Week 17 (26 April - 29 April)

Monday morning the weather was miserable, just rainy and foggy. I trained with the kids at 5:30 and after a lot of sprints and frog jumps up the academy drive way we had to do handstands with our feet resting against the wall. The goal time was 2 minutes however the longest I managed was 50 seconds. At 8:00 we were told that Rahul was being gooned for misbehaving, he got 10 goons, however after the 4th hit the stick broke and the last 6 hits were with half a goon which was quite a bit more painful. Later I also found out that Eagle had mounted a web cam on the balcony which recorded the entire proceedings, however it was pointed straight into sunlight so it was just a white video.



27 April the weather was depressing, just overcast and miserable. Eagle was late at morning line up and had to do 20 push ups. The training was basic and after the usual warm up we just did some power stretching. In the afternoon Umit was late for line up and had to do 20 push ups. For afternoon training we did acrobatics and I was surprised to see how my handstand had improved, shortly afterwards I sprained my neck. I took the rest of the afternoon off and by the evening it felt like I was getting a cold. In the evening I practised the group form which we had started learning on Monday.
 
Wednesday 28 April it was raining, I told my shifu that I wanted to go to Beijing for the Motor show and needed to buy a train ticket, he said it was fine as long as I come back before Monday. I went to morning training and all we did was some power stretching which was pretty intensive.

When I got to Siping I was doubtful of getting a ticket at all because that weekend was labour weekend and almost all tickets had been sold out, I couldn't get a ticket for Friday so I got one for Thursday evening it was a hard sleeper and top berth which is pretty bad but oh well. On the way back to the academy the taxi stopped at a petrol station to fill up, this is where I saw a terrible site, one of the worst toilets in China.

When we got back to the academy I had some more symptoms of a cold so I took the day off and took some strong Chinese medicine which knocked me out.

Thursday 29 April I felt a lot better and took the training easy, we spent most of the day practicing the group form. After dinner I went to Siping, my train was only at 23:00 and I was really tired so I went to the Internet cafe and browsed the Internet a bit, I noticed I started falling asleep so I set my cellphone alarm clock just in case. I got to the station in time and after the big rush and a lot of squeezing (queuing is still a pretty new concept here in china) I finally made my way in time whilst people were tripping and falling to get to the train despite the fact that they had 10 minutes to spare. I settled into my top berth which was as tiny as I had expected, the bed was about 1,90m but the room between the room and the bed was about 45cm. Luckily it was late and I fell asleep right away and woke up the next morning and hour outside of Beijing.