Comic #1

As promised, our first comic :)



Also, tomorrow is the first day of our semester, and the beginning of the 10 years program. I guess it's time to get some sleep.

Ceremony Day

The end of our ceremony, photo shoot.

Standing:
Ricardo Tonet, Mike DiMeglio, Tom Dudkiewicz, Patrick Manriquez, and myself.
Sitting:
Master Nick Gracenin, Mrs. Yang, Mei-Ling, Master Yang, Jwing-Ming, Kathy Yang, Master Pat Rice, and Master José Johnson.

Thank you to all of our honor guests for taking time out of their schedules and attending our event.

Yesterday was filled with lots of fun times. These included, driving, some more driving, and even more driving. It was an extremely exciting and eventful day. But seriously... My mother arrived yesterday to attend our ceremonies. Mrs. Yang and Kathy also arrived yesterday, so Dr. Yang and I spent a day in Eureka, taking the opportunity to shop for lots of food supplies for the party this weekend.

Ceremonies will be this Saturday. I think all of the students here, including myself are extremely nervous. It all begins soon!

Day two:

1. Walk mountain. [Down: 16:46 ; Up: 20:35]
2. Staff conditioning [Endurance: 50]
3. Staff speed drills [4 angles: 15 sec each]
4. Ma Bu [Regular: 10 min (with angles) ; On bricks: 1 min]
5. Rope [2 rounds]
6. Taiji ball [20 min (vertical + horizontal)]

First day back to conditioning. This is what we did today.

1. Walk mountain. [Down: 19:06 ; Up: 20:40]
2. Staff conditioning [Strength: 25]
3. Staff speed drills [4 angles: 15 sec each]
4. Ma Bu [Regular: 10 min (with angles) ; On bricks: 1 min]
5. Rope [2 rounds]
6. Taiji ball [30 min (vertical + horizontal)]

Being able to practice all of this as a group felt really good. It was fun to get back into training too, especially with everybody pushing and supporting each other. We had set up a new rope course yesterday. Instead of a tiny little section, we now have 5 long sections running between trees (pictures to come.) Our course is only made up of 150 feet of rope right now, but we plan on getting more in the future as we condition more.

Also... Ricardo arrived Thursday night and Tom is coming tomorrow. Our group will soon be complete... ceremonies are approaching soon.

1st Annual Taiji Ball Seminar
YMAA California
8/15/2008 - 8/21/2008

I started learning the Taiji Saber form today.



(thanks Mike for taking these pictures)

Two more months to practice everything until Taiwan!

--Some pictures from the Taiji Ball Seminar. Bill and Josh performed for the group.

Dr. Yang's birthday. We got him all six Star Wars movies. He was happy :)


Justin's mom made him a chocolate cake and I designed the cake topping. It was really good. Super chocolatey with cherries inside. Yum.


Seminar season is going well. Things are running pretty smoothly here with one or two occasional exceptions. Patrick and I have been very busy cooking for everybody. I feel that this week has been the hardest for us. It is the biggest group with 28 people, including us and Dr. Yang. What makes it even harder is that there are a lot of people with special diets. I feel that we spend more effort in cooking than we have to sometimes and it is pretty tiring. Because of the seminar's tight scheduling, Patrick and I basically live in the kitchen.

05:50 - 06:00 : Wake up
06:00 - 06:30 : Lecture
06:30 - 07:10 : Meditation
07:10 - 07:40 : Prepare breakfast
07:40 - 09:00 : Breakfast, dishes, and prepare lunch
09:00 - 10:30 : Seminar lecture
10:30 - 12:00 : Finish preparing lunch and cook
12:00 - 15:00 : Lunch, dishes, rest
15:00 - 16:00 : Prepare dinner
16:00 - 17:30 : Seminar lecture
17:30 - 19:00 : Finish preparing dinner and cook
19:00 - 22:00 : Dinner, dishes, free time

I feel that we have almost no time to train because we work all day. Although we have a few hours in the afternoon, we are usually too exhausted from the stress of cooking and having to deal with seminar people that we retreat to our room to rest. Thankfully not every day has been bad and I have gotten the chance to walk down to the creek a few times. Angel and I have taken trips down there together to train on the nearby flatland.

Speaking of the path from the creek, we tried running it the other day. It is very difficult. The path is extremely steep and the gravel is made up of many large, loose rocks, which takes a toll on not only our lungs, but our legs as well. I can't wait to start running it every day. It will be a very big challenge, but I have no doubt that we will be able to do it.

Beginning today, Dr. Yang has told me to practice my Chin Na counters with Mike. This is mostly because Mike enjoys attacking us randomly and tries to put is into Chin Na. I guess this will make things interesting. It is fun when we play around. I feel like all of us have become like brothers, with Dr. Yang as the head of the family.

Happy birthdays to my mom and Dr. Yang :)


1st Annual Qigong 2 [Medical Qigong] Seminar
YMAA California
8/8/2008 - 8/14/2008

1st Annual Qigong Level 1 Seminar
YMAA California
8/1/2008 - 8/7/2008

Some pictures from our "photo shoot" session.

Taijiquan Seminar

A lot of interesting people came for the Taijiquan seminar. From the looks of it, most of the people who participated had learned from Dr. Yang previously, and if they had not, they had some sort of previous experience. Only one or two people had no experience what-so-ever, so things went by pretty quickly. Dr. Yang had me help the newer people while he instructed the main group. This was interesting for me because I had been learning Taijiquan for only a few months before. Through helping people learn, I also learned a lot about my movements. I found it difficult to explain movements for Taijiquan because I had never had to before. However, in teaching, I felt better about my own form and caught many of my own mistakes. I learned to slow down (yeah.. believe it or not, for Taijiquan) and go over every movement in my body that I could and try to perfect them.

I finished part 3 of the Taijiquan form. Time to begin constructing my own form for Taiwan!

Taijiquan Push Hands Seminar

Again, many interesting people came to attend this seminar. I'm glad that a lot of the Taijiquan people stayed for the Push Hands seminar as well. It saved us a lot of time familiarizing ourselves with new people and their eating habits (hooray for kitchen duty.) I found push hands to be a bit frustrating. I had to spend most of the time in the kitchen, either preparing or cooking food, and didn't get much time to practice. Then, when I did get to learn, topics and movements were constantly different. I did not really get to learn one thing well. Everything was scattered and confusing for me. Oh well, we'll be doing plenty of push hands in the future.

Some friendly sparring with the Alex Faguy, the French Canadian, during the Taiji Push Hands seminar. Thanks Xiao Ping for the pictures.




Qigong 1 Seminar

Almost a completely new group this week (but I think most of them will be here for 3 more weeks.) All the people have been very nice so far. The only problem for us is that most of them enjoy the vegetarian lifestyle more. Although they do eat meat, they prefer vegetables (which we're running low on now.) Patrick and I have no time to practice outside with the group now because each session starts with a lecture for an hour and a half. This means that we can't prepare because it will be time. So, by the time the group goes out to practice, we only have a little more than an hour to prepare and cook. Although I'm a little disappointed to be missing the outdoor lessons, I'm not feeling too bad because I do get to sit in and listen to the lectures. Also.. the pressure is on (for cooking)! Half the group now is made up by females (who know how to cook.) ...we also have a chef here. I hope that they're not too disappointed with our food :P Patrick and I will be getting some tips from all of them over the next few days. I hope we learn some tasty recipes, too.

Other

Finally, happy birthday to my dad :)
60 is a big year. Dr. Yang has given me a gift for you, too.