20th Day of Training...Dengfeng Shopping Again.
Woke up again to rain. However, today, the rain lasted most of the day. It stopped around lunch time but picked up again during afternoon practice.
Morning practice was good. I worked all on Zui Quan. Happy Sifu was being really pedantic about the stances and had me doing a few moves over and over again. Which is good. Helping me to get the movements right. There are lots of little things in each movement that you need to look at. Its fun to do but when you keep doing the same things over again, u start to get tired, especially when it some of the most physically intense movements.
Also during practice I practice some butterfly kicks. I got those good, but there is also another way to do the kick. When you go to the butterfly kick, you don’t spread your body out, you just spin as you jump and you spin sideways and either land on your feet or you do a break fall. I got the break fall one down sorta because its easier. And I can barely land on my feet. Its really tuff. I need to jump higher apparently.
Morning practice was good and during lunch time, I was planning to go to Dengfeng to get some of those shoes and get my pictures, but during lunch I popped in “Hitler: The Rise of Evil”, the biopic where Hitler was played by that psycho from Trainspotting, Robert Carlysle. It was good, but a little quick with his childhood and junk. Just creepy to see how he achieved everything and how many people just allowed it to happen. Its freaky.
Then optional afternoon practice was at 3pm. We had just finished stretching and warming up when the Sifus boss, Mr. Lu showed up. It was really sad to see how the teachers acted when he came in. He strutted in, smoking a cigarette, and issueing orders and our teachers lost their personalities and became obedient dogs to an asshole. Just the stories I hear of this guy, I don’t like him, and seeing him just put a face on it. We had to fix up the carpet because it needed to be pulled away from the wall when it started raining because the Chinese don’t seem to have overhangs on their buildings and rain comes in thru the windows. So we needed to place the crash pads underneath the carpet and then pull the carpet back over it. That kicked up lots of dust and dirt.
Then once that was complete, the women’s Xanda team took over the training hall and our practice was cancelled. Well, I thought they were women at first, but then I took another look and thought they were men, then I looked again and they were women. I shuddered. These were some of the butchest Chinese women I have ever seen. Almost all of them were bigger than me. And hell, I have bigger boobs than them. It was freaky. It was all I could do from staring. If you want something relative back home, think of the women’s rugby teams. Yikes. I swear, about 80% looked like men, the only ones that didn’t had girl haircuts. Wow.
After that, since I had time on my hands, I headed down to Dengfeng. I picked up my pictures and I bought the fancy meteor hammer, 3 pairs of shoes, and those wrist gauntlets. Searching for the equipment was tuff because I forgot which store was which. I ended up buying the hammer and the shoes from that expensive place. They wanted 55RMB for the hammer and I laffed. I got them down to half and they forgot that I bought the other one for 15RMB. So I asked. They tried to sell me the steel one for 40RMB. I was like, “Dude, yesterday I got this thing for 15RMB and you are trying to sell me the brass one for 55RMB? Don’t insult me.” I had found other shops with the shoes, but not the right size. These shoes are a bit tighter than the others so I had to get size 44, the biggest they carry. They wanted 50RMB for each pair, and after they had brought 3 pairs, I was like, wtf, they are 35. They were like, no, 50, so I started to leave and they were like, OK OK OK!
Dicks.
After that I caught the last bus back to Shaolin. In the evening, it was Dola’s birthday so he wanted to watch Ace Ventura 2. Not again. So we watched that. I went back to my place then crashed and slept really well. Goodnite.