Worldbuilders

I figured I'd make a quick post about Worldbuilders.  Worldbuilders is a charity that I give to, at least last year and this year.  The charity supports Heifer International, which specializes in giving poor familys all the things that they need.  Like it won't just give them free food, it gives them a goat so they can get milk, and cheese, and other such things they need to sustain themselves.  Anyways, I think it is a good charity.

Worldbuilders then is a raffle.  For every $10 you donate, you get a raffle ticket.  I donated $50 and so I get 5 raffle tickets.  What you win are rare books, dvd collections, lots of signed stuff.  The main genre are fantasy, science fiction, urban fantasy, and a lot of other such things.  Basically a lot of what I read, as well as what a lot of you, my family reads as well.  There are lots and lots of items in the raffle, so there is a very good chance you will actually win something.  That is what I really like about it.  Last year I won a book autographed by like 20 authors.  Pretty cool I think.

Anyways, So I encourage everyone to donate.  If you win a book that you don't like, I"m sure we can share them around.  And honestly if you don't win anything at all, then you are still giving to a great cause.  So a win win all around.

Update

As Sara so eloquently pointed out, it too has been a month since my last post, and that one not being too exciting 

But this last weekend was a fun one.  I managed to test for my 3rd degree Brown Belt on Friday night.  It was a very fun test, it was a great group.  Though it lasted from 8:00 pm to 12:00 am.  For those keeping track, this is the penultimate belt before black.  Next time I test it will be for black.  Which, will at the earliest be at least 3 months away most likely.  But I don't know for sure when they will think me to be ready.

After the belt test I managed to get about 4 hours of sleep before having to wake up for the Hot Chocolate 15 k race.  It was a very cold morning, and they ended up delaying the race for an hour... But I finished!  And this on little sleep and when I was already physically tired from the test the previous night lol.  After the race there was some chocolate fondue and some Hot Chocolate provided by Ghiradelli.  Talk about a fun way to end a race lol.  For those interested the results are here if you look at the list Rachel did an amazing job running an 8:23 mile, and placing overall 1659.  Myself I didn't do quite as well, running a 10:04 minute mile and coming in  6061 place overall.  Don't hold it against me, I'm convinced I could have been solidly under a ten minute mile had I, you know not started the race sleep deprived and tired lol.

Update:

Some pictures from the Run HERE

Christmas list 2011

I'll throw together a quick Christmas list and I will try to update it periodically.

Clothes:

Basiclay some work clothes, not too many though.... I don't have any specific in mind. But keep in mind I do not iron, and I wear jeans to work 90% of the time.

Sizes - Shirts, either a M or a L depending on the shirt....

Pants, usually 34x32

Fun Stuff:
Star Wars the Complete Saga - Blu Ray
Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Wireless Headphones

MOTOACTV Media player

Radeon HD 6850

Intel Core i7

Motherboard

I'll try to update the list as I go... But for now that is enough to get started probably.

Shaolin Temple

This will be my last post on the Shaolin Temple. Which if you havn't picked up was the part of my trip that I have the fondest memories of, as well as what I think was the coolest thing in the world. Being able to train Kung Fu at the Shaolin Temple itself.

The trip was a combination of people from my school here Potomac Kempo, and Shaolin Studios. Overlall there was just over twenty of us. At the temple we were taught a Chinese Straight Sword form called Bohdi Dharma's Sword. It's very long, and very traditional. The monk who taught us, and who can be seen in the middle of the group photo was named Shi Tan Ti, a warrior monk.

So an interesting fact. At the Shaolin Temple, there are two types of monks, the normal monks, and then warrior monks. You do not need to be Buddhist in order to be a warrior monk. So you can actually have quite a few students who are just warrior monks without them taking the vows of the normal monks. Also, while generally speaking, Buddhist monks are vegetarian, Warrior monks are actually allowed to eat a single egg a day. Presumably because, you know, they work out for a living.

The temple itself was quite nice. And, there are lots of tourists. Generaly speaking they charge at the gate for people to be able to look around the temple.

One of the more famous areas is the pagoda forest.

Each of the pagoda's is like a grave marker. After a famous monk, or perhaps abbot dies, they put one up. Generally speaking the larger the pagoda, the more well liked that particular monk was. There were some that didn't even come up to your knees, a real jerk I'm sure. The funny, or, perhaps sad, thing about the pagoda forest is that it is considered a national area now, meaning that no new monks can be buried there.

As they have whole sections open to tourists, there were kung fu demonstrations that you could attend, as well as vendors selling various items, including Chinese herbs and lotions.

One of the sad things about modern Chinese history was that Chairman Mao had this thing that he called the "cultural revolution". Which basicaly meant out with the old, and in with the new. During this "cultural revolution" a lot of historical and religious places and items were destroyed. This included the Shaolin temple itself being burned down at one point, and monks being persecuted. That is why if you look through the pictures, all the buildings look relatively new, and not a thousand years old. The buildings were rebuilt, but who knows how much knowledge of kung fu was lost when these warrior monks were killed or sent into hiding?

Anyways as I said above, the monk we trained with was named Shi Tan Ti, which is his monk name, and represents his "generation" of descent from Bohdi Dharma. He is a warrior monk.

Also as I mentioned earlier, Warrior monks do not need to take the Buddhist vows, and what not. So what you end up with is a lot of these warrior monks, who go there to the temple to train. Then a lot of the best of these students, rather than stick around and become a monk in truth, and train other generations, they instead use it as a stepping stone to become a movie star. The next Jet Li if you will. I'm not sure how I feel about that to be honest.

Anyways, below are some more pictures of the Shaolin Temple. I suggest you look through them, as it truly was a very beautiful place.

Bodhi Dharma's Cave

The second of the Four days we went to Bodhi Dharma's cave. Bodhi Dharma was a Indian Warrior prince who abdicated his throne in order to move to China and pursue Buddhism. The legend has it, he traveled up the cliffs near the Shaolin Temple to a cave, in that cave he meditated for 9 years and attained enlightenment. When he came down he founded Zen Buddhism, and established Chinese Kung Fu. So he attained enlightenment, and is the father of both Zen Buddhism and all of Chinese Martial Arts. As Mr. Santillo says, he's the classic over achiever.

The second of the four days at the Shoalin Temple a group of just three of us, Mr. Santillo, Dianne, and Myself took the hike up to visit Bodhi Dharma's cave. It was up the mountain.

Do you see that small statue type thing at the top of the hill there, with the stair case leading up? Yeah we went up there. It was a lot of stairs....

The cave has since had a shrine built around it. And is actually located just below where that statue is. I wish I could say I got a good look inside. But I didn't sadly. There were people meditating there, and I rather thought it would be rude to go all touristy on them while they were attempting to achieve enlightenment....

After the cave we climbed higher, to get to the spot where the statue was. There was a great view up there, and you can see the Shaolin Temple off in the distance.

And of course, here is a close up of that statue that was way up there. I can only assume it is meant to represent an elightened Bodhi Dharma.

So that's Bodhi Dharma's cave! Pretty cool I thought. A tiring but rather worthwhile hike.

Interlude Part 2

Last weekend Rachel and I participated in a karate Tournament. We both managed to come home with some chunks of plastic! I got 4th in weapons (I was competing against super good black belts!), 3rd in bunkai (forms with people punching in), 3rd in kempos (short techniques), 2nd in forms, and then 1st in sparring. Rachel got 2nd in weapons (she was in a different division than me...) and 4rth in sparring.

If you are interested there are pictures that were professionally taken at this link. You can view any of the pictures. I'm in adults weapons, and red belt divisions. Also some random pictures of me in the kids photos, where I was helping judge. From this link you can also purchase any pictures that you like. So mom, you can update those photos I gave you if you like!

After the tournament Rachel and I went to see Les Miserables at the Kennedy Center, which was pretty awesome. I don't see too many musicals, but for some reason hearing dialog sang took some getting used to...

Cliffs of Shaolin

Here is where things got interesting. You see, we were supposed to go from Xi'an to some other city that I can't spell or remember really. Namely because we didn't end up making it. Supposedly there was a monsoon, meaning our flight was canceled. The result was that we got the chance to go to the Shoalin Temple a day or two early. The total time was 4 days of training at the temple, which was awesome! The training at the temple I"ll most likely talk about a bit later. But basically it was we got there at about 8:30, trained for a couple hours, broke for lunch, and then came back around 2:30ish to train for a few more hours every day. In between we had about 4 hours. The first day we decided to go to the cliffs of Shaolin.

To get there, we picked up a random man with a van that just happened to be willing to drive us where ever we could manage to explain to him using mainly hand gestures. The trick was, there was 8 of us going, and, the van wasn't really that big.
The results were amusing. Nevertheless we managed to get where we intended to go, and it was a gondola. We took the gondola up the cliffs and mountains to the top, where there was a trail. The trail was supposedly 12 miles long, one way, at the end was another Buddhist temple. Sadly we didn't have time to make it all the way there, but we did marvel at the beauty of the area.

According to Master Williams, the one who led us here, there are warrior monks from the Shaolin Temple that *run* to the temple and back every morning. Yes, 24 miles, pretty much a marathon, in some pretty hilly (pretty sure uphill both ways) path along the side of a cliff. I'm not sure I believe it, but I want to.

Anyways, not much more to say about these cliffs, besides that they were amazing, and 2 of our group members was afraid of heights lol. I hope you enjoy the pictures! There are a lot of them, because they were pretty cool.