As I am writting these words now I am laying on a beach in Thailand on Koh Kood island,it is the 25th of December and I feel wonderful! But let's get back to China for a while! I finished my training in a special way. The day before I left was a Kung fu competition in the big city, Jiazuo, just 30 kilometres away. My Shifu, Yuan, told us to go. I was at first surprised because I had been learning Kung fu for just a short period, I was sure this is not for me. Anyway I don't like to perform in front of a lot of people but something inside me wanted to do this. So when Shifu told me to go I went :). He had a big talk on how performing in a competiton is a good training and that it is normal to be nervous but when you do it, just try your best and it will be good. I like our Shifu's speeches, but this was so long that we almost missed our dinner :)! Ok so there I was, standing in front of half a dozen Chinese judges and showing them what I had learnt - my form Xiao Hong Tren. My wish was to do the whole form and don't forget the steps, because when I was practising in front of other students I was nervous and forgot a part of the form, but I continued which was good :)! The whole thing was very weird, we paid like 25 EUR to go there and one day before we found out that we will perform the next day (the competition lasted 4 days). In the morning they still didn't know when we will start, just that it will happen in the evening, and after the lunch they told us we leave in an hour:). So we went there, everything happened so fast, I borrowed special clothes and changed just few minutes before my performance. I came, did the whole form and left. I am quite satisfied with the performance although it was a bit too fast and not enough powerful because of my nervousness and as I was so focussed on doing the whole form that the rest didn't matter so much :)! I was happy to step outside of my comfort zone and did something at home I would never do :). And because of all the fuss about my competition I wasn't so nervous with the fact that I was leaving the next day. This place had been like a home to me for one month, I have met some amazing people, did some crazy stuff and really learnt a lot:
1. I was never late!
Being late meant having to do 100 push ups, so I just wasn't late :). At home I am often late. Ok it is true that here I had a motivation (the punishment) not to be late, but actually the most important thing was that here I was focusing on just one thing - be on time for training, so get up, get dressed, make your bed (in a special Chinese way otherwise you could also do 100 push ups:)) and come downstairs. Simple as that. At home I am always thinking about so many things I have to do, so if I have a little time left I do something, but that means that I am often late because I focus also on the less so important things. So - everything is about focusing!
2. Enjoying simple things!
I was so happy and satisfied with simple things (I already wrote about it before, so I won't repeat myself)
3. My body is amazing!
Everyday I tried new things and put my body into strange positions, sometimes I did things I never thought I can do. I was so amazed by realising what can you do with your body (especially by looking at others who had been training for longer) if you just don't believe in limits. But it is important to observe yourself and listen to yourself, otherwise you can have problems. Like me, a little knee problems but nothing that cannot be fixed.
4. Accepting the cold!
At home I am often cold and wear a lot of clothes. Here I learnt that even thought it is cold it shouldn't stop you from doing the things you want to do
If you are cold, the most important thing is to accept the cold and just dress enough and move a lot:)! Simple:)! I felt a little sore throat just for one day and I ate a lot of ginger and citruses and felt better. It is pretty amazing that considering the circumstances of my training I felt actually good and powerful and healthy.
5. Don't think about what you eat or about the hygiene!
To me this was hard especially at the beginning. At home I watch carefully what I eat, I eat mostly wholegrain food, not too much processed, not too oily, a lot of fresh fruit and I use a lot of food that is grown either at home or at local farmers or certified organic food. I don't eat much sugar, especially I avoid the white sugar.....Weeeell, by travelling you can eat good quality food buy sometimes it can be expensive. I actually have to admit that I liked the food we got during training, a lot of vegetables, rice, sweet potato and rice bread. Tahini helped to improve things when needed and also served as a desert And mostly I felt very good after eating the food there (except a few days of stomach problems, but I don't think it was the food from the school to blame). I ate so much because I was spending a lot of calories. I was really happy with the food after I turned off my thoughts about the quality of food and the higiene. And I also learned how many times I have to circle through my food bowl with my hand using just the cold water to make it clean (yeah we had to clean everything by ourselves, including the common rooms and training hall once a week:)).
6. Accepting things as they are!
I have sometimes problems when things turn out different than I planned so this is an important advice I try to follow, sometimes it works good, but sometimes I still have troubles with it :). I expect something and get something different. But actually that something different is usually a very good choice, even better than the original plan. It is just important to accept the things the way that they are and let go of the idea of what "should have been" instead of it. Then you can see "the magic" - how something totally unplanned turns out to be amazing.
7. Being happy!
This is hard to explain, although it is pretty much simple. When I manage to turn off my thoughts inside my head and just focus on how I feel I felt so happy and I knew that I was at the right place.
8. Don't worry too much about the money!
I still have a lot of problems with this one. As I am travelling for a longer time I am travelling on a budget, which means I can't have just everything I desire at that time. Sometimes I save money on accommodation, sometimes on food (but rarely - that doesn't mean that I am hungry, but I choose my food depending on the price but it still has to be goooood), sometimes on the activities I do and sometimes I just don't have a beer although it would feel good. But beer is not so cheap so sometimes I just skip it:).
9. Enjoying life without much internet!
China is perfect to turn out the outer world as you cannot use Facebook, Gmail or anything related to Google. At first it brought a few difficulties, especially regarding my email which I need, so I just created a new email :). I could use internet just seldom and a lot of other pages are also blocked, but I needed just a few - to search a little about China travel and Agoda for booking. It felt good to turn out the "outer world" as this way you focus more on the present moment. Viber worked really rarely and when I could hear a familiar Slovene word after 3 weeks of listening to Chinese, English, French (which I practised a lot during my training and just before my travel one of my decisions was to improve my French, so yeah, this was something I had wished for and got :)) and German. Now I have internet access everywhere I go (I bought a Thai sim card) and I have to try not to use it too much because it is usually the distraction from the present moment :).
