Yesterday was back to the same ol' routine: class and clinicals. Our class was on Chi therapy which was sweeeet. But again very different than western medicine.
For clinicals I was assigned to Wu Shu, a sport that I had never even heard of before coming here. There are two types of Wu Shu: combat and performance. The team here only does the performance style and it is an amazing sport. The movements are so controlled and require a great deal of strength. They use spears, rods, and swords in their routines and it is beautiful to watch. We helped treat the athletes before practice and then enjoyed watching practice. They also taught us some basic moves with the rods which was comical... it definitely took me a while to catch on! I'll post a video later so you can all watch and laugh.
Today after our manual therapy class, we went to the National Judo Championship in Taipei. Judo is similar to wrestling, which they don't have in Taiwan. We were trying to explain to them about wrestling so when we finally figured out how to translate "wrestling" they were envisioning WWF. This made for a great conversation!
The championship was a 5 day long competition and today was the last day, so we got to see the best of the best. We sat with the athletic trainers and they enlightened us on the sport of Judo while we were watching the matches. We learned about the rules, the common injuries, the injury time during matches, etc. I'm becoming more and more enthralled with martial arts!
Tonight we went to Taipei to visit Taipei 101, one of the tallest buildings in the world and one of the Seven Wonders of Engineering. It was cool to see the city from the top of the building. The building is supported by a giant steel ball that works sort of like a pendulum (excuse me for not knowing technical terms - physics was never my forte) and there is a room where you can see this "giant ball". Dad, you would have loved learning about the engineering shtuff!
The Dragonboat Festival is tomorrow, which is a national holiday, so we will not have class for the rest of the week. Look forward to posts and pictures about the festival - I'm sure it is going to be an awesome adventure!
