Day 3 of Training and what a great day it was.
I woke up at about 445AM to get ready for the early morning practice at 5am. I dont think I fell asleep until about 1230AM because of my roomate and his paranoia of dying because he had a little wine.
Morning practice was tough. Running around some of the sight seeing area and practicing some things outside...with such a wonderful view. It was hard, but it was awesome all at the same time. As other groups of chinese were running by, i would catch some stares.
After that, I grabbed some breakfast and a shower. Then I had mid-morning practice at 8am where we worked on stretching out and kicks and junk and weapons practice. It was really kool seeing everyone working on their own things. You got a couple guys working on chain whip, another on saber, another on taiji sword, a couple on staff, etc. Really neat.
These teachers are terrific. They have bridged the gap with the students and everyone is treated like a friend. Its a really nice thing to see. The teacher that I worked with in the morning was not who i worked with in the afternoon. The teacher taht I worked with in the morning, his name is Sifu Wong. But, he always says, "WRONG!" when a student doesn't get something right for the 30th time. So some of the people call him Sifu/Master Wrong. Just little playful stuff like that that makes this place seem so much better. That and the view and the practice.
My teacher showed me WuBu Quan which is 5-stance fist. Its pretty much like Chang Quan 1 that Guo Sifu taught me. Except there are slight variations and sometimes I would throw the wrong thing in there. Also, during some acrobatic stuff, I popped a vein in my right hand, right in the crease between your thumb and fore-finger.
There is another student named Phil here too. He's from New York City.
All the other students seem nice as well.
As mid-morning class was ending and we were showing our teacher our progress, our teacher's girlfriend showed up and was asking us foreigners if anyone could sing. I was like, yeah, and she wanted me to come sing for them. Basically it was an audition for a bigger talent performance later that night. It took me about 20 minutes just to figure out what was going on. The other Phil came just to watch, but left before i sang my tune. On our way to the singing room at the top of the stairs, teacher's girlfriend kept buggin him as he was talking to us about what was going on and he just reeled on her, his eyes squinted, it looked like his face changed color, and his ears grew, he said something very sharp, and she had this look of fear come across her face and she backed away and stood against the wall in a sullen mood. It was freaky. Both Phil and I were like...what the heck just happened?
We got to the small room. Only about 30 kids in there and they were waiting for me to sing a song. They were like, here's a guitar. It was a classical guitar whose strings were completely destroyed. I was like, you said you had Karaoke for me. So they searched for music that had english songs on it. I knew it was gonna be 1 of 3 they would definitely find..Auld Lang Syn, My Heart Will Go On, Right Here Waiting for You. Sure enuff, it was. I chose Right Here becuase I only really know the words of the chorus to that.
It was some chinese musician sing it live and trying to be all into it. I dont know why the chinese love this song so much. Its so lame. But it is a ballad and chinese people don't like listening to pop music that isn't lame. Getting them to set up the microphone or find the song was funny too because they kept turning it off right when it was about to start for me singing.
I totally tore the place up like a high school kegger, yo. I worked the crowd really well. I started singing straight to this one woman who got all embarassed. It was awesome. All the little kids wanted to slap my hands and touch me. It was funny. Very enjoyable. The kids alos loved it too when I started singing to one of the older boy students. He was trying to get away from me but I cornered him. Good times. My teacher couldn't hide his joy. They all thanked me and I headed to lunch.
Food was good. I sat down and just looked out onto the mountain and the throngs of tourists walking down the street. Then I did some journal writing and went into that little tourist center for Shaolin Si and looked to see if I could find anyplace that puts fotos onto a CD from a memory card. Nope. Looks as though I may need to do it in Dengfeng. Bummer yo. I saw Xiaohui again and pestered her for the 2nd time about fixing the AC. Apparently, this school doesn't really fix things when they are told about it. Frustrating, but I found, thru time with BOND, if you get on their ass everyday, thats the only way to get anything done. Another thing I found out was that hot shower water is only given from 7pm - 11pm or something like that. Thats more than what the common chinese folk that attend the school who live in rooms filled with about 8kids. I see them washing themselves outside their rooms with the water bins. But, I am also paying much more than they are paying as well. So, those issues should be taken care of.
I got ready for practice at 3pm. I found out when I got to pracitce that the school was putting on a big talent performance around 8pm tonite and they chose me to sing a song. I was like, I will only do it if you get the office to fix the AC. THat didn't work. So I chose a song from a couple disks they had their room. I decided on Pretty Woman. It was the one I knew the most by heart, but I wanted to write out the words just to be safe. So I did that then I started practice. Practice was really good. I learned some new staff work and practiced some of the forms and worked more on kicks and stretching as well. Fun stuff. They are really pushing me to the limits here. Which is good and what I wanted. I learned some flashy rockstar stuff.
After practice was done, I got some dinner. A dog came by and looked super hungry so I gave him my chicken bone and tried to give hime some bread, but he wouldnt have the bread. After that, I showered and got ready for my singing performance.
There were about 25 acts and I was number 15. THe thing started at 730pm. Mostly it was singing acts and every once in a while a dancing group or a little skit. There was one skit right after i got done that made me laugh my butt off. Not because the skit was funny, but because a little 8 year old boy was dressed up like a hip 20-something triad member holding a burning cigarette. It ruled. By the time I turned on my camera he had gotten rid of it. Phooey.
So I was walking around and practicing my words before I got on stage.
Then the time came and the announcer, the girlfriend of my teacher, was like...."chinese chinese chinese PHIL chinese chines chinese Pretty Woman" then as I walked on stage, the entire crowd...well over 1000 kids started cheering. Really loud. It was awesome. I was like, I didnt even do anything. So I spoke to the crowd breifly and then sang the songs. THe kids loved it. They were cheering and shrieking like it was Beatle-mania. During the first major change in the song, when Roy sings, "PW Stop a while..PW Talk a while..PW Give your smile to me" i hopped down and started to work the crowd. I sang to individual adults which embarrassed the crap out of them but also drew the best laughs and cheers. I also walked thru the kids as I sang and they were going nuts. They were touching me and holding out their hands and I was shaking them. It was like being a rockstar at your own concert and going out and touching hands. I can understand why musicians love it...it soo much fun. It was really goofy too. I started to get lost from the music so I ran back on stage nad sang the finally notes, but I was off by 1 measure. So it looked pretty funny when I did it twice. The crowd was cheering. Totally sweet. Afterwords, I got offstage and teacher was bouncing around like..He's my student! A couple italian guys that are just staying the night, I met this afternoon, they came over and chatted with me. Francesco and Enrico and another guy from Portugal that they had met just today as well. They are some pretty cool fellas.
I was like, ok...now, time for a hot shower and sleep. Then teacher said his girlfriend will sing soon so i must video tape it. I was like kool. As she was about to start, teacher gave me, Josh (another laowei), and a French born chinese guy Jean Luc (thats right!) some flowers to give her all at once. So we triangulated, equilaterally, on her singing, basically i came from stage right, Josh from stage left and Jean Luc from back stage. It was quite humorous. Master Wrong was doing the video work with my camera...he is also the guy that did the camera work when I sang.
Her performance was pretty good.
After her's was done, I was like..time for bed. I went back, took a hot shower and fell asleep.
Man, today was awesome. It was such a great day. I am so happy i dropped that other school and came here. The location, the teachers, the activites, oh, its great. I just hope it stays this good while I am here.
Ok, im outtie.