Really long update:

Our daily schedule so far goes something like this:

05:50 - 06:00 : Wake up
06:00 - 07:00 : Meditation
07:00 - 08:00 : Qigong
08:00 - 09:00 : Breakfast
09:00 - 11:00 : Taijiquan
11:00 - 12:00 : Chinese
12:00 - 14:30 : Lunch/rest
14:30 - 15:30 : Lecture
15:30 - 19:00 : Conditioning
19:00 - 22:00 : Dinner/free time

Waking up isn't too hard to do right now. My phone is set to go off at 5:50 but for some reason I always wake up a few minutes earlier and disable the alarm. The only problem with waking up so early is the meditation period that comes next. I find it hard to stay awake during meditation and usually doze off after a few minutes. Only a handful of times have I stayed awake the whole time (working/training camp and seminar seasons included). Meditation is probably the hardest part of my training so far. After meditation comes qigong practice. We usually spend this time to warm our bodies up for the rest of the day by stretching and doing various exercises. Doug, a local, sometimes joins us. It's nice to see some outside people sometimes, especially our neighbors.

Breakfast used to be a mess. We had no plans for what we wanted to cook or who was going to prepare the meal. We're a little more organized now though, selecting people by seeing who did it the day before. Usually two people make breakfast while the other three go to the garden to collect the day's vegetables. I have found that I enjoy going to the garden a lot more than dealing with the stress of the kitchen. I feel more relaxed when I'm squatting next to the jungle of tomato plants trying to find as many cherry tomatoes as I can.

Taijiquan has been interesting. Sifu has divided the week up so we practice something different every day. Mondays and Thursdays are used to refine part 1 of the Taijiquan form, Tuesdays and Fridays are used to go through the whole form, and Wednesdays and Saturdays are used for Taijiquan application practice. However, because of the competition coming up in October, Patrick and I practice our forms all the time except for application days. Patrick will be competing in Traditional Yang style Taijiquan 105 form and Traditional Yang style Taiji Saber. I will be competing with him in both of those as well as Traditional Yang style Taiji Sword. Over the past few weeks, we have both finished learning our weapon sequences, compiled our bare hand sequences, and have begun to practice our butts off. A lot of the time it can be pretty frustrating. This is because there's a time limit within each category. Bare hand sequences have to be between 5 and 6 minutes. To compile this sequence wasn't too hard. The hard part is being able to practice it over and over, trying to stay low the whole time. I'm glad that it's Taijiquan and not Shaolin. I can at least do the form many times and still breath. Weapon sequences must be between 3 and 5 minutes. I haven't found it to be too difficult for Taiji Saber, but for Taiji Sword, it's another story. I keep going over, bringing the time to almost 5 1/2 minutes. I'm hoping that with enough practice, I'll be able to add jing into the sequence and hopefully cut the time down. I only have three weeks until we leave for Taiwan though, so I'm not so sure if I'll be able to be proficient enough in manifesting my jing into the form. While practicing my bare hand sequence today, Sifu asked me, "did you sign up for the miscellaneous category?" When I said yes and asked why, he said something along the lines of, "because only in the miscellaneous category can you use jing." I'm not sure if he thinks/wants us to incorporate jing into our forms or not. I guess that I'll have to ask him tomorrow. If so, Patrick and I have about 100 times more practicing than we're already doing. Oh well.. it's the only way to get better :)

Learning Chinese hasn't been too difficult for me... mostly because I can already speak the language fluently. The hard part for me is being able to remember how to read and write all the different symbols being thrown at us. I feel bad for the other guys because even I have trouble memorizing everything. It must be worse for them do have my problems, and more, because they're learning a whole new language. Surprisingly to me, Ricardo has picked up the language the pretty quickly, or at least faster than everybody else. It must be a mix of Sifu's "Chinglish" and Ricardo's "Portuglese". Two bad accents mixed together must be a recipe for success or something. Everybody else has had a lot of trouble not only pronouncing words, but memorizing characters. When we fail to remember how to write certain words, we're punished with writing those words 100 times each. It's a little cruel and very time consuming, but I found that it really helps to put the characters into my head. The only problem with having to write so many words is that we hardly have any free time at night now. All the time is filled by reading and writing.

Lunch has pretty much the same situation as breakfast. There's no set cook and we still don't plan meals out. As a group, we find it alright though. As long as one of us has taken food out the night before, everybody jumps in and does their part. The first few days were a disaster, but it's pretty good now. It still takes a while to get things done because only Patrick and I have experience in preparing/cooking with a small time gap. I hope that as time goes on, we'll be able to get everything done, including eating and dishes, in an hour or so... leaving plenty of time to rest.

Following our lunch period is Sifu's lecture time. So far it has been mostly about Qigong. He answers any questions we have and tests us on assigned reading. We don't have text books, just the books that he has written himself.

After lecture, we have conditioning. This consists of running the mountain, rope climbing, cinder block tossing, ma bu training, staff conditioning, jumping training, dan tian training, and taiji ball. These activities are meant to condition different parts of our bodies. Running down and up the mountain conditions our legs. From doing it these past two weeks, I'd say that it really helps strengthen my ankles and knees, stretches my Achilles tendon, increases my lung capacity and brings my endurance level up. Also used to condition our legs, we do train ma bu (horse stance). This further helps to strengthen different sections of our legs and because we practice on bricks, it helps to train our root too. By practicing ma bu with various angles, I have found that my ankle flexibility has increased dramatically. I feel a lot more comfortable in practicing Taijiquan and getting lower in stances. The last activity we do for our legs is to practice our jumping. Do do this, Sifu has us jump over sticks and other obstacles. Also, we have to jump continuously for 30 seconds, in order to learn how to land/take off many times in a row. For arms, we climb rope. Patrick and Mike had argued about which way of climbing was correct. Patrick said that we should climb with arms bent, using the whole body to climb. Mike said that we should climb with arms extended, in order to strengthen our ligaments more. When they asked Sifu, it was a mix of the two. Apparently we should be swinging like monkeys or gorillas in the next few months. Trying to swing this way is pretty difficult. Sifu says we need to grab with one hand with an extended arm, then pull ourselves forward and grab again with the other hand. This training will strengthen our wrists, elbows, and shoulders. After this, cinder block tossing is done to improve our grip. It's pretty hard because as time goes on, the block gets less rigid and more slippery. Sifu says that after we get to a certain level, we'll be covering our hands with soap to make it even harder to grip. Other conditioning will be described later when I have more time.

Dinner time is the same as lunch and breakfast. Still no clue of who to prepare/cook food and what to eat. It somehow works out though. Dinner is followed by "free time". By free time, I mean homework time. We have a lot of reading and writing to do which consumes almost all of our time and energy. By the time we finish, we're all too exhausted to do anything else but shower (sometimes skipped) and sleep.

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We discovered mushrooms in our garden yesterday. Glenn had planted three different kinds in the logs we used: phoenix oyster mushrooms, cloud mushrooms, and Ling Zhi mushrooms. After a few emails, we were informed that our mystery fungi was the phoenix oyster mushroom. We cooked a bunch last night and have saved the rest to dry for later. They're pretty good, and I'm glad we'll have a lot for the winter season.