I asked Sit to write my name in Chinese characters the other night. I can't replicate them here, obviously, but in Mandarin, my name is He (lotus flower) Li (pretty). "Li" is common in girls' names. In Cantonese, I'd be "pretty light." Which has a kind of pleasing similarity to the English meaning of my name, which is "holy."
It's not bad, but I could do better. A friend of mine who actually speaks Mandarin got himself named "Start at the Source," with the help of one of his teachers. It's pretty cool and suits him well.
And Sit asked me to house-sit for them again, in exchange for some private sword training. And how! He also said he'd teach me the second half of the longsword form this year. This makes me rather smug, because he hardly teaches the sword form anymore. "It's too hard," he said in class, when someone asked about it. "Nobody can learn it. Everybody quit."
Not me. I may not be progressing fast, but I'm still slogging along. And I'm finally healthy enough to be practicing again, so I'm looking forward to class on Saturday.
2 comments:
I forget what my name is exactly in Chinese, but the first part is also Li (Li-sa). Which reminds me that I owe that friend an email from eons ago.
Kudos on the sword training. I had one small lesson with a saber once and the next day my arm felt like was going to fall off.
Earlier this week I went to my first "hot yoga" class. I've been practicing yoga for about 8 years now, though admittedly my practice has fallen off in the last year. I'm trying to get back into it, but I can't find a Vinyasa class near me, so I checked out this "hot" class, where the room is heated to 90 degrees. Wow! It was fantastic!
I am curiously intrigued by the concept of Hot Yoga. Generally I am indifferent to yoga, because I have an excercise fetish of my own that doesn't leave room for much else, but Hot Yoga intrigues me because it's so extreme. There's a school about four blocks from where I live that has classes and when I go to the hardware store I always crane my neck to see if anything interesting is happening in there. I guess it would be more similiar to actually practicing yoga in India, as opposed to doing it in air-conditioned rooms.
Re: arms falling off--Yes, when we first did the broadsword (sabre) form a few years back it did some serious strain to my right arm--not to mention my neck and rib muscles on that side. Ditto for when we bring out the long staves (staffs) each spring--I always go through a few weeks of aching triceps and deltoids. In fact my body has undergone some serious restructuring as a result of the training. I had to buy a whole new set of bras last fall, with more generous bands, because my back and shoulders have broadened.
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