September 22, 2011

September 12^th, marked one of the larger holidays in China: Zhong Qiu Jie, or the Mid-Autumn Festival. Here at the academy, this holiday is indicative of a few things: a day off, an enormous meal, entertaining performances from the different classes, and of course the endless consumption of 'mooncakes'.

We prepared non-stop for our performance this year, determined to surprise everyone with something that promised to be very entertaining: a Matrix-esque fight. This not only included choreography and a lot of group cooperation, but also a lot of hands on creative work led by our handsome architect guru, Corey. After many different ideas on the performance and concepts for how to make it work, we finally had it. Everyone but Louis and Simon (they were in colorful outfits as the two fighters) were covered literally from head to toe in black and stood in front of a black tarp that of course allowed them to move around unnoticed by viewers, while at the same time controlling the false legs attached to Louis and Simon, flying weapons, and of course a flaming fire-ball; giving the allusion to the crowd that Louis and Simon were both floating, flying, and performing physically impossible stretching movements as they fought.

The entire week prior to the festival it rained almost non-stop. The rain finally stopped for Monday, but remained cloudy. We were lucky enough to be able to have a large dinner outside behind the school and had just started the performances when it began to rain. Si Ban (the fourth class) was lucky enough to do their larger performance outside before it rained and we had to rush to set up before the rain got heavy.

Once the rain started, everyone packed in to the indoor training hall at the academy for the rest of the performances and celebration. This year was the first time that the short term foreign students created a performance for Zhong Qiu Jie and everyone was very entertained. We did our best for our performance and everyone enjoyed it so much that we were asked to perform it again.

After a mostly mild Summer, Autumn is here and the weather has certainly begun changing. Aside from the endless rain, it is also starting to be much more comfortable during the day and noticeably cooler at night, and thankfully the mosquitoes are disappearing. This year, many return students have come for their 3^rd or 4^th time to the academy, and some for their 5^th and 6^th. We are all really happy to be able to live in, promote, and sustain a productive, friendly, hardworking, and diverse community at the academy. A community that becomes bigger every year and spreads Master Yuan's teachings around the world. Check back in soon for news about Master Yuan's trip to Thailand!