Kung Fu seminar goodness

I am mighty tired today, and I blame my long (but fun) weekend of Kung Fu seminars. The theory was three two hour seminars per day, though theory and reality did not quite mix this weekend. Regardless, on Saturday I learned Mantis basics and the Wu Tan Chui form (which I hopefully spelled correctly). Saturday was the more physically challenging day, as Wu Tan Chui is a very energetic form with lots of jump spin kicks, fast moves, and intricate mantis strikes. The form itself is actually quite fun, but I'm not sure I'll ever get the one jump uppercut in the middle of it quite right. The tiny Master Sun was an energetic old man whose english was so broken I understood nearly seven of the words he spoke for the day: "Dis a good", "Dis a maybe" and "Dis a not so good". He was amazingly fast and agile and somehow capable of making really entertaining jokes even with his tenuous grasp of English.

Sunday was a totally different ball of wax. Initially we did a southern White Crane form the name of which I can't remember for the life of me, but I think it translated into "The Three Stratigists". Oddly enough, this Kung Fu form was closer to my style of Karate than it was to the Kung Fu I study at that school. Rather than being big and fast, this style is very small and not all that fast and much more interested in internal style power generation. Far be it from me to suggest that it was anything but effective as I wouldn't want to get hit by anybody who studies this style exclusively. It was nice to take a seminar that my Karate training gave me a distinct advantage for once too.

Lastly we learned something I've always wanted to learn: fan! That's right, fan. It may sound like a truly ridiculous idea to think of a fan as a weapon, but having studied the thing for around two hours I have to say that it's remarkably more effective than I would have previously given it credit for. It's also rather fun to play with as you get to make a lot of noise, whip this fan around in entertaining directions, and at one point you throw the fan up into the air only to snatch it out of air and end up in a very cool stance. I think the fan, while by far the hardest thing I did all weekend, was the most fun to learn in the end. I'll be practicing all three of the forms I learned this weekend fairly incessantly till I feel I have an appropriate grasp of them, but I'll try just a little harder with the fan. Fun, cool, and makes a lot of noise? Winner.

In conclusion, I hurt. I hurt a lot. I didn't even get hit at all this weekend. Hopefully this will be a nice prep for my stupid test that I don't want to take so that I'll survive the experience without considering suicide or quitting.