And Then I Almost Killed Lianna (that title is completely literal!)

(Mark)

Today we woke up and got down to our second kung fu class by nine. The dojo that we practiced in was pretty nice, it’s spacious and the floor is completely padded, which was especially useful for today. There’s a rack of weapons on one wall, ranging from cheap training swords to pretty nice looking halberds and spears. Also some spiked maces and weird chain weapons, which I didn’t expect to see here. One corner is filled with a bunch of sparring gear, as well as a large punching bag that I totally almost broke my foot on. The opposite corner has kicking pads and a bunch of weight lifting stuff. It’s pretty cool.

Warm-ups included jogging, suicides, grapevines, the usual. And then some weird kicking things, jumps, the unusual. After about an hour and a half of warm-ups and calisthenics, we took a ten minute break, which is when I tried out the punching bag. After that, he tried to teach us how to do a flip. A lot for a beginner, right? Basically the idea is that if you can do a small cartwheel really quickly, then it should be pretty easy to just take your hands out of the picture (small meaning your feet land pretty close to the starting point). For me and Alex, this sounded like a lot of fun. Allison and Lianna, however, who have apparently never done a cartwheel in their lives, were not as excited. We worked on this for about an hour, at the end of which I was able to do a quick, small, one-handed cartwheel about once in ten tries. I will certainly keep practicing though… doing a flip would be awesome. We then spent the rest of the time going over the series we learned yesterday, perfecting it and speeding it up. 

I don’t know if Allison talked about the little girl in the dojo, so I will. Basically, there’s a six-year old girl who’s constantly in the dojo; we’re not sure if she’s a student or if one of the instructors or staff or somebody is her father, but in her Shaolin jacket, she is the CUTEST thing ever. I bring her up because we noticed while going through our series, she was off to the side of the room learning the same thing. She was much better at some parts, probably because she still has the flexibility that comes with youth. Also she’s small enough that she didn’t have to bend down very far to be close to the floor.

After the first class, we headed to lunch in the “hotel” dining hall. It actually was quite good, despite some of the warnings we’d gotten from George. Unless we puke our guts out again in a few hours, knock on wood. After lunch, we basically just lay in bed for an hour, as we were too sore to do anything else. When we returned to the dojo for our third and final class, we were one down, as Allison opted out of it. This class started a little more easily than the previous ones—no running, just stretching and a few calisthenics and such. Then we did a bunch of random/weird things, including front rolls, back rolls, and the move where you start lying on your bag, flail your legs and push yourself up and end up on your feet. The only problem with most of this stuff? I couldn’t do it because my legs don’t bend. For this reason, Shaolin overall was kind of a bust for me. For those of you who don’t know, my legs were congenitally dislocated, and I now can’t bend them all the way. Chinese kung fu is heavily based on your leg bending—for one thing, all of the stances he showed us involved bending at least one leg. I thus couldn’t fully do most of the stretches and moves he showed us, but I just did my own version, and was able to complete the series anyway. It was still great to be here and to see everything, and to partially experience lessons, but it would have been much better if I could do it.

After the break, we did a very small amount of pad work, including some punches and kicks, but I think only because the instructor saw us playing around with the pad. Then class started for real, and all hell broke loose. It consisted mostly of strength training stuff (not with weights, thank Buddha). It was stuff like repeatedly jumping over a bench, doing a lap around the room carrying a partner, and doing a lot of push ups and curl ups as FAST AS WE COULD. It was incredibly tiring, though I realized that everything we did would have been EASY back when I was rock-climbing. Guess you were right parents, I need to work out more. When we finished, Alex said that he felt more sore than he did at any point during his three months of uber football training or something, back in freshman year when he was even less fit than he is now. 

After class, we headed out to the Shaolin sword factory. With four decorative swords, and a bunch of other Shaolin memorabilia in hand (including the red jackets that all 28,000 students have!), we headed out to dinner, which was nothing special. Obviously the swords didn’t come to dinner with us, thank you Lianna. Afterwards, we came back to the hotel to relax and repack our bags. We have another flight tomorrow, because the silly government stole our train tickets (according to Richard).

And then I almost killed Lianna.

Basically she was just drinking water, and apparently I made her laugh. It took me a few seconds to realize she was doing MORE than laughing—specifically, wheezing and spitting up water. When she was suddenly unable to make any noise at all, I figured it was time to run for help. By the time we got to Allison’s room, however, she was wheezing again, and from there she just got better. In retrospect, she probably wasn’t really in that much danger, it was just terrifying in the moment. And Alex was on the toilet the whole time, which just adds a little humor. His version of the story is much better. DeBors, don’t worry (and anyone else, I guess), she’s COMPLETELY fine now. So now I’m lying in bed writing this. I should probably go to bed, seeing as how we have to wake up at 5 AM tomorrow. EW.

P.S. I forgot to mention that I had a lot of coke and fries at dinner, to make up for the fact that I’ve lost about 12 pounds on this trip. Steve, I bet I’m lighter than you now!