12th Training Day....Black Dragon Pool!
Woke up this morning and went to run and do stuff at 520AM. We had three new students today. 3 Germans from Los Angeles, 1 guy and 2 girls. The oldest one, 42, said he just got his US Citizenship before he left for China. Awesome. I had to help instruct the new germans because there werent many of us. Just Bean Sifu, Ethan(little ABC), me, and Andy. And of course,they were screwing around. YiShin was walking around with Wong Sifu and with Andy's mom and friend.
During practice, Wong Sifu and I did his version of BaDua Jin. Much shorter than the one I learned.
After that, I grabbed some breakfast.
Morning practice was...sad. I started out ok. It was good, but already hot. Very hot today but with a great breeze, but not in the training hall. And after warmups my stomach started to hurt and I was getting really tired. About half way thru class, i had to cut out because it felt too bad. I think it must be all the fried food from last nite.
I went back to my room and use el bano and rested a bit, i felt much better. I got some laundry done as well.
Lunch i spent doing nothing special. just fooling around on the computer and resting up.
I bought some Xanda shorts because I had no clean shorts to wear for practice.
Afternoon practice was very different from what I expected. We did warmups and Josh, Dola, Rom and I convinced Happy and Andy Sifu to let us go to the Black Dragon Pools to practice gong fu in the mountains on the rocks. I so wanted to work out there.
After a tough jog down the street past Shaolin and the Pagoda forest because I was carrying my bag with cameras and stuff in it. We finally arrived to the rocky path which was a long walk thru the mountains to this ravine area. This Black Dragon pool is not a trouist attraction, so the paths are very dangerous and slippery. But the scenery was A+. When we got to some of the pools, I realized this is the place where monks take fotos of themselves in stances over pools of water and the ravine is quite sharp at areas so they prop themselves between the two walls sometimes. It was really kool and I got tons of pictures.
I found out that it would be impossible to train around here. There are no wide places where you could practice forms. The paths were smooth and steep and dangerous and wet sometimes.
So, the training was pretty much walking up the mountian to get there and then the swimming. Oh my God, it felt so good. It was great. We would scale up the walls and try and jump from the highest and safest point.
Swimming with Chinese people is interesting. They strip down to their birthday suit and just swim around with each other. I swear, they are completely comfortable with swimming around and wrestling with other guys when they are completely naked. I got some pictures. It was hilarious. I couldn't stop laughing. It was just wierd seeing Happy Sifu standing on the top of the rock with his junk on display while he was thinking about where to jump and while he was thinking he was flicking his junk. Its just sooooo funny. Josh, Rom, and I kept our shorts on, but I was contemplating it. Dola had disappeared. He was off walking somewhere.
The water was cold, but it was quite refreshing. And it was so much fun. The view was glorious. As we were swimming, Happy Sifu was splashing and shouting and playing in the water. Quite funny. He was right next to me and I turned to look at him right as he turned upside down in the water and had his ass sticking in the air 5 inches from my face and I shrieked out, "Dirty Starfish, Dirty Starfish!!!!!"
Josh almost fell off the rock laughing.
We then took off and walked back to Tagou. It was a nice walk and I got lots of pictures too on the way.
I got back to the room about 650pm and hauled ass to grab the last bus to Dengfeng for 2RMB because I needed to take my fotos for processing so I can use my camera cards in Luoyang on sunday.
I got into Dengfeng and met the same camera lady and she knew what to do. I grabbed a taxi back to Shaolin. It was nice.
Then I came to the computer room where I typed this thingy up and afterwards, I went back to my room where I took a nice hot needed shower after swimming in the mountain water. I chilled and went to bed. Goodnite.