KC's blog about her second day here

Day 2

I woke up at 5:50. I slept soooo good, my body was dead tired. My legs had 3 mosquito bites, my arms had two… I’m getting eaten alive!

I had to get up and get ready for Tai Chi. Scott was supposed to do tai chi with me in the mornings but he wasn’t there this morning. I saw Sam in class,  he does tai chi in the mornings. I did some stretches and one of the masters called me over to show me the first steps to a form. He had to show me 4 times before I kind of got it down. But when he walked away and I tried to do the form on my own I didn’t remember it. 

Thankfully Big Mac is also in the tai chi class and has the same master as I do so he was nearby and I was able to ask him to help me. I had him watch me do the steps a few times before I got it down. Big Mac doesn’t speak English and I don’t know any chinese, so I had to motion to him that I wanted him to watch me or show me how to do the moves again. He is really nice.

After tai chi I did qi gong again with master Guo. Thankfully this time we were allowed to sit down. Qi gong is meditation. It is really hard for me to focus my mind and sit still. I feel like a five year old kid figiting in my seat. I was doing pretty well until a giant bee/wasp/bug thing flew by me. I almost jumped up and ran away. 

Once class was over I went to the dining hall to look at what they serve for breakfast. I grabbed two hard boiled eggs and went up to scott’s room. He was still sleeping so I woke him up. I told him I was hungry and needed him to feed me. He got up and gave me yogurt with granola. It was really tasty.

We had to do our first 2 mile run in the morning and then break into our individual groups. In Shaolin we worked on our forms and then did some San da drills. The master pulled me aside and had me do San da foot work while the other students did the drills. After that we paired up and did conditioning. One person would hold the punching bag and throw it at our partner and that person would have to hit the punching bag with their back. I threw the bag first and when it was my turn to hit the punching bag, my partner was really nice and threw the bag really slowly and easily for me while I got the hang of it. Still, I felt like my brain was rattling in my head. My partner was the guy who is teaching scott to play the accordion. He is from France and used to be in the circus.

After we hit the bags with our backs we had to hit the bags with our shoulders. By the time we finished conditioning my head hurt so much. After conditioning we had lunch which was really really good! Eggplant, meat and they had veggies mixed with eggs.

After lunch I went up to scott’s room to watch “How I Met Your Mother”. At 3pm we had to go on the mountain run. For some reason I was really looking forward to the mountain run. Scott didn’t have to run because he was practicing his forms for the competition. We have to walk from the academy past the spot where we run to in the mornings and afternoons before class and walk up a hill. This is a really BIG hill. I reach the bottom of the hill and it starts raining. Let me rephrase that, it started POURING. The biggest rain drops I’ve ever seen. I look back and there are a few people behind me and about 10 people ahead of me. I walk about 4 feet and I am already soaked. I look back and no one else is coming. I guess everyone went back to the academy, but I keep going up the hill. Maybe I should call it a mountain instead of a hill because this thing was steep. It’s probably about a three mile walk up the mountain and this isn’t part of the “mountain run”. At the top of this mountain is a temple with stairs…this still is not where we start the mountain run. After walking up 40 steps to get into the temple, we go to the side where there are MORE stairs… now this is where we start the mountain run. I am breathing so hard, I am out of breath and my legs feel like they are going to give out. Not to mention that I am soaked all the way through, it is still raining hard and then I heard thunder.

I liked walking in the rain. It was fun because it wasn’t cold, but what I didn’t like was that my clothes and shoes were heavy from the rain water. The view from the mountain is amazing. It is so green and beautiful. There are a lot of orchards near the academy and you can see the water fall from the top of the mountain. One of the girls, Donna, was trying to ask Big Mac if there was a bathroom up at the mountain but he didn’t understand her. So I tried to motion and show him what she was asking. So I squatted and made motions with my hand to show what I thought looked like going to the bathroom. Big Mac looked so confused, but it was really funny.

After I checked out the view I start my mountain run, or mountain walk is more like it. I don’t know why I was excited to do this because this SUCKED! It’s worse than I could ever explain. We have to run to the top of the mountain. It’s not a straight run, there are stairs and it’s windy and on top of that…there was rain. My legs were already tired just from walking up here to start the mountain run.

You would think that since it is raining like crazy the mosquitos would hide or go away, wrong! They were still out trying to eat me. I made it up the mountain and back down once. Some people made it up two times.   But by the time I made it down the Masters told us to go back to the academy because it was raining too hard and the stairs are slippery.

I walk down the mountain with Big Mac and he tries to talk to me a little. I don’t speak chinese and he doesn’t speak English so we have a hard time. We usually end up playing charades and motioning to communicate. On our walk we passed Scott and Scott said something to Big Mac in chinese and Big Mac responded and started laughing. Scott later told me what he said to Big Mac. Scott said that my Chinese is bad and Big Mac responded, “Yes she’s really really bad”.

When I got back to the academy I put on my swim suit and walked back out to the waterfall to swim with scott. There were a few other people from the academy there. The water was really nice and warm. After the swim we went back to the academy. I hung out in scott’s room for a while and we then went to dinner down the street with a few people. Let me tell you who we had dinner with. It was me and Scott, Brittany and this girl Xan. Brittany and Xan are from the states. Xan actually went to UOP, she was here in china teaching English. Max also had dinner with us, he is in Scott’s Wing chung group. Donna and her boyfriend Jeremy also had dinner with us. Donna is from Canada and Jeremy is from France.

During dinner Donna told us that Jeremy found a bird caught in a spider’s web and next to the bird was a bird skeleton. I don’t know about you but that story really made me miss being home. How big is this spider that eats birds???

After dinner I went next door with Ash and Keith. There were a lot of students next door. We sat down in our own little group. Matheiu was there already and Sam came over a little after I got there. Next door is a little restaurant that is literally next door to the academy. The food is prepared in this little outside building and the guy carries the raw meat from the little building into the restaurant to cook it. (I don’t think I’ll be eating there) the beer is warm and the service is slow but everyone goes there. I sat around with the guys for an hour or so. It was fun just sitting around. After that I went to my room and fell asleep.

Ill tell you about my resting day later.

Xoxo,

Kc

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

First Blog from KC

August 3 2011

I decided to go to China and train with my brother after i took the CA bar exam.

When I got to the airport in SF I could not believe that I was actually going to China. I wasn’t excited, I wasn’t scared…. I just didn’t really feel anything. I went through security and it still didn’t hit me, but half way through my flight to china I felt home sick. I wanted to turn the plane around and go home to hug my dogs. The flight from SFO to Bejing was okay. There was a lot of turbulence but besides that the flight wasn’t too bad. The hard thing about a 12 hour flight is that you have to sit for 12 hours straight. I was only able to sleep for about 3 hours during my flight.

I arrived in Beijing at 5:30 pm local time, back home it was 3:30 am. I got my luggage and checked into Air china again for my domestic flight to Yantai. I had two huge bags. One bag was full of clothes and things I needed for a month here in china and the other bag was packed full of candy, twinkies, and American cereal for my brother. After I checked in I looked around at the airport shops. I ate dinner at KFC and decided to find my terminal even though I was 4 hours early.

Let me tell you about my KFC experience really quickly. I walked up to the register, in China you point to the picture of the item you want. Nothing is in English, if you don’t speak Mandarin all you have are the pictures. I point to a picture of fried chicken with a side and a drink. I do not get to pick what I want to drink because the drink is part of the meal. My meal comes with 4 little chicken wings, my drink is an orange/mystery fruit drink, and my side is chopped cucumbers with corn in some type of mayonnaise thing. Instead of a biscuit I get a custard cake, which was tasty. I didn’t taste the cucumber mayonnaise thing… it didn’t look too appetizing.

After I eat I head to what I thought was my boarding area. I sit there for about 3 hours reading my book. When I first got to the boarding area there were a few people there, slowly more people came but they got onto a flight for another city. After 2 hours alone at the boarding area I start to realize that I was in the wrong place. I get up and ask a lady if she knew where I should be, I was currently at C6 she told me I had to be at C53. The other side of the airport. I rush across the airport, and have to go down 2 flights of stairs and get to C53 but that was the wrong place too, I ask the lady where I should be and she tells me C17. I walk back upstairs to the main section to look at the main sign so I can find out where C17 is. Finally I see that its past C53 and at the very end of the airport. I turn around and again go downstairs.

I finally make it and sit down. I have an hour left till boarding. But while sitting at the gate, I fall asleep and would have missed my flight if a lady didn’t wake me up. I make it on the plane and arrive in Yantai. As I walk into the baggage claim area I see Scott on the other side of the security glass. I wave and yell to him that I have to get my bags. Even at this moment, the moment I see my brother who I know has been living in China for the past 10 months, my brain does not register that I am thousands of miles away from home on the other side of the world.

I am lucky my brother and his friend Matheiu came to pick me up at the airport because I didn’t arrive in Yantai until 11:50 pm local time. They have a taxi waiting and we load my bags into the van. Its an hour drive from Yantai to the academy. I’m a little scared because I know everyone will be sleeping and that’s including my roommate.

When we get to the academy it is completely dark. I’m more worried now because on the way to the academy the taxi driver tried calling to let them know we were close and to open the gate to let us in but no one answered. the gate was unlocked and luckily one of the masters heard us come in so he opened the door for us. He gave me my key to my room and Scott dropped my bags off and went up to his room. It is past 1 am, my roommate is asleep, the only light I have is the hall light that the master turned on when we came in.

I have to go to the bathroom so I leave the room and find the bathroom. The first thing I notice is that it smells like a “porta potty” (those plastic bathroom things you see at parks and fairs) AND then I notice there is no toilet paper! I rush back to my room, I know I have a pack of tissues in one of my 4 bags. I quietly try to search through my bags when the hall light turn off and everything goes black. “Crap” was the first thing that came out of my mouth. I grab my cell phone and use it as a flash light. I remember that my dad bought me 2 flash lights at Brookstone in SFO

By the time I get settled into bed its 2 am and I cant sleep. It is so weird. I wasn’t able to fix my bed the way I like it and I was barely able to check for spiders using my light. I tell myself there are no spiders and fall asleep.

I will tell u all about my first day later.

Xoxo,

Kc

Weather and Chaos and my sister arrives

Weather in Kunyushan



The weather here in the mountain changes as much as a chameleon changes his color. It will be sunny in the morning and then when lunch comes around it will be pouring rain. It is crazy. The rain is good because it fills the river by the school so we can swim but it also makes the weather very humid. One bad thing about the rain is it always rains when i hang my clothes out to dry! I will look outside and its sunny and hot so i do my laundry when i finished hanging them on the line, about an hour later it will rain or it will rain throughout the night making my clothes wet and smell bad so i would have to rewash them. This happened to me 3 times in a row. Last week i finally dried my clothes in time because when i got them off the line it started raining...Whew!

As you all may know, my sister is training with me here for a month. She had asked me what the weather is like and i told her its sunny sometimes and it rains sometimes which ends up making it humid but not too bad.


When she got off the plane and experienced the humidity she said "its horrible and hot!"


I said "Yes it is. But if i told you that before you got here you would of never came at all!"



Chaos in WingChun

In the summer the academy gets more new students every week. For the past three weeks every new student wanted to join WingChun.(maybe because the new IP Man movie just came out?)  Our class went from 16 people to 27 in 3 weeks. The class is massive. Every time a new student came to class, Master told Clement or me to teach them the basic moves and forms. I don't mind teaching the new people. I think teaching is fun. 

One thing i have noticed when i teach new students are the habits they have when they do wingchun. A few of the guys did wingchun back home which is very different to the wingchun we do here. Our style is more traditional, their styles are more southern and changed throughout the different countries. I find that the people who did wingchun back home have a hard time learning the basic moves in class and the students who don't know wingchun pick up the basics a little faster. I picked up the moves fast because i never heard of wingchun until i came to china. I never even heard of IpMan until i watched it one night in the academy with friends. But when i teach i break it down so the students can process each movement. If they start with a bad foundation they will have a hard time learning more and more moves. The basics might seem easy but they are the most important which is why we do them every morning. 

Since Joseph left a few months ago, Clement is the only class leader. I lead the class for warm ups a lot now and last week I even lead stance training and power training  since Clement was out. 

Yesterday, August 5th, Master promoted me to second class leader. I am very happy. Master has been telling me my progress over these past few month has been drastic. I know I am not on the same level as clement but I have been trying very hard to get close.


-Scott

MY BROTHER (BIG MAC) AND MY SISTER

Big Mac





I wrote about my little Chinese buddy in WingChun who we gave the english name Big MAc. Over the past few weeks i have been talking to him in Chinese and teaching him english. My chinese is pretty decent but i have not been practicing my chinese for the past few months since i been training hard for competitions and not going into town as much. So when i started talking with Big Mac my chinese came back to me. I can understand a lot more now and speak more. I first realized my chinese is getting better is after first class we sat outside on the steps and talked about the last tournament i was in. He told me i did good and if i was doing the next one. My chinese was pretty basic at this point and i said basic words like 'Yes'. 'Next one i do same thing'. 'Will you compete'? Basic phrases like that. He understood me though which is good and i was glad. Over the weeks i got more fluent and could converse a little better.




We talked about sparring coming up and he asked if i was fighting. I told him no because i dont want to injure myself before the competition. But he should fight. He laughed and told me he is too small and fat but i said he would do well against the other Chinese boys in shaolin. That seemed to boost his spirits and he liked that idea. I wonder if master will let him fight. Then i started teaching him english phrases like hello, how are you? I am fine thank you. His pronunciation is very clear and was shocked when i asked him, "How are you." And he said, "i am fine, thank you. And you?" He learned fast! Now i am starting to teach him the days of the week and 'punch' and 'kick'. The last time we talked I asked if he watched the movie "Kung Fu Panda" and if he liked it. He loves that movie. I told him he is Kung Fu panda. He laughed so hard and told me that if he is "Kung Fu Panda" then i am "Kung Fu Dragon". I didnt mind. I even taught him a little 'handshake' we do when i see him in class. Sam my roommate pointed out that when we did drills on the punching bag Big Mac would mimic my punching sounds. I didnt realize it till after he pointed out. I have a little "mini me". So i taught him how to say "Awesome!". He says "Awesome-ah". Lot of Chinese say Ah after they say an english word...i do not know why. I'm working on that with him.

I always wanted a little brother. I guess i found my little Chinese kung fu brother.






NOW MY SISTER KC




August 4th

Tomorrow my sister, Kc, is coming from the United States to train with me here in China for a month. She has been in law school for the past four years and she just took the Bar, (the test to become a lawyer). She wanted to go on vacation after the bar to Hawaii or somewhere but i told her not to go to Hawaii but instead come visit me in China. here she can get in shape and we can go traveling. My horror stories of pain and beatings scared her a little but i told her she will be fine and I told her that i was exaggerating (....i wasn't). She wont read this blog until she gets here so i don't have to worry about her getting scared off and not showing up. 

Right about now she is getting ready to board her AirChina Air Bus and 16 hours later be in Beijing. Now she arrives in Yantai at midnight, the same time i first landed here. Remember how that experience went? I got in a random "taxi" with three other people, drove around for about an hour looking for a hotel, ring a bell? Well it was pretty scary. I couldn't imagine being a woman in that situation. I would be a little more paranoid. The Academy told her it is difficult for the translators to pick her up at that time because they would be tired for work the next day so i told the academy that i would go pick her up. I have been telling my friends that my sister is coming for weeks now and i am pretty excited to see her. I told them i'm picking her up tomorrow and since Mathieu needed to go into town tomorrow he will meet KC with me.  He said we should go get some McDonalds a bit early in the evening and then wait for my sister to arrive. I thought that was a great idea, plus i would have a friend to help with her luggage.

My sister will here for a month. She does yoga and crossfit back home. I told her she will do TaiChi in the mornings at 6am. She should join the Shaolin group because in a month she could learn a lot more in Shaolin rather than wingchun because the basics are a bit harder in WingChun and Mantis. And Qigong in the afternoons. 

I think she will do alright, she gets a bit lazy at times so i hope they put her in the shaolin group with Master Xiang or Master Wong. Master Xiang is known as the "Terminator" Shifu. Picture the Terminator...now picture him asian and thats Master Xiang. They way he walks and his face expressions are just like a robot's and he is as powerful as one. But when he laughs or smiles he looks like a Happy Buddha. Master Wong is a younger Shifu so he pushes his students a bit more and whips them is they are lazy. I'm sure Kc would not be as lazy in that class. When she gets here i will start waking up in the morning and doing tai Chi with her. Right now I pay more attention to my power training and forms in the morning and afternoon classes but once my tournament is over i will be more relaxed on forms and would like to do a class with my sister.

I am especially excited to see how she does on the Mountain run. I will be to blog and take pictures of her experience!


-Scott

MY FIRST TOURNAMENT IN CHINA

THE DAY BEFORE THE TOURNAMENT


The Fifth Traditional Wushu Tournament in Yantai was on the 24th of July. As you already know i have been practicing constantly everyday on my three forms i would compete in, BajiXiaoJia, Baji Staff, and Wingchun Simnumtao. The Day before the tournament I did some training with Clement. It was light and mainly focused on time. At night i did some more training with Jake and got an early night sleep because i planned on waking up at 5 in the morning and going to warm up with jake in the training hall. 

On the Day, the school ordered taxis to take us to the arena at 6am so we had to have breakfast at 5:40am in the dinning hall and be ready to leave by 6am. So Jake and i did some exercises around 5:10 and showered up and got ready for breakfast afterward. I guess it was nervous but i only had one hard boiled egg and a sip of some yogurt. 

The 16 competators got into the taxis and we headed out to Yantai with the Shifus in their own taxi. It took about 2 hours to get to the Arena. usually it takes an hour to get to Yantai but we went pretty far into yantai. When we arrived and went into the arena, we saw a lot of schools standing together in lines all single file. They were of course all chinese. Old chinese ladies, young chinese kids, old chinese men, all organized with matching outfits. 

Then there was our school. All foreigners, talking to each other, half of us were not even dressed yet, and all crowding behind Kathy, the headmasters wife, who translated for us. She knew the order of who is performing. I have no idea why we all had to stand in the middle of the arena next to the other schools but we were there for at least 20 minutes. During that time we found out one by one who did what first. The Tai Chi group went on first then the rest of us would go. It was not very clear but we were all too busy stretching or talking to each other trying to cool our nerves down. KAthy told me i had to do my three forms back to back...with no break! (I was not sparing against anyone. I was going to show my memorized 'forms'. One form was with a staff)  I was calm the whole time until then. I asked her how does that work, do i go out there do one form, stay out there and do the others. She had no idea and told me she will ask the other Masters. 

By now the judges where announcing each school. Well thats what we thought because each school would cheer together. When we heard Kunyushan we all Cheered then went back to our unorganized groups. Three of the Shifus from my school were performing with us as well, Master Rong, Master Sun, and Master Shao. 

There were about 300-400 other chinese competitors that were from 5 years old to 110 both guys and girls. I saw a few chinese competitors do some weapon forms and fist forms but i was focusing more on my forms and freaking out that i had to do all three back to back. 

The Tai Chi group were performing first. The judging was interesting. Two competitors would compete together. One guy would stand in a marked rectangle and the other would stand behind him in another marked rectangle and do their form. Sometimes the forms were the same and others where completely different. There where about 7 judges per section. There where only two sections going at once. 

This tournament was the smaller one out of the two Master Guo told us. The arena was not full, only about 500 people. Some students even came from our school went to watch and support us. 

Then once all the tai chi guys went and performed we moved sections and started lining up. Master Gou told us at school that he would try to make it to the tournament. When we changed sections Master Guo showed up with his family and Big Mac. I said 'hi' to Master and felt more confident. Clement and I were first to do our Bajixiaojia. I knew i would not look as nearly as good at Clement because he has been training for the past 3 years, but then again it also calmed my nerves being out there with him rather than being alone. 

When we got in line i asked Kathy again what do i do about my three forms. She told me the masters split our order up so we all had breaks in between. I was glad to hear that. When Clement and i were called out i heard them call me by my chinese name, Zi Long. When we saluted and walked to our positions i did not feel as nervous as i would when i graded at the academy. MAybe its because i do not know those people out in the stands watching and i care more about what my friends think of my form than them so i was not really nervous. 

After doing the first form i went to get a drink of water. By the time i finished taking a sip, Kathy was telling me that i'm out next. Get a break in between forms...chea right! 

I grabbed my Staff and ran to get back into line. By the time i got in front of the line, they called out my name again. I walked out with another friend, Sheridan who was doing his sword form, Before we both started a judge walked onto the mat and told Sheridan to get off. I saw him walking off and had no idea what was going on. I was not sure if i should stay out on the mat or what but when i looked around, the judges where looking at me like they were waiting. So i started my Staff form. (maybe they didn't want two foreigners with weapons swinging them around too close to each other?) 

I practiced my form hundreds of times but i still forgot a part when i was performing on stage. I did not do a '360 kick', aka 'Tornado Kick'. I did not stop but i realized, 'Uh Oh you did not kick!' So i just put it in at another spot in the form and it seemed to go well. When i finished i saw Master Guo and i said 'i forgot the kick, No good!'  He laughed and said "very good very good." Then after i got another drink KAthy called me again to get ready to do my WingChun. 

Now the all of the forms before my third form were all Mantis, Baji, and Shaolin. I did not see one WingChun form. Master told us all before we began to train for the competition that WingChun was not allowed in the Tournament. He said its 'not pretty' and the judges look for more acrobatic and artistic forms rather than a form like wingchun because it is all fighting moves. It does not look "pretty". I asked Master if i could try a Wingchun form and he said yes but i would not get a good score. Well i practiced and practiced to make the form look as sharp and powerful as i could. Right before i went out to do my third wingchun form all hand moves which i do not even move my feet at ALL, Master Sun from our school performed his amazing Spear form with flips and jumps all over the place. I felt a little stupid going out there stand still and doing hand movements only. 

Well, i went out there anyway. Did my form as good i could and didnt get my hopes up to get a good score. MAster Guo told me i did very good and that cheered me up. I at least made my Master proud. Once everyone finished their forms we all headed back to the academy. The Masters told us that we would find out our results tomorrow on Monday. 

The rest of that Sunday i was one of the many who wanted to know what our scores were. I could not sleep Sunday night. I woke up early monday morning hoping we would find out what our scores were. Then i remembered Master Guo did room inspections today. When he came around and saw the room i asked him if he knew my score. He smiled and told me i got two gold and one silver! I was so happy. I was hoping i would get at least one silver. But i got 2 gold and one silver i could not believe it! 

When he left i realized i didnt ask him what the silver was in. That drove me crazy all morning. At line up Master told us we can get our medals during second class. i wanted to know what i got gold in and the silver in! Finally Second class came around. Master had our certificates and medals on one arm. 

He had a translator present us our certificates while we got our medals. I was first and got a silver in Bajixiaojia. I knew clement would beat me so i did not mind. I got Gold in my Staff form and in Wingchun. I was so happy with that because Master told me my staff form needed a lot of work when i signed up to do that form. So i knew all the training and practicing my forms paid off for my gold medals. 

Clement and i both got two gold and one silver. Oran got one gold and one silver and Steffan got one gold in his Tai Chi form. Master was very happy that all of us got medals in our forms. The other classes did well too. Everyone got a medal. Silver was the lowest anyone got. The hard work is not over yet. Now i need to get a medal in the next competition so i can achieve a "Masters certificate". If i get two gold medals, one in each tournament, i can get a Master Ranking of level 4. If i get a silver i will be level 3. There are 9 levels total. some of the masters here are only level 5. My master is level 8, the highest out of all the masters here. Today the training did not stop. Even after class i did extra form training to get ready for the next tournament in only 2 weeks. Wish me LUCK!



-Scott

The story of Little Fat Chapter 1

July 20

Little Fat
So the Wingchun class has been growing bigger since its summer. A particular new student that joined us is named Houng Yuan, i think thats how it is spelled...well that's how you pronounce it. Master introduced him to us like this, "That little fat boy over there, thats Houng Yuan. He trained here for three years during summer." I started laughing because master was pretty rude calling him 'fat' in front of the whole class and master was laughing too. 

Houng Yuan is 12 years old Chinese boy. His english is not good but i communicate with him in Chinese. In class i would 'high five' him after he does the line drills or i would ask him, "Ni lei ma?" Which is 'are you tired' and he would laugh and say, "Hen Lei." very tired. He knows a lot of Wingchun forms. MASter would pair Zi Lu and me up with Houng Yuan sometimes because he knows our form we are on. I do not know if it was for him to practice like us or us to practice more like him. 

Last week was grading and Hong Yuan and I were grading the same form so we did a lot of practicing together and he is a cool little kid. I showed him some magic tricks that blew his mind. He was still trying to get me to tell him how i did it after class. Magic really confuses Chinese people, which makes it all more entertaining and enjoyable. Today i asked Houng Yuan if he had a English name. He told me 'no' so i asked if he wanted one and he really did. So i thought about it and next class i told him his new name is 'Mike'. I told the class and Mathiue called him 'Big Mike'. He seemed to like it. During power training i told Ash his name was Big Mike. He said it should be "Big Mac!". I laughed and told him nooo but i asked Mike is he liked Mike or Mac better and he liked Mac, plus he was able to say it better. So now his name is Big Mac. 

He is an adorable little kid. He always runs to where ever he is going. He runs to class, he runs to the bench after class to sit with his other Chinese friends, he always seems like he is on a mission. He calls me by my Chinese name 'Zi Long'. Master always beats him whenever he does one thing wrong. I have never seen Master seem so serious with anyone besides me and zi lu. Big Mac did not run enough the other day and master made him run up and down the hill until he said stop. Now i see why Chinese people are so good at martial arts.