Week 26 (28 June - 30 June)

Monday morning was exciting, there was a room inspection and when the headmaster and my shifu got to my room I knew this wasn't a usual room inspection for cigarettes or alcohol. They know I don't smoke or drink so they usual just enter to look at the tidiness, but today they actually had a thorough look, looking for guns. They didn't find anything because my gun was actually inside a boxing glove hanging on the wall right in front of their eyes. The headmaster found about 4 guns during his inspection, he also found some bowls from the dining hall.

By line up time it was clear that Josh and Chima were going to get gooned for having guns in their rooms and Harry was getting gooned for having bowls in his room. Each received two soft goons from the shifu.



We then listened to some pathetic speech about how BB guns are illegal in China and that the academy will call the police to search the rooms if the remaining students dont surrender their weapons. A was then quite surprised that the headmaster said I need to get gooned because on Sunday Rahul told him that I had shot him a number of times. This was not true because I had not shot him this weekend. And I specifically asked if he meant in the past or only on Sunday, he said only Sunday. I said it was a lie, at this point Rahul started mumbling and was asked to step forward, he started saying that he was confused and he didn't actually see who had shot him. At this point I said just goon me twice and stop wasting time, but the headmaster said no Rahul must be gooned. After Rahul was gooned we were all standing back in line and the headmaster said no I must also get gooned because they found a gun in my room, I said the gun was taken out of Chimas hand which happened to be in my room. I said fine goon me for harbouring terrorists, I did deserve to get gooned but not for any of the pathetic reasons they kept coming up with, my first public humiliation and it wasn't even that bad. We were then reminded to surrender our weapons which nobody did so the headmaster said he would call the police, a big joke. But to be safe I hid my gun in the meditation room behind some books.




Wednesdays training was pretty intensive and in the evening Chima and I told our shifu that we wanted to go to Changbaishan for a week or so, it wasn't a problem.

At the same time Harry told the school he was going to Beijing to see if he could get money to extend his stay, this of course was a lie. He was coming with us to Changbaishan but had he told the school the truth he would have had his visa cancelled because his tuition time was up and he would have had 7 days to leave the country. So instead he could spend a week with us in Changbaishan come back to the academy and then tell them he had to go home to make more money before he could return. This would give him enough time (7 days) to get to Wudang so that he could sign up at another academy there, have visa extended and then train some Taiji.

That evening Chima realised that his passport was at the visa office but it had been there for two weeks which meant it was ready. We asked the "small" translator if we could collect it, she said no there was a printing mistake so the visa will only be ready next week. Fortunately she is a bad liar and after some more questioning she then said but you can't fetch it, you need a translator. That too was absurd because firstly other students have fetched their passports before and secondly the passport belongs to Chima and the photo in it matches him. Anyway we told them we at least want a photo copy of the passport, we weren't going to let this stop the trip even if we knew that no passport would cause some trouble.

Week 25 (21 June - 27 June)

I spent most of the day in bed on Monday, only watched the kids practice.




Tuesday morning I didn't feel much better so I spent the morning resting. In the afternoon one of the translators was giving Daniel grief with the extension of his VISA. Basically how it works is that the academy tells the local department of home affairs how long the student is staying and how long the issued VISA or Residence permit should be. The translator told Dan he had only paid for 3 months and not 6 so they can only give him 3 months. This is a load of BS because even if they give him a 6 month permit and he leaves before it is up they can just cancel it. And also Dan only paid for 3 months because I told him not to pay for everything up front because there was no Sanda shifu and if you haven't paid they will make an effort to get you one but if they have your money there is no leverage or pressure that can be applied. Anyway they said they will sort it out on thursday so lets see what happens. In the evening I helped Thomas reinstall Windows on his terribly functioning laptop.




On wednesday we were told that we were going on a field trip with the bus, the headmistress told us this so we knew there was some kind of ulterior motive. We drove about 60km which took almost 2 hours and we finally arrived at a high school outside of Siping. We (8 confused foreigners) were asked to step outside the bus. After walking around for 5 minutes and creating some attention we were told to get back into the bus. The school then had a break and many students rushed outside to catch a glimpse of us foreigners. At this point the headmistress gave us each a stack of academy marketing material to distribute to the students. Shortly after this we headed straight back to the academy, the trip had been pointless and we had just been marketing tools (pun intended). Luckily the bus needed to make a refueling pitstop in Siping so four of us told the headmistress that four of us would like to go shopping in Siping. She said it was ok so we just left and went straight to the JinLiHao and relaxed in the Sauna and hot tubs before going upstairs and lying in the recliners. We ended up getting back to the academy at just before midnight.

Friday we went to Siping to watch some of the world cup games. Quite annoying with the time differences, most games were at either 22:00 or 02:00am. Chris and Umit also got back from Siping and Chris got me a South Africa jersey, quite funny that it had a Totalsports tag on it even though it came from the Silk market and cost 120RMB.

Some tanks on the way to Siping

The Zhongxing, knockoff central


Only 40RMB for 3 people


Looks real but all nike products are fake in that store




Want a pet or future stewing meat, the sales woman actually tells people which ones taste good


Standard Siping Hazards

We got back saturday afternoon and didn't really do much. On sunday we went on a shooting spree upstairs, about 6 of us had BB guns and were shooting each other. After about 15 minutes whilst we were busy reloading on my room, the headmaster came knocking on my door. I quickly hid my gun and opened the door, Chima still had his gun and the headmaster confiscated it.

Week 24 (14 June - 20 June)

On monday it was only Dan, David, Tharun and I training. The others all had excuses not to train. Despite this we got pushed hard.

Tuesday Dan got his Sanda shifu and according to Prashant who has been here for almost 2 years, this shifu is excellent. In the evening the weather changed quickly and there were strong thunder showers.

Wednesday day morning Dan started training Sanda with his new shifu and looked rather happy.

On Thursday I took the bike to Yehe and bought some huge crackers, these things are like dynamite and they destroy just about anything. Josh found a Nemo doll in his room that he no longer wanted. So we strapped a cracker to it and blew it up.



In the afternoon we trained in the forest and I saw a huge snake but I didn't have my camera on me.

Friday we got a new translator called Liming, she is a really sweet girls but her english isn't that great, I guess it will improve after time.  In the afternoon the workers asked if they could use the socket in my room to connect their drilling machine I thought I had seen it all, look at this.

After training Dan and I threw some crackers into the lake, I also took the little dirt bike out for a drive on the sand roads which was quite fun.

The weekend was pretty boring, I had to get a new chain link for the little bike because josh crashed it and broke the chain, so careless at times.

Week 23 (7 June - 13 June)

This week was very hot about 30+ on average and we had to do the stairs almost every day and by wednesday most people had stopped training. My shifu didn't teach my form finished which is pretty long so on the 11th I did not need to perform anything for test day. Also Che Wen Long (Boss man) was at the academy so Dan spoke to him and told him that he wants to train Sanda but there is no shifu, he said it will be sorted out.

 

Listening to Rahul's drunken tales

On the weekend I just relaxed and did some washing.

Week 22 (31 May - 6 June)

I started the week feeling pretty demotivated and thus decided to spend the day learning chinese instead of training.

On tuesday we trained on the stairs and Rahul was causing trouble as usual and so Deepak told him to train, a small argument ensued and Deepak ended up kicking Rahul. Rahul then complained and Deepak got one soft goon for what he had done. After training Rahul got into some trouble from the headmaster which was behaving quite aggressively, Rahul had bribed the worker with 10RMB so that he wouldn't switch the power off at night.
 







In the afternoon I went to Yehe with Chima to fetch his laundry, it was another exciting drive in the back of the 3 wheeler.

The washing machine at the laundry had an interesting sticker on it.

Wednesday was an exciting day because my older brother Daniel (Dan) would be joining me here in China for 6 months. Also I told him I would fetch him from Changchun instead of letting the Academy send their driver. So at about 7:30 I set off from Changchun airport, after some delays I arrived in Changchun at 11:10 and took a cab straight to the airport and I arrived about 10 minutes late. It was really good to see Dan, it had been over 5 months. We took a cab back to the train station and after buying tickets we ended up waiting about 3 hours for the train which had constantly been delayed plus the tickets I bought had no assigned seats, luckily we found some seats. I felt bad about all the delays and mess up with the train tickets but we arrived safely in Siping a little while later. We arrived at the academy after dinner and Daniel settled into his room which I had reserved for him, it was the last room on the corridor and the only room with a wooden floor.

On thursday was a very hot day, about 32 degrees and we went to Siping to change money and buy some basic necessities for Dan. We returned in the afternoon and did some basic training.

Friday morning we trained with the kids, at 8:00 line up Rahul was late and got 5 goons. Dan was very lucky to see a gooning on his second day.



Morning training we did some powerstretching and practised some forms.

On the weekend there was a performance, the kids parents were coming so all the kids were excited to perform. At the last moment I was asked if I could do a group performance so I said yes. The form went well and while we were waiting backstage they asked me if I can perform something else, I told them to get lost because I hadn't practiced anything. The rest of the weekend I just relaxed.