Well again it's been quite some time since I blogged.

Back in Wudang again. And it`s very exciting. It`s been great to reconnect with some of our friends here. And it`s been especially great to spend some time with our master again. He`s just got a lot of charisma and is really full of inspiration.
Brandi and I just got internet in our room.. So my plan is to start blogging once a week. A friend here, David Wei (the one who wrote the article about the women of wudang) suggested that it would be a really cool idea if Brandi and I journalled weekly for our five years here. So people could follow our transformation. Although I`ve heard this before, I need to be reminded regularly. Playing on the computer is not my favourite pastime. Just add it to the routine.

So on to the training. It`s been way more intense so far than last time even. Arg. We get up at 530am for Qi Gong and Tai Qi. And even though I`m not really a morning person, this is my favourite part of the day. Probably because the rest of it feels like torture Our fist class is from 830 to around 11. We do our hour of basics and then just practice forms. The program hasn`t actually started yet so we`re just working on the stuff we learned before. Once the program starts the setup of our classes will be much more structured. We don`t have class again until 7 pm (because it`s ridiculously hot during the day). This class is usually the most brutal. Generally for basics we do kicks and then practice forms again. But the end of class for the last few nights we`ve been doing extra strength training on top of everything. We do like 50 burpees, or we do over 100 squats, low back stances, jumping training... etc. I can easily say I`ve never sweated so much in my life. Or been this sore.

I`ve been going through a lot of mental stress at ths point too. It`s very frustrating when it seems like you get less and less flexible, and more and more sore, and don`t really see an improvement. I`m sure after I get more conditioned this will be better, but at this point it`s very discouraging.

On a cooler note: the last couple days it`s been raining here. So we`ve been training inside. Last night we practiced tumbling and doing kipups(which was unsuccessful for me) and then today we practiced push hands. It`s been really fun. My backs pretty sore today but maybe this will give my legs a bit of time to recover. All in all, I`m really excited to start the program, and I`ve never been so scared.