Thur 11th Aug - Shaolin students in the mist

We woke up to a fine rain and mist sitting low on the ground. Theo would not get out of bed, this little warrior was already spent..I fetched him breakfast and made it just in time for 8.30 class. We were fulling expecting to be dismissed because of the rain and we train al fresco. No such luck, our Zhang shifu is the youngest and toughest of the masters. He made us run in the rain and then warm up in the patio in front of the main building. He then marched us outside the walls of the compound under a large aluminium canopy where we did body conditioning. This means different thing in Shaolin parlance - it involves getting punched and kicked repeatedly in different parts of your body to toughen them up to withstand pain. After 1hr of literally getting beaten to joyful shouts of shifu: Harder, No pain, no gain!we were allowed to hoble back to our digs. The rain continued so I thought we were going to be left to relax as promised by shifu. I was caught on my way to wash our dirty clothes, so was the newest arrival, Rob. The rest did not bother showing up. So we were the only lucky ones to receive a private lesson and theory of Chiqong by our shifu in the mid section of the lake. This was almost mystical. Chiqong engages the power of Chi with breathing and helps in mental and physical healing. As were going through the first 2 out of 8 basic formations watching the gentle rain on the green lake with the lilies something amazing happened! My brain for the first time totally emptied, and my aching limps relaxed. Afterwards I was so relaxed I almost flopped on the floor to sleep. At 3pm the rain had stopped. After the warming up ritual we were ushered in the very hot gym to do abs on the most disgusting smelly damp mattresses. No ordinary abs session, we were made to do 100 of each front, back, sides, hand stands and feet up on the wall with endless push ups. We were then taken in the forest behind the school and given more of everything we hated. A new record was listing another person on your shoulders and doing 15 squats. I sat on Theo's shoulder who almost and embarrassingly for both of us collapsed. He somehow squeezed the squats and collapsed afterwards. I amazed myself - lifted Eze a stocky girl about 60klg and did 16 squats! We literally crawled back to our hovel and collapsed. Strangely 30min later I was fine and in facy feeling energised and strong..Yippee!
The headmaster summoned all 7 traveling to the Shaolin temple tomorrow to let us know he called his younger brother who is a senior monk at the temple to arrange for monks to pick us up at the bus station on Sat morning and give us the VIP treatment and tour! That's very exciting cannot wait! Just when I thought could not finish on a better note, for dinner we were treated to variety of yummy dumplings along with other dishes. Theo was so happy he ate 3 plates of fried rice and one big plate of dumplings and forgot about his aches and pains..