Wednesday, February 2:

I am really, really frustrated by my Internet situation here. It’s been a week of, “yeah, it should be fixed tomorrow.” I bet they’d be a bit quicker fixing it if their rooms had the same trouble. I can’t watch movies, can’t download, or upload, anything, and, most of all, I can’t use Skype. I’m trying not to let it occupy my mind, but I ought be able to talk to my family when I want to. I don’t think there’s much chance of resolving the issue today, or even in the next few days, though, because it’s Chinese New Year’s (Spring Festival if you’d prefer) and everybody is celebrating. I almost spoke to Daniel just a moment ago, but he’s entertaining visitors and I don’t think it was a good time.

I worked on the Mantis master’s training plan this morning. I got thirty laps (Master said 30 would be alright at first, then 50 later on), all the squats, about one hundred and forty push-ups, and around two hundred and seventy sit-ups done. I say “around” because the last few sets were not proper executions of the exercises. I may try to squeeze in a few more later on today, but it's no use trying at the moment. It just won’t happen. I am not looking forward to repeating this, even more diligently, for the next four days, but I suppose I’ll try. Then it’ll be Monday and I’ll train with the Master, I’m not sure how I’ll like it not having any rest. There’s a different way of thinking about exercise here in China. In the states they’d tell you to do only as many sets as you can with proper form, but here they care more for how “many” you push yourself through. I’m almost positive this isn’t ideal for building muscle, but perhaps that is not the main goal of the conditioning.

Today Daniel’s mother in law fed me a hot pepper without warning me.  It was all in good fun, she’s very kind to me. Woah, here she comes now, she just walked in to see what I was doing on the computer, but she can’t read English. I have my door wide open with the cloth propped up on the door (we have these heavy cloths that hang outside our doors. For more insulation I guess?) so it’s not like she barged in. It’s the oddest thing, this morning it was freezing, more so than the last few days, but this afternoon is practically balmy. Birds are fluttering about in the bushes, and the snow is all but melted away.