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May 31, 2001

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* Shao Lin Temple *

        While in China a had the special pleasure of getting to go deep into
mainland China and visit the Shao Lin Temple. This is a picture of the front
entrance.

    That's right, the actual place where the art of Kung Fu came from. It
was amazing looking around at all of the structures that have been there for
thousands of years. They had lots of students all over there going through
all the training while at the same time still had many of the Shao Lin
priests in their long. orange robes.

    One interesting thing that happened was while I was walking around and
looking at everything I noticed a small, old Shao Lin priest walking towards
me. I looked in awe at him as he approached. From a little distance he made
eye contact with me and somewhat maintained it as we came closer towards
each other.
    I was at the bottom of some steps about to walk upward as he was at the
top walking down. About half way I could hear a strange noise coming from
this little old man in the orange robe. As we got right next to each other
he stopped and looked at me. He graciously bowed his head when I noticed
that the sound I heard was coming from a small Sony Walkman stereo that he
had blasting in his ears. I had to laugh as I smiled and bowed my head back
to him. He gave me a big smile and walked on.

    Later on I came across several students that I shared some brief
conversations with. They took a liking to me and I got to spar a little with
one of them that was strangely about my own height.
    Now I'm not going to put myself down and admit how much of a wimp I am
but that guy was really fast, and he wore me out.