The past couple of weeks have been busy ones. We have had many guests and have also been working on many projects.

Visits:
New candidates Enrico Tomei (Italy) and Jáchym Jerie (Switzerland) have returned home. Enrico unfortunately will not be joining us next year and we have yet to hear from Jáchym. Also, candidate Zach Cohen has come to join us but also had to leave due to his job. He will however be coming back at the end of this month and will be helping us out for the seminar season.

Our media teacher, Rii, came to visit us for a weekend and helped us out with video shooting and editing. We have now shot a rough draft version of our some of our Taijiquan Applications videos. Our other media teacher, Craig, will be coming this Sunday to help shoot the first couple of these videos, which we hope to post online sometime in the near future.

Also, my mom came to visit this past week. She helped to teach us Chinese as well as some cooking techniques for larger groups (aka seminar people). Hopefully we'll be able to use these newly learned skills and will actually be able to take some of the seminars this year. I think we have all gained about 10lbs each, too :P

Our organic gardening teacher Glenn, just arrived with his son Josh yesterday afternoon. They will be staying with us for about a week. Glenn will be teaching us some more about gardening, how to plug/plant mushrooms, and how to use chainsaws.

In the next month and a half, we will be getting even more guests. After Glenn and Josh leave, one of our sponsors and board members, Dr. Gutheil, will be coming to visit. And after him, Nicky will be joining us for a few days. In June, we are expecting some old friends to come back. Daniel from Chile will be coming to train Taijiquan with us and then Ciaran may be coming as well.

Projects:
Our new outdoor training area is currently being constructed. We helped Kurt and his crew pour the concrete last week and they are now in the middle of assembling the support posts and the roof. As of now, it looks like everything will be finished before the seminars begin.

Our Taijiquan Applications videos are coming along. We have written a rough draft of the script and have drawn out most of the storyboard images. Also, we have now split up into two groups, one for each video, and will be discussing camera angles and how everything should be shot. When Craig comes, we hope to finish shooting at least two of these videos.

Other:
We had our body conditioning test about a week ago. Things that were tested included: mountain running, jumping, rooting, reaction, Taijiquan form, Taijiquan applications, wrist strength, upperbody strength, vertical rope climbing, horizontal rope climbing, speed training, and tumbling. Although afterwards most of us felt like we could have done better, I think the testing overall went pretty well. I felt a little disappointed with my mountain running time because I missed my record by about 30 seconds. I don't think I paced myself right and ran too fast at the bottom.