I took my time the past few days getting to know the city – hitting a few tourist sights, but mainly spending my time walking around, wandering, exploring. Also, I’ve been making sure I’m taking enough time to rest, in this time of transition. I think I drove my body to the ground at the end in Mongolia, not wanting to rest too much for fear of not taking advantage of my time there. This is my fourth day of self-prescribed rest, and I still have gnarly knots and sore muscles!
Tomorrow I will head over to the WuQiao International Circus Festival in a city a couple hours away. I will be there for a few days, staying with a troupe of contortionists I trained with in Mongolia that are there to compete! Afterwards, my lovely parents are coming to visit! I will take a short “vacation” from my grant to travel down south with them for a little bit before heading back to Beijing, getting settled at my school, and starting training!
I’m very excited for training at my school here: today I took the subway over to visit the campus. A Canadian student was able to take a couple of hours to show me around campus. My first impression was “it’s a real school!” It’s a gated campus with a basketball court, a green lawn, fountains, statues, and multiple buildings for academic classes, administration and dorms. Then, of course, are the training spaces. I should have counted how many different rooms and gyms there were for training, at least ten or twelve. There is an aerial gym, a few large gyms, one professional space where the acrobatic troupe rehearses their shows, and a few handfuls of other smaller rooms for tumbling, handstands, contortion, dance, and juggling. The equipment seems a little faded and the paint on the wall is peeling here and there, but it was still so inspiring!
I was able to talk to a few of the students, and it seems like the structure of the school is pretty unorganized for international students, but everyone is still enjoying their time regardless. I will be able to choose my disciplines and I will be assigned a coach for each. It sounds like a lot of the classes have been unsatisfying for the international students, but everyone says that the flexibility and handstand training is incredible. Since that’s what I’m here for, I lucked out! They also say that the bounce jugglers are fantastic, so I’m going to continue training in this new interest of mine!
Talking with the other students about their contortion classes made me think, “well, maybe if I just stretch a little bit I can still train contortion,” and I immediately had to rein that in. It’s going to be hard to commit to resting my back when I’m surrounded by people stretching and training, but it’s obvious that that’s what I need! I need to be just as disciplined with resting as I am with training.
Anyway, I’m very excited to be here! I’m enjoying my time in the city, taking my time to build a relationship with Beijing and repair my relationship with my body, and I’m happy to look forward to a new phase of training.
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Writing this update about Beijing makes me realize that I didn’t really do justice to my experience in Mongolia in my blog posts! I didn’t write about my time visiting the nomadic herding family, I didn’t pen any characterizations of the different studios I trained in, and I didn’t update about the bounce juggling performance (in short: it was fun! No bounce balls ended up in the wedding cake and no vodka bottles were knocked over. Success! I was also able to stay and watch the rest of the wedding. By the end of the night, I was dancing with my coach, had magically become best friend’s with her aunt, and had someone take a picture with me because they thought I looked exotic).
I don’t quite have the energy to do a retrospective blog post, but feel free to email me if you have any questions or want any more details! I can’t actually access Blogspot now that I’m in China (my family is posting this for me), but I can still see your comments and I love them!
I’ll post a bunch of Mongolian photos with this one, to make up for my lack of narrative!
The lady on the far right is my Mongolian coach! This is a picture from the '80s when she was performing in Switzerland.
Dulguun and I getting ready for our bounce juggling gig!
Practicing "god's hands," traditional Mongolian contortion choreography. This choreography mimics traditional Buddhist statues, specifically of the taras. (That's my coach in the back!)
A training pic
A group picture, taken after I taught our last English lesson! (I taught English to the kids from the studio every weekend day - it was so cute! My last day at training, I noticed Oga, the 4 year old with the pigtails in the photo, was over in the corner doing her sit-ups, and she was counting them aloud in English! It was a moment of teacher pride, for sure.)
I learned to milk goats with the nomadic family! I finally got the two-hand rhythm down, but I would never get as speedy as those women!
The inside of one of the family's yurts. One of the granddaughters came to visit from the city, "Oh yeah, she's a contortionist," and here's the proof! Really, it's just that common...
Out in the countryside. Yes, it is actually that beautiful...
