Thursday, July 24, 2008

Swords, Chinese Sports, & Acupuncture

As the countdown to returning home continues...


We had our second Kung Fu lesson today. Our professor Mr. Mei Lingqi gave us a couple of demonstrations of various techniques...including the following one with the sword...pretty cool!!

We were then given a tour of the entire gymnasium...which is a more literal term for them than in the US...where we usually mean a basketball court (this gym didn't even have a basketball court)...there were four of what we would call a GYM...in this gymnasium... one for TABLE TENNIS (ping pong)...it was huge...amazing! One for gymnastics...again...amazing...and one for the Kung Fu and shadow boxing. Then the upstairs of the gymnasium was an open indoor track used for track (all track events) and for indoor football (soccer). There was also a HUGE rock climbing wall...probably two stories tall at least.

You can see the rock climbing wall here...the top of it.


The one thing we can't get over though is that you can smoke EVERYWHERE just about in China...including the ashtrays sitting all around for your use after a workout...or while on break from a workout!

During our afternoon break I ran to McDonald's, did a little shopping, then did my own laundry in the bathroom sink for the first time! Then I did like everyone else in our dorm/hotel...I put it out to dry in the hallway windows...haha. All up and down the hallways you will see the laundry drying..."personal" stuff included....again 1.6 billion....changes a lot of things.

Then it was time for our second class of the day...Chinese Acupuncture... after the lesson we went to the lab and some of the crew had it done on them...I'm in pretty good health (and after the clinic visit the other day...decided I didn't need MORE Chinese medicine...sooooo I passed).

My roommate John was one of the guinea pigs

We also had our first REAL REAL REAL blue sky today...which is weird because we saw some of the WORST air quality last night on crossing the bridge at sunset...it was hurting our eyes it was so bad. So the blue skies and low humidity made it a very nice day in Wuhan!


(all images and video on this day's blog are by John Stephany)

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