Week 43 (25 October - 31 October)

Monday morning was cold about -2 and most students didn't go for the morning run, it was pretty light at 5:30 because of the full moon. Dan had some cold symptoms so he took the morning off. I trained together with Liu Shui the Chinese student that has been training with us the past 3 months. We did some sparring and in the afternoon we practiced our kicks, after wards we went for a short walk and the sky was clear but it was still very windy and cold.

moon still up at 5:45am

 

Corn and rice

Tuesday was a relaxing day we didn't actually do any intensive training and just took it easy, doing some stretches. Most of the shaolin group was not training, from 8 students only 3 were in the training hall. By the evening Dan was feeling better again and his cold symptoms had subsided.

Wednesday morning we decided to go for a run through the local villages, it was pretty which was evident by the frozen rice patty reservoirs. My knee started hurting after a few hundred meters of the 9km run and I decided not to stop, hoping it would get better once warmed up. The pain didn't go away but we still had a good run and had to do 2x 1:30 min handstands against the wall to drain the blood from our legs. After wards we did some power stretching which was extremely uncomfortable because of the cold, my muscles felt like strands of metal.

frozen reservoir

farmers working despite the cold                                           handstand after run

some power stretching

Thursday was more of a rest day for me, my knees hurt so I just spent 2 hours hitting the bag during the morning session, in the afternoon and evening I just did some stretching.

 

sunset before 5:00 pm now

Friday morning our shifu told us we need to go for a run but faster than usual, he told me to go slow if my knee hurts. We had to run to the "red sign" and back, the red sign is a big red sign that is about 3.5km from the academy on the outskirts of Yehe. The road that leads there has a long steep uphill and two downhills which are pretty tiring (below is a map of the route) we had to run this quite fast (+-35mins). After the run we did some power stretching, the weather was a lot better so the stretching was a lot easier than on Wednesday. In the afternoon we went for a walk and then did some weights.


View Red sign run in a larger map

some rice patties and a farmer moving some harvested corn

The weekend was relaxing, Saturday morning we went to Yehe to buy some water and other basics, the weather was pleasant the entire weekend, blue skies and temperatures above 10 degrees.

This was the last week of October which also means I have less than 10 weeks to go I am still not counting down the time. I am actually still genuinely enjoying myself despite the daily hardships and lack of luxuries.