I've now survived over 2 weeks of martial arts training.
Internet is pretty unreliable so it has been hard to update this blog but I have got here eventually.
My flight here was a disaster. I had very short times to switch flights. My first flight was delayed so I only made it onto my flight in Frankfurt by sprinting to the other terminal. I was with a nice Italian girl all the way Beijing though which made a difference. My flight to Beijing turned up late aswell so I missed my flight to Nanchang and my luggage was still in Frankfurt. I ended up waiting for my luggage to arrive and eventually managed to persuade the Air China to change my flight to Wuyishan so I could still get picked up. Their English was very limited and it was very stressful, especially as I hadn't slept in a long time.
I was very relieved when I finally got to Wuyishan and got in the minibus with 6 other people. The place was incredibly cramped with a crazy driver playing chinese music, chain smoking, spitting lol. We had no seatbelts and one guy had to sit on a bucket but I've found out since then that all the driving here is very dodgy so nothing unusual there.
When we arrived a few hours later at 1am at the school I got showed straight to my room. I just had a shower, and a nice experience with a taratula in there and went to sleep. I met my room mate the next day, Harriet from Manchetser who was very nice but has left now this weekend.
I ended up doing Tai Chi which I am very happy about. I have learnt 7 out of 14 forms and hope to move on to Shingyi and more powerful punching version of Internal Martial arts for my second month. A Scotish guy stephen started the same time as me so we learn everything to same time which is good. First few days were so hard and I felt pretty sick but I have really got into ti now. Its very hard being vegetarian here, but I get a lot of rice and veg which is quite ok I guess.
Everyone here is really nice, mainly British like I thought, but there is also Swrish, German, French and a few Americans. We got out a lot at the weekend which is good as its a nice relief from all the training! We went to a barbeque, a karaoke bar and a club last weekend and this weekend just gone we went out for a meal. We go out for meals a couple fo days a week here as its only about £2.50 each time and its much nicer than the rice we get everyday.
There is a local village here which we run to everyday and go to get essentials in the evening too. Then a 40 min bus ride away is a bigger town, we stayed the night in a hotel there last weekend. There are quite a lot of shops and its a reasonable size. Its actually really pretty too so I will have to take more pictures of that.
The hardest part of the day is the morning circuit which is always so hard. Usually involving loads or pressups and situp or bear-crawls. One day we did a run to a load of bircks, had to run back with 2 then do lots of exercises with them. Getting up early isn't actually that bad anymore. On week days we all go to sleep pretty much at 8pm so we get enough sleep. I got bitten alive a couple of night ago, no joke, it was soo hell and I got over a hundred bits on my legs and feet. Agony. The locals couldn't stop laughin when I went to the village lol. But I've been using a load of afterbite and they are already a lot smaller and hurt a lot less.
We've done the bleep test 3 times and first time I got 7.2. A week later I got 9.2. A new girl's record so was very chuffed but this morning I went back down to 8.1. Hopefully I can get back up to my scord next week. I still have no upperbody strength but we do a lot of standing meditation in Tai Chi which is building up arm and leg muscle I hope. Tai Chi is turning out great for self-defence as all the moves when used fast are entirely self-defence based and teach you how to get someones hands off you or push someone away etc. which is exactly what I wanted to learn. It can be very mentally draining but the group is great. Everyone is quite mellow and we have a lot of laughs, no-one is competative because the whole idea of Tai Chi is to become mentally strong aswell as physically and have lots of 'Chi' (positive enrgy) so it seems to attract a good bunch of people.
I'm sure I could go into more detail here but I think I will leave it this for now and try to update again next week with more detail before this post gets ridiculously long.
To sum up, I am loving this place and the people, it is amazing being here in China, my first time out of Europe and this is just the kind of challenge I wanted. What a great way to end my gap year. This might just have got me hooked on travelling forever :D
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