This week has definitely been the easiest so far! We had monday and tuesday off as bank holidays and Thursday was my birthday, so I took that off to 'celebrate' (only 1/2 a day training on thursdays anyway). Friday was spent attending a buddhist ceremony at the local temple and then playing basketball in the glorious sun. That just left Wednesday to do training!!! On thursday I headed into Si Ping with Matt and Triss (guy from nottingham) and after a bit o...

3rd week down and 7 to go! We are no longer learning the sword (Matt never wanted to in the 1st place so when he found out that we would need to do it for at least another few weeks before moving on he was not happy!) and have now set about mastering the goon (long pointy stick). Lots of fun, lots of lumps on my head and lots of close calls with my gonads... Che, the absentee manager of the acadmey, told us on Friday morning that on the Sunday morning, ...

Well the 2nd week of training is already at an end! Since Monday, my Sifu has been teaching me a Dao sword form and the "sword flower" (a pretty way of swinging the sword around). I have also been tarting around with the goon staff. It has been BL**DY hot for the last couple of days which can only only be a good thing! On a slightly less positive note, I have lost all of my hair. The story goes something a little like this; I bought some clippers in Si ...

After only 3 days of training here, I seriously cannot believe how much I have learnt! (Mostly about the true meaning of pain!...) On Monday morning we did a 2km warm up run before some fairly dynamic stretches. All at 5:30 in the morning! After a fairly hearty breakfast (the fairly crappy food here hasn\'t got to me yet!) we then commenced our first training session in our groups. I am in the traditional shaolin forms group, the others being wu shu (acrob...

I have just arrived in the Academy, but efore I say anything about that, I may as well fill you in about what I have been getting up to since I left the UK on Wednesday. The last 3 days have been spent living it up in Beijing. We arrived on Thursday morning and made our way over to our hotel (watching our 1st taxi driver being arrested and our 2nd one ripping us off in the process). We proceeded to unpack a little, had a quick nap because I got bugg@r all sleep...