A Thank You, Plans, Leaving and Arriving Day (England to China, May 10th 2007)

A Thank You, Plans, Leaving and Arriving Day (England to China, May 10th 2007)


I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that saw me days before I left so as they could wish me happy travels.

A real heart felt thank you to Mum, Onna, Yuki, Peter, Simon, Charlotte, Claire, James, Michael & Merlene, Enrique, Kemi & Petra and everybody from work, Charmaine, Lucja, Tim, Vikash, Ken, Otaniyen & Janine, Amina and Lodi that came to my staff leaving meal and chipped in for my lovely 27oz steak. It was gorgeous.

A thank you to all my wonderful clients, work colleagues and anyone i may have forgot to mention.

Plans

I have two countries that i want to visit. China to study kung-fu and Thailand to train in Muay Thai. Apart from these two i really have no idea which other countries i want to see or what i'm going to do when i get there. I have no idea how long i will travel for either. I will simply go with the flow of life and see what it wants to show me.

Leaving Day

Leaving day was emotionally a lot harder than I imagined it would be. The whole day was a struggle, though for most of the time it seemed like any other day but with spells of tears. Yes, tears (what!).

Family photo.

It was Mum, Onna (sister), Peter (friend) and Yuki (girl friend) who came to the airport to see me off. I was in a very relaxed mood considering i was about to embark on a life changing journey that involved leaving everything i've grown to love and am comfortable with. At one moment I almost fell asleep in the café where we were eating. I sometimes become very relaxed when a situation has an emotional or volatile charge to it.

We arrived at departures and i gave everyone a hug I had to look up and away from their faces to stop myself from crying.

Whilst in the waiting room, the airport bus and in the plane, thoughts of, am I really doing the right thing kept passing through my mind. My life is filled with such beautiful people that I knew I would be feeling like this so I was a little prepared for it. When the thoughts were overwhelming I just quietened my mind and knew I was doing the right thing.
Whilst in mid flight I read a letter Yuki had written for me. It was beautiful and touching; thank you Yuki.

Arriving

The flight was about 9hrs from London to Beijing. Which was not too bad but Air China do not play movies which was a little disappointing. Had to wait for 6 hours at the airport for my transfer flight to Yantai.

Whilst walking around I had the feeling of being in an illusion and was slightly disorientated. Though I did wake up when I sat in a tea shop at the airport and asked for the price of a pot of green tea which the waitress replied 180 Yuan which roughly equates to 12 GBP. How lucky I felt. I had found the most expensive pot of tea in the world in an average looking establishment, in an airport, in China. So I showed her the $6 I had and she said I could have 2 cups of tea. It wasn't bad.

Even on the airplane to Yantai I felt a little disorientated and light headed. The flight was about an hour long and arrived at Yantai airport about 45min late. I was half expecting the translator from the academy that I booked to pick me up, not to be there. But he was. A bright faced, enthusiastic, smiling young man by the name of rollend greeted me at arrivals. Along side a very grumpy looking taxi driver.

On the same flight as me was another student of the name Ori, from America. The translator seemed shocked that I only brought a relatively small back pack. We waited for Ori to get the rest of his, vast in comparison, luggage.

Once in the car we had a q&a session, which Rollend seemed to be the instigator of. He was telling us about the mountains around the academy and the national park that is also close by. I just kept quiet and listened. Ori was very pleasant and talkative.

We arrived at the academy about an hour later which was around 10pm. Rollend and one of the Shaolin masters showed us around facilities which was very quiet as everyone was asleep. We were then shown our room. Went to sleep shortly after that but not before setting the alarm for 5:20am.

The whole day was a blurry, disorientating, exciting and a completely surreal moment in my life.