!

The second mile I told scott I needed to walk. He told me “if I get back to the academy before you do I will tell them to give you a really mean master” so I run back. When I get back they tell me I’m in master Rong’s shaolin class. He’s very nice, he travels all around performing Shaolin and acrobatics.

We start the class with stretches and warm ups. Master Rong takes me aside and shows me all of the basics. I start off with kicks and work on that for an hour. After that we have a 15 minute break and master shows me the five step beginning form. I work on that for another hour. People in my group are so nice, if I am struggling with my form or any of the warm ups they show me how to do it and are very patient. It is so humid here I sweat so much.

After the morning class Scott and his friends take me to Muping to buy things I need while I’m here. We get lunch at a noodle house and the we go to the tailor because his friend wants to get kung fu pants made. I decide to get a traditional chinese made. After that we go to the store and I get two pillows, oatmeal, shampoo and a few other things.

We head back to the academy and by the time we get back it’s time for afternoon class. We start again with a two mile run. I always stay with the same master and same people. But instead of Shaolin we do San Da, chinese boxing. Master takes me asaide again to show me the basics. We start with the foot work and then he shows me punches. I then join the group and we practice punching combos with pads. He then has us pair up and we practice sparring. My partner for the sparring exercise was Dan, hes in his 50’s maybe and lives in San Francisco. He was really helpful he kept correcting my hand placement because my hands were too close to my body and explained how I should move my feet. In my Shaolin group there are 6 ladies. Two girls are from Denmark, two girls are chinese, one lady is from Florida, and then there’s me. There are two guys from france, one guy from Belgum, and Dan the guy from San Francisco and a guy from Canada.

Once afternoon class was over I did Qi Gong with master Goa. We had to stand with out arms up and palms facing each other and when we breathe in our hands move away and breath out hands move close together again. We close our eyes and focus on the energy between our hands. This was really difficult. I couldn’t focus my mind and my arms started to get tired. After a while my legs got tired and started to shake. Master came over a few times to fix the posture of my arms. All I could think about was sitting down. I made it through class and dinner was right after.

For dinner everyone gets in line. We grab a big bowl and pick what food we want. The food was good we had some veggies and they had meat and tofu. We also were able to choose rice or noodles. I sat at a table with scott and some of his friends that I haven’t met yet.

After dinner I go to my room and get my things ready for the shower. I had to wait 20 minutes to take a shower because it was occupied and I kept missing my place in line for the shower. After my shower I went up to scott’s room to visit with him and Sam. I could bearly keep my eyes open. At 8 pm I decide to go to bed. I knock out so quickly I don’t even notice my roommate come into the room.

I had a fun, very tiring first day.



Xoxo,

Kc

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