Down to the last 3 weeks already! How time flies.... Successfully finished my first week in Sand Da but not without plenty of sweat and pain! Much more demanding physically than the traditional training that I was doing so it feels like Im back to square one but hopefully not for too long. Wrist is slowly getting better after I hurt it playing one of those arcade games where you have to see how hard you can punch the machine (pathetic story I know). Also...

Aplologies for the lack of updates recently. There was a total collapse of the internet connection here after a MAMMOTH electrical storm on thurs/ fri night and it has only just been fixed. In the Sand Da group with a mental Sifu now! some proper plonkers in my group (and some decent ppl too) so plenty of laughs mixed in with the constant shouts of "harder", "faster" "lower" and "fifty press ups!". I'll update more fully soon, but meditation beckons...

Half way through my stay at the academy now!~ Still doing the goon form but going to start doing some Sand Da (shaolin kick boxing) at some point over the next few weeks. Had a 'test' on Wednesday and had to perform my first form to the rest of the academy. Went fine, but some of the "older brothers" as they call them here did some amazing forms, got some on video. Wednesday night was also an interesting 1, just as I went to bed I noticed a commoti...

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, ...