Beijing – Day 13/14: Training and New Arrivals

This blog entry is being written for Wushu West’s website, wushuwest.com. However, since I’m the one writing it, I thought it might be of interest to other folks too. If you would like to learn more, please visit the Wushu West website.

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Sorry for the lack of updates over the last 2 days. Not that much have happened to warrant a single entry for each day, but now two days have passed. And since I’m waiting for the guest blog entries on the F0rbidd3n City and The Gr3at Wa11 (Pierre and Ashley? Hellooooo?) I’ll fill some time sharing what we’ve been up to the last two days.

Monday morning was practice. 9:00 AM in the Wushu Hall. Actually all practices this week are at 9:00 and 3:30 in the upstairs wushu hall, so at least it is consistent. Everyone was working hard, and down on the far carpet was Liu Qing Hua’s group. Since it was just the two of us, we got to be on the blue carpet. Yay! For myself, I primarily focused on the first section of my nangun (Southern Staff) form. I’m working on making a new one this week so each day I’m creating a new section.

After class was lunch and then I spent some time in the afternoon working in my room. The afternoon class came and went as well, and I spent that time working on more nangun.

Lauren eating fries

Shahaub and Jennifer

Myles

I’m not sure what everyone did in the evening, but I spent the whole time working on my computer, so this is why I didn’t end up writing much in the blog.

Tuesday was another morning training (of course). Unfortunately Myles hurt his ankle so had to sit out the rest of the day. Jennifer said she tweaked her ankle as well. Hopefully they’ll both be back in full form soon.

After the morning practice I spent 20 minutes or so working on my nangun form after everyone left. However, Liu Qi and Zhang Ye Xin were still there so I talked to them for a while and had them record a video so they could greet everyone in America.

Liu Qi

Liu Qi and Zhang Ye Xin

In the afternoon I went to the airport with Lauren to pick up her mom, Susan and younger brother, Travis. Once again we were blessed by the airport gods and they came out of the terminal just as we walked up to the door.

Lauren and Travis

Susan and Lauren

Hugging

Travis and Lauren

We got back to Shi Cha Hai just in time to go watch most of the training. Lauren quickly changed and I spent some time either talking with Susan and Travis, helping Wu Di with some conditioning, or working on my nangun. It was Tiger’s last time teaching us, as he would be leaving the next day for a competition in ZhengZhou, Henan. Actually, we will see him there since he will still be in town when we go to check out the Shaolin Temple. We grabbed a group photo for posterity.

Goodbye to Tiger

After class I was asked to go to a Japanese restaurant with Wu Di, who had also invited Shahaub, Patti, Cary and Jennifer. It happened to be the same restaurant I ate at last November, also with Wu Di. We had a good amount of food and naturally I took some photos:

attempting the persian finger snap

After that Patti and Cary went back to Shi Cha Hai, and the rest of us walked down the street to digest our food. We also grabbed a quick cone at McDonald’s before catching a cab back to the school.

Tomorrow we have two different coaches training us. I’ll be sure to snap a few photos and post them up.

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