My Wushu Blog

I had a pretty long night, Pierre was sick and Peter is out of town so Patti asked if I could be there by 5:30 to help get the carpets ready and help out with the beginners class. Thankfully Lynda was there, so really, I just participated in the class like a regular student :) After some running, dodge ball (with really light foam balls, first time no one got hurt), then a good round of wushu tag everyone had sufficiently warmed up and went on to stretching.

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Most people went to the Crucible’s second showing tonight, so Patti had asked if Jane and I could take care of the beginners class. Pierre and I got there the same time and he helped me roll out the carpets, James dropped by for a few minutes. He gave us a quick run down of the show and said the fight set Wushu West does is incredible. James is also leaving for Thailand for 2 months, so I hope he comes back in one piece.

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Wow Alright, I’ll divulge a bit more information. The class first started off with a good pep talk from Wu Bin, he said he would like to see the US place in the top 3 :) ( because we know who #1 is ). Otherwise, Cao Yue led a almost identical warm up that he did on Sunday. He had us stretch for a while, then made us hold the center splits while he came around to everyone and pushed them a little more.

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[ Romeo and Juliet a Fire Ballet ](http://www.thecrucible.org/ballet/) I was a lot more entertained than I expected to be. I went there to see the Wushu West folks and the flavor group, but I enjoyed almost everything else. Especially the chandlers girls, when I wasn’t so interested in the Romeo and Juliet specific scenes, I could just look up at them. They moved so slow and fluid it was hard to notice when they changed positions.

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When Patti asked me to come early on Tuesday, I figured it was because she was going to be gone and needed help with the younger students. So when I got there, Pierre and I helped with the carpets, changed and then started to warm up with the kids. Peter is back so he took over, and that was nice. Then, Patti came with Cary… and Johnny showed up right after them… and then I realized “oh, tonight is a regular class”.

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Went back for another “Self Defense” class with Ron Dong, so I came around 12:00 to warm up. I got in a few jump ropes when Patti had asked me to help out one of the newer students (and I can never remember her name) with her staff basics. Its actually hard for me to explain how to do something, and according to others, its not just wushu :) I have a hard time saying what I mean with just about everything, from computers to wushu.

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The Beijing Wushu Team are getting ready for a small performance, so we all stayed to watch. I wasn’t sure if taking photo’s was allowed, but then I noticed Patti was recording it. The only problem with this demo is that our classes have been moved from 9am ( which I originally thought was unbearable ) to 8am ( which literally is hell ). So it’s an early bedtime for all of us.

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It has been a very nice weekend to recover, plus the Beijing Team is back from their competition so Wu Di has been attached to Mark’s hip. Its pretty funny to watch those two. So besides lots of resting up, we’ve gone to a few nice places to eat, went to a VERY large electronic’s “store” The Fry’s of Beijing Which resembles a large computer show in the US, except all day every day and the store is 5 stories high.

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Not much happend yesterday (minus the very extreme training), but tonight we went out to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe, Shahuab cannot take a normal picture nothing else besides that, so check here for more: http://m87-blackhole.org/photos/China+Trip+06/page/3/

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The internet connection here has been down for the last full day, but not much besides training anyways. It was kind of odd to first walk in the main wushu hall, it felt like I was walking onto a movie set. I’ve watched countless wushu clips of the Beijing team in that same location. Practice was good, we do one morning class (9am - 11:30) everyday, then we alternate an evening (7:30pm - 9 ) and afternoon ( 2:30pm - 5:30 ) every other day.

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