I was up at 5am and ready by 5.30am. Theodore struggled a bit but eventually hje was up too. The field in front of the main building was filling up with students doing their warming up moves. There's few that have been here for 2yrs like Joe the young French boy with the cheeky smile and bad mullet, courtesy of Qufu coiffures; Pete, he's been around for 1.5yrs, couple of other french guys also almost 2 yrs. The students are all in their 20s (same as my mental age), with only exceptions Federico - the colombian oil engineer, who is on 3m sabbatical from his job in Alaska and a weird, small old guy with the broadest N.Jersey accent like someone straight out of the sopranos. When the 5 shifus arrive with 2 translators we all formally line up facing them and headmaster Wei tels up about the program and dishes out penaltiees to the tresspassers of the weekend. One young Brit, Derek, got so drunk that he does not remember how he eended up in hospital with bad cuts on his hand and back and several of his things missing. Somehow he made it back to the school at 2am Sat. Other that missed the 10pm curfew were listed. They had to clean all the common areas inside and outside the scholl for a number of weeks according to the severity of their failing. I think Derek will be cleaning for the rest of the year! Then we we the new students we were asked to formally introduce ourselves. The warm up for Tai chi involves a lot of difficult stretching. We were assigned to Jao shifu who is the nicest in my view and also speaks some english. We learnt the basic steps and were made to repeat everything many times. We broke up at 7am for breakfast - soya milk with Nescafe Gold and chopped up banana never tasted better!
We resumed at 8.30 for Shaolin Basics. Before each class we have to run twice around the lake (1Klm) and then warm up with thorough sretching of each part of our bodies. That alone is exercise enough, but in humid heat like today's it was a struggle. The warming up lasts 45min and then another 45 min of basic steps and movement of shaolin kung fu. We then had less than 30min break, enough to rush to our cabin, cool down by the aircon, eat some nuts and take lots of vitamin C in our water before 10.30am we were gathered again for.Shaolin formations class. Again run 1klm in what is now 30c heat, warm up and 30min of yet more Shaolin Kung fu movements. By 11.40am Theo and I were drenched in sweat and red as lobsters. We rushed to take a shower and wash our sweaty clothes - all in less than 30min because lunchtime at 12, everybody was so hungry they did not even wait for the bell to ring. We did and could not find soace around the tables and most of the meat was gone. We then had a nice long rest until 3pm Sheda - Chinese kickboxing. You know the drill by now, run 1klm in 32c heat and what felt 90% humidity, warm up exercises and then basic steps an moves of Sheda in tthe gym which was like a furnace. At 4.30pm when we finished Jao shifu made us do again 40 push-ups (20 for me) and endless squats. We were both so sweaty and exhausted we could hardly walk to the showers again - but we did and it felt great despite the trickle of water that comes out - it takes me ages to rinse my hair. Dinner was earned and devoured by all.
I then had calligraphy lesson *t m30-8.30 with Federico and a duch-arab girl called Taz. I impressed the tutor when I drew the ideagram for horse and recognised couple of his - the one for wood and forest.
Very full and fulfilling Day - I looked at the markets before I went to sleep and frankly I could not care much!
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