A lot of things are happening and I'm finding it hard to keep up with this blog. If you really wish to know how I am doing, email me: hidetherice@gmail.com. I will respond if I want and won't be pressured to update anything.

Thank you for your support and thank you for reading,
Jon

Jáchym: So, when do you want to go to the other side?

Jon: I'm not sure. My mom wants me to update my blog, but I don't really have any motivation to do so.

Jáchym: Just do it tomorrow.

Jon: Yeah... I've been telling myself that for two weeks now.

Jáchym: ...

So for those of you who still check up on here every once in a while. I am alive and well. I've recently been busy as well as unmotivated and too lazy to keep updates. Sorry. Anyways, we've had a couple of pretty big events since the last post. The first was the second generation disciples ceremony on August 30 and the second was our trip to Santa Cruz for Shifu's first ever book signing and seminars in California outside of the Retreat Center.

Disciples Ceremony

For the disciples ceremony, Javier Rodriguez and Zach Cohen bowed before Shifu in our newly built outdoor training area, and were accepted as students for the Retreat Center program. YMAA South Africa President Corlius Birkill was also present and was also accepted as a disciple under Shifu. YMAA Boston instructors Aaron Damus and Ben Warner were also present to witness Corlius's acceptance. In addition, we had many of our friends and neighbors come visit us as well. We greatly appreciated their presence as they have been supportive since the beginning and many, if not all of them, have personally aided in at least one of many projects at the Center.

Santa Cruz
Shifu's first ever California book signing and seminar event outside of the Retreat Center was a huge success. Because we were on our way down to Santa Cruz, we drove down from the Retreat Center to Kung Fu Tai Chi Magazine in Fremont first and had lunch with Ms. Gigi Oh and Mr. Gene Ching. They took us to a nice Chinese buffet a few blocks away from their building. The food was really good. They had a lot of things that I had not seen and eaten for a long time. It reminded me a lot of home and of Boston's Chinatown... all the delicious goodies the restaurants near us don't have. After lunch, Gene interviewed Shifu and then we had a photo shoot for their magazine. Hopefully we will be able to see our pictures soon.


After leaving Kung Fu Tai Chi Magazine, we had to rushed to Santa Cruz to drop their luggage off at our friend, Tony Galis's house. He had been to the seminars at the Retreat Center and offered to let us stay at his place if we were ever in Santa Cruz. He was also planning to attend Shifu's seminars in the following couple of days. Once our things were unloaded, we drove to Gateways Bookstore in downtown Santa Cruz where Shifu have a lecture and then had his book signing. A large number of people showed up for the event. We were only expecting 20 at the most but a good 50+ people showed.

Shifu's seminars were hosted by the Santa Cruz Integrative Medicine and Chi Center. Both seminars had successful turnouts, bringing at least 40 participants for each. The first was Embryonic Breathing and the second was Four Seasons Qigong. We decided to stay for the morning sessions for both of them, to show our support. Shifu however, did not expect us to stay for the entire time and allowed us to go walk around Santa Cruz. Our first day was spent walking along the beach to the boardwalk. They had a lot of amusement park rides and carnival games. I won a frog (but I left it at Tony's house. Woops. Hopefully his daughter will like it :P) On our second day, we walked in the opposite direction. Although it was foggy and chilly, we remained on the sand and checked out each of the different sections of the coast there.


We ended up leaving Santa Cruz right after the seminars on the second day and drove to Cupertino to go shopping and to have dinner with Shifu's sister. We went to a Chinese Islam restaurant. It was awesome. After leaving Cupertino, we headed home and drove north about 5-6 hours. We didn't get back to the Center until around 1:30am. Just in time to unload the car, go to bed, and wake up the next morning to train! :)

Well. That's it for now. More to come about our training and other news... soon!

Seminars



Seminar season is finally over. After 6 long weeks of having people from all over the world come and stay the Center, it is now back to normal. Although it is nice to have the peace and quiet of an empty house, I miss having people around. I feel like this years seminars went a lot better than the previous year. Also, having built friendships and connections last year, I felt more comfortable approaching people and more relaxed around them.

This year people seemed more social and more playful than last year. Throughout the Taijiquan (太極拳), Taiji Sword (太極劍), and Taiji Push Hands (太極推手) seminars, we had a group of younger guys who enjoyed singing, humming, or whistling. It didn't matter if we were doing dishes or hanging out after meals, there was always a song to be heard. As for the Qigong (氣功) and Taiji Ball (太極球) seminars, when people weren't chatting, board games such as Apples to Apples and Taboo were played a lot during the nights.

This Week



Now that the seminars are over, we have about a week left before our second year starts. We had our sponsors festival last week. Only a handful of our sponors were able to make it this year, but we had a good time with them. Mr. Charles Vita and Mr. Roger Blough were already here for seminars the previous week and Mr. and Mrs. Bill Buckley showed up Friday evening. On Saturday we had a tea ceremony with everybody followed by a question/answer session. It was a time for our sponors to get to know us. Afterwards, we showed them photograph compilations of previous working/training camps so that they could see the history of the Center. We also showed some of our own video projects from the first year. When the videos were finished, we took our sponors outside for a short demonstration, followed by lunch and then a trip to Shelter Cove.

When we got back from the ocean, we took our sponsors out to dinner to the Oriental Buffet. Bill must have tried taking a group picture at least 10 times. His batteries must have been low or something though because he kept waiting for his flash to work. Here's a picture of Bill attempting to take a picture :P



Bill and his wife Rebecca left this morning. They had decided to stay for a few more days after the sponsors event to hang out and train with us. I'm glad they did so. We had many nice chats and it was a lot of fun training with Bill. I'm looking forward to his return in October. His wife however we not be coming this time, which makes me sad because I'll miss her cooking.

Throughout this week, we have been working to get back into shape for training again. Our schedule is now a little shorter than usual. The mornings remain pretty much the same, but instead of training for 4 1/2 hours in the afternoon, we are only required to practice for 2. This is good because of the amount of other work to do, such as video projects, and article writing.

I have taken this week's training to catch up on attaining my original goal for the summer. Shifu wants us to practice each of our sequences 1000 times before dumping it. My goal was to make it to 300 for Qi Xing (七星) before the next semester started. As of today I am at 285, which means 15 more tomorrow and I will have reached my goal :) After that, I begin learning Shan He (扇鶴) and will also need to catch up with my Long Fist (長拳).

Next Disciple's Ceremony

The disciple's ceremony for next year's group will be held this Sunday. In the new group will be Javier Rodriguez (USA) and Zach Cohen (USA). YMAA school director Corlius Birkill from South Africa will also be formally accepted as Dr. Yang's disciple. I guess I'll be calling him Shige (師哥) soon :P Ben from YMAA Boston will be coming to witness as well as many of our local friends and neighbors. We have been preparing to demonstrate for the past week. So.. we'll see how that goes.

Edited: Sept. 9, 2009
(Added Chinese translations)