April 16th - Meditation and Conditioning

Looks a bit more green, right?

Morning Thoughts 🛌

I woke up thinking about how much money I've spent while living in China which is an odd thought but a good one. It has been a while since I've checked my bank balance, I think in January I checked it to see how much I had, but with the whole school lock down that went on earlier I wasn't even able to get or use money.

It is interesting to see that after 2-3 months in China I've only spent around $195 dollars from my bank savings. But, when we went to Xinyi I managed to withdraw about $851 (as I said previously). That amount of cash should be enough to last me throughout the rest of my year here and since we are in the country side of China, most places accept cash.

Now, I know I'm in a unique situation but living here hasn't used a whole lot of money. My biggest expenses are food/snacks and (surprisingly) shoes. I'm sure later on I'll have to spend more money on other things but if I use my money wisely I think I'd be able to still have savings for my next Kung Fu Journey.

To be honest though... I have no clue what the next step will be. I'm just enjoying this place right now and making the most of this cool experience.

My Dinner

Evening Thoughts 💪

This place really makes me feel weak especially the sneaky Thursdays and Fridays. I don't know why but power training and power stretching just destroy me. It always knocks me down a rung that there is something I can improve on. Flexibility, Strength, Moves, Sparring, Exercises or more things. Today power training made me realize how weak my legs are, I couldn't even do single leg squats and had troubles doing jumps on one leg. What in the world happened? Yesterday, I realized that I couldn't even do as many pushups as I could before I got here. Maybe it is just mental, I'm not sure but even our "easy days" are difficult... at least for me they are.

The earlier classes were good though, I really enjoyed standing mediation as I actually was able to feel calmer than when I started. Terina helped me and JD out with 易筋经 as I keep forgetting how to do it. I do prefer the other Qi Gong though; 八段锦. After power training, my breathing was really hard so maybe I'll go back to doing one of these Qi Gong every morning so that I can improve my breathing. It is a good warm up to do in the morning that only takes 5-10 minutes depending on how "intense" your breathing is.

It is almost the weekend, how are you all doing?

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