Aikido summer!

Starting from this weekend, I should have some more Aikido weekend activity during July, visiting also a new place (both as tourist and as Aikido practitioner): Wuhan, 武汉, capital of Hubei province, Hankou, 汉口, district.

I met Aikido people from Wuhan dojo in Beijing, during Irie sensei seminar. Very nice people, friendly, and interested in practicing together. So I will go there soon, and I am looking forward to attend their classes. The actual communication is a little limited, but I do not think I will teach there. They are an established club with a few black belts, I think. I just want to go and make new Aikido connections in China.

The boy in the picture is the main instructor: he told me his English is limited, but this does not scare me anymore.. Aikido side! If I even managed to teach to people with almost zero English, I can certainly attend classes in Chinese, as I did already! Even without glasses! 🙂 It means I will sit front also in Wuhan!!

Anyway, I’ll start with a Saturday morning (tomorrow? today? how to call it?) 4:34am (!!) train to Hangzhou, 2 days there this time. We set the starting time for the classes at 4pm to 8pm, given the common heat!

But my friends wonder if I’ll survive in Wuhan since it is one of the hottest places in China!! The classes on weekends there are at 13-14:30 and 20-21:30, both on Saturdays and Sundays!! Good thing is that Wuhan is only 2 hours by fast train from here. So with enough energies to crawl back to the railway station, I will be able to sleep in my bed and not on another train!!

After Wuhan I plan another visit to Hangzhou and maybe Shanghai.. back to Norwegian traditions of traveling almost every weekend.. 🙂

Birthday Perfetto :-)

It works in Italian, “compleanno Perfetto”, meaning I had a very nice birthday dinner at Perfetto restaurant here in Hefei together with a few friends..

The people in the restaurant knew I was going there to celebrate my birthday and they prepared one of the private rooms in an extremely lovely way!

That was a surprise!

FUNNY THING OF THE DAY – Since it was a Western birthday, I sort of forced my guests also to eat some cake at the end of the dinner, not during the dinner, when Chinese randomly mix sweet and salty food servings.. according only to the order they were reserved.. But since it was my night, I obliged to get a cake with the Italian coffee.. in the proper moment of the meal!!