Week 3 | Travel Blog

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The Exhibition

Okay so it's been a while but the last week and weekend were pretty well packed, considering the combination of events and school work. The weekend before last the group attended an acrobatics performance which sadly I have no pictures from. There were plate spinners who did rolls and jumps while holding eight rods with spinning plates on them, a set of bicycle stunts culminating in eight people riding the same bicycle while it circled the stage, an excellent juggler and a lot more. I also went dragon boating again which was even more fun with the three friends I brought along. None of us are supposed to speak English so we asked the boat leader to speak in Chinese. We made a pretty good team and learned some useful phrases. “Jishu” is technique while, “Jia You!” is a command to add power.

Last week was China's Mid-Autumn Festival which meant no school on Wednesday and no test on Friday, lightening the load considerably although the most celebratory thing I did during the festival was eat a moon cake, a sweet filled pastry. Last weekend there was a group trip to the Fragrant Hills which was a hike

Under this park

followed by picking up garbage on the easy path to the top of the mountain. This took a really long time and everyone was pretty exhausted that night. Sunday after Church a few of us went out to breakfast and visited the Temple of Confucius east of the Forbidden City. The temple was pretty interesting but my legs were sore from the day before and a lot of the information in the museum sections read like propaganda.

I'm really enjoying my Wushu class which is actually providing more exercise then I initially expected mostly in the form of prolonged squats and freezing with a leg in a kicking position. I'm most interested in what it can do for my flexibility when combined with the Wednesday night Yoga class. We have also been doing a lot more practical feeling moves along with the line dancing we started with. Today we did dozens of kicks, first front, then side before we learned some more of the forms we've been building on.

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