Big Plans For the Coming Year! (and wushu vids)

As you know, I have been a little on the quiet side with my blogging as of late.  I’ve even blogged about how I’m lamenting over my lack of blogging (and training), which is a little funny when I think about it.

But now that my future plans are “official” I can talk a little bit more about what is going on in my future over the next year.

You see, part of the problem with my current situation is that my work load and current obligations don’t really allow for a consistent amount of training.  Often I will have to drop my training for a period of time while I travel to meet a client in Hong Kong or spend a few all-nighters finishing up a project.  This doesn’t really bode well with me as I am the type of person that, if I am going to do something, then I really want to focus some energy and attention on it and not spread my attention across too many things.

In other words, I’m not all that in to multi-tasking.  I prefer to focus on 2 or 3 main priorities in my life than spread myself too thin with 10 different projects.

So, in looking at the various alternatives that I had available to me I realized that there was one opportunity which I’ve been around for the past 5 years which I’ve never really explored.

Teaching English.

Now, to be honest I’ve had my reservations about doing something like this.  It took me a long time to get comfortable coaching wushu, and I had zero experience teaching English aside from a few conversation partners and some English practice sessions with Jet and his English teacher back in L.A.  I figured the best thing to do would be to try it out in a controlled environment to see how I felt about it.

So I scouted around for some light teaching opportunities.  I put up notices that I was available for English conversation practice at some of the coffee shops near universities and even replied to some requests for part-time teachers.  One request was for someone to teach twice a week at a primary school in Gao Xin.  Well, I thought I could at least check it out and see what it was like by watching someone teach.

But when I got to the school I was told that I would be teaching that day!  There I was in front of 50 3rd grade students with zero classroom teaching experience and no lesson plan.  Thank goodness that Ruhi was able to quickly give me some suggestions on the phone before I stepped in to the room.  But it was certainly a stressful 2 classes.

Coincidentally, on that day I also made contact with a private school in Xi’an that was opening up and they provided me some neat opportunities to learn a bit more about teaching as well.

And finally I was able to help out with a class at a local university teaching Oral English once a week.

Those combined experience made me realize that this was something that I not only was interested in doing, but that it was something I actually was enjoying as well.

So I applied for a teaching position at Xi’an International Studies University (XISU), one of the top Foreign Language studies universities in China.  Actually it has a very good reputation and probably the only other language school that would be better on my resume would be Bei Wai in Beijing.

But that aside, it is also a good situation because we get on-campus housing, which allows us to both save some money and takes a couple hours off of Ruhi’s commute, since this is also the school where she is getting her Master’s degree in Chinese studies at the moment.  Plus, to be honest, I sort of like that side of town better.

So, what does this have to do with wushu training?  Thats an excellent question.

I knew that, if I was able to get this teaching position, that it would actually free me up so that I would not have to take on so many projects at once.  And, as I mentioned, taking on so many projects has been hampering my ability to get any exercise and training in to my daily routine.

Come the fall I would be able to teach in the mornings and spend my afternoons training.  I could keep two of my maintenance clients and focus on providing them with good service and my life would suddenly become free to study Chinese, spend time making some Friends, hanging out with my wife a bit more, less traveling to Hong Kong every month, and other important things like that.

But in order to get from where I am now (inundated with projects) to where I want to be (see the previous paragraph) I would need to get ALL my non-essential projects finished up and out the door as quickly as possible.

In fact, I’m planning a trip with Ruhi back to the U.S. in August for 6 weeks.  And during that time I am really hoping to be able to enjoy myself and not be constantly stressed out about work.

So, my current focus is on getting everything done.  All my projects (except for those 2 clients).  And to do it all by the end of July.  For the sake of my future ability to train in wushu, I will sacrifice the following 3 – 4 months without any training so that I can clear out these obligations.

And this is why I haven’t been training very much lately.  I have been trying to focus on getting these things out of the way — on getting all of these projects finished and completed.  And to be honest I still have a long way to go.  I still have a lot of things on my plate that need clearing off.  So, for the time-being at least, you are still going to have a bit of silence with regards to my training in wushu.

I will still try to blog whenever possible, but for the next 2 months you will have to be patient with me while I work on taking care of a few loose ends so that, come the late summer months and in to the fall, you will be able to enjoy some high quality blogging and a lot more wushu videos and information for the coming year.

I was waiting until now to write about all of this because, right now I’m in Hong Kong and I just received my work visa for my new job teaching English at XISU.  Now that I am officially on my way towards the coming year’s plan to get my priorities re-aligned, I felt it was okay to share all of this with you guys out there in the blog-o-sphere.

So, there you have it.  To celebrate this, I finally posted up some of the videos I took at my last training with the Shaanxi Wushu Team back on May 15.  They were preparing for an upcoming Compulsory forms tournament and you can check out their forms here:

And finally, here is a wushu training vlog that I made when Qi Peng Hui invited me to eat at their cafeteria.  It was my first time there so I thought I would put it on video.  Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. Returning to Wushu: The 40 Year Old Version – Week 1
2. Returning to Wushu: The 40 Year Old Version – Week 2