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Sometimes you reflect, and you realise willpower wasn't in play. Instead you were led. This is exactly how I ended up in China. Deep in the middle of this vast country, surrounded by sacred Toaist mountains and acient temples, yes, I entered a Kung Fu school. Now if you knew me then, it would have been the last guess in your mind as to where I would voluntarily go. I just finished my thesis, I was living on a diet of take away and pre-made grocery food and was not putting much thought in to any from of exercise. So what did bring me there? Love. The man that I had been in love with for three years had already spend 3 months in various schools and he had found the one school he thought was right for the both of us. The cultural shock was intense, people spitting and burping was the first thing I noticed coming of the plane. The 20 hour trainride to epicenter of Daoist Kung Fu was a noisy mixture of farts and snoring created by the two elderly Chinese men riding in our carriage. Finally we arrived. A serene presence of the mountains. Crispy fresh air filling our stuffy noses. A sense of excitement crept up in me as we walked from the station to the school. We were greeted by the master, who kept things short and sweet. We agreed on my schedule for the next couple of months and that was that. The next months I ate the vegetables grown in the neighbours plot, occasionally one of their chickens vanished as well, and I trained 4 hours a day. This kind of active rigour after doing little to nothing got me my first injury. Not serious, just a bit of fluid around the knees, but man I did something! And now I had the knees to prove it. We got close to the teachers and were invited to drink tea in there living space. We learned where the hermits lived and how you could visit them. We walked some of the pilgrimage paths on the sacred mountains. Our love ended up deepening even more. Surrounded by the beauty and grace of the Toaist mountains in beating red heart of China we thrived. As it turns out even I can 'good' at something as foreign as Kung Fu. All you need to do is practice, practice, practice.