A Warrior's Thougts on the Martial Arts

Disclaimer : Pictures and links are to follow soon. Also, most of that text was written when I was still in Clearwater, so half the trip is not yet covered.  On December 24th I hopped onto the plane and took off for the US. Just as with [China last year] , we're not staying in one location but rather go from place to place. So far, the journey took us from Miami to Key West, Key Largo, the Everglades, Okeechobee, Orlando, Saint Augustine, Crystal River and now, Clearwater. Just before the trip, I strained my right calf, so during the first week of the trip, Training was pretty much out of question. By I was more or less pain free at the beginning of the second week, however, I went back to business. First, I had the opportunity to train with [Phil] at the Renzo Gracie Jiu Jitsu Academy in Crystal River. The class was No-Gi, which obviously is a topic of special interest to me. Phil had is go over a couple of his bread and butter moves, such as the cross coke to...

So we've just boarded the train from Beijing to Xi'An. It's been busy 6 days... Edit: No, we're not. By the time I wrote this, we were in the train. Now, the first day here in Xi'An has already passed. More on that next time, though... Beijing is an impressive city. Not only is it huge, fast and busy (not to forget: hot at this time of the year), it's also a city of contrast. East meets west here, old meets new, socialist meets capitalist... China truly is an emerging country and a unique one to that, I believe. It'll be quite interesting to look back in a couple more years and compare the situation then to what we've experienced during that week. When we landed, we were both pretty jet-lagged. In Vienna, we've boarded the plane at around 12. At 3pm, we stopped in Helsinki. Then, at 6pm (local time) we boarded our flight to Beijing, which landed at around 7:00am (again, local time). Neither of us had any sleep during the flight. Sitting ...