I went to my first kung fu class yesterday afternoon with Bleisha, Fujii, and a group of students, some of which were from Fujii's Japanese language class. After we had all arrived at the track where the class was to be held, the first thing we did was take a lap with the hundreds of other students who were also there to take various PE courses. We finished our lap and then got into lines to wait for instruction. Our teacher was a man in his forties who would stand at the front of the class and demonstrate the movements for us while explaining them in Chinese. I could understand some but not all of what he said so I stood at the back and just tried to imitate what the other students were doing. This was the third or fourth kung fu class so I already had to try and figure out what the students have been learning for the past couple weeks. Given that I was making so many mistakes, and that I was a lanky white guy trying to do kung fu, a lot of the students were having a good time watching me. I can see how it must have been quite funny. I finally started to get the hang of it a little bit and the students in the other classes had to pay attention to their own activities so things started to calm down.
But our kung fu class ended up being a lot of fun. We were basically just learning how to do a long series of movements involving punching, kicking, stomping, and lunging. We would learn one part, then another, and then another. Then at the end, we tried to put all the parts together. The class lasted for an hour and a half and they have it every Thursday afternoon. I think I will try to attend next week's class.
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