A Student's Diary of the FWC Crete Camp, 7th - 14th July 2009
by Ricki Chow
Some months earlier
The time had come. With a mixture of intense excitement, apprehension and pure dread, I hand over part of my pre-credit crunch bonus. The deposit for Crete 2009.
What were the thoughts running through my mind at this precise moment?
- Sun, sea and sand! It was currently the depths of winter in England after all.
- FOOD! I had heard tales of a fish as big as me! Of delicious fruits so juicy that the nectar streams uncontrollably down your face...
- The voice of Dennis Ngo, the Chief Instructor saying "If you want to know the meaning of 'everything taken care of'? Come to Crete!" (Need I say more?)
- Hmmm... Torture!! Sleep deprivation! 6am runs! Sprints! Hills of Death/Doom! (see Crete diary 2008) Not so good...
- And finally the ghostly whisper of a past Crete attendee: "You are going to Crete? Ha! Good luck!" This is BAD!
Gulp! Was it too late to snatch my hard earned cash back and invest in more training until I was ready? I had been with the club less than a year - do juniors come back from Crete alive?? What have I done?!
So it begins...
The trip to the airport was well planned. I was to be picked up by Amy in her car at around 4am, drive round to the others and make our way to our pre-booked airport parking space. Wishful thinking eh? As if it would be so simple! Five "youths" in black kung fu track suits, hoodies hiding our faces (it was cold!), driving hurriedly around in an Audi in the early hours of the morning spells trouble with a capital T, or so the police thought anyway. We were stopped, questioned, subjected to various sobriety tests and released. But then we couldn't find the entrance to the airport parking despite Matt's magical iPhone. By this point we were running extremely late so when we finally arrived at Gatwick, we grabbed our bags and sprinted, what seemed miles, to the check-in desk where we met with the disapproving gaze of Adam Prout, our instructor. My arms ached and I felt like I'd already tackled an army assault course before the training week had even begun!
Landing in Crete, I feel the comforting blast of warm air which is the ultimate confirmation that you have arrived at last on holiday. Adam calls for us to separate into groups and we are allocated our refuge for the next week. We find when we arrive that it is an idyllic little cottage surrounded by plums, lemon trees and blackberry bushes and the sounds of cicadas chirping in the air. Amy and I race upstairs and claim the bedroom at the top, which opened onto a roof terrace boasting a fantastic view of our surroundings. I collapse out of joy onto the "romantic" bed; nicknamed as such due to a draping mosquito net which made it look rather dreamlike and princess-y. We decide to have a dip in the pool; little did we know that it was our first and only time we would have the opportunity to do so!
So what is Crete about?
Training
Let us start with the dreaded run…. I jumped at the sound of the alarm at 5:30am every morning and hastily woke up, dressed and made my way to the crossroads to warm up and stretch silently. Then we began with the hill. I had training runs quite regularly before the trip to psyche myself up for this very purpose and as I ran up this hill, I felt like I had never run before in my life. This was hard! And I mean HARD! Every step took a magnitude of effort until I reached the top (which was luckily level), then, ahhh, it seemed my engine had gotten going again and this was running! The air was fresh, the day was dawning and the best thing was that everything felt so much easier after that hill! And how did I feel after? I felt great and after a couple of days, I couldn't even remember why I had been so worried about the running, after all it wasn't that bad!
Then came the hill sprints. We kicked up dust while Adam evilly devised ways of making us work as a team to get up this hill. What followed is a secret (ha! Go to Crete to find out!) but lets just say "ring of fire" and "double rings of fire" were just the beginning! And also that my white trainers are no longer white!
Mid mornings consisted of training on the beach. We trained soft style which tested our balance in the not-so-solid sand, we learnt what I have now dubbed "The Crete Breathing", we competed in a thigh squeezing competition (which kind of looked and sounded weird) and we learnt to spar like we were moving in an intricate dance.
Training in the afternoon took a different course. We would do hard-style sparring or patterns each day but we were allowed one day off, which myself and a few others, decided to spend on the beach. However, the people who chose to train appeared in the evening with mysterious welts on their stomachs. What was this about? Intrigued, since nobody would talk about what had happened, I was impatient to be let into this secret. I found out the day after. "Who wants to be hit by a stick first?" To which I enthusiastically replied "me me!" No this wasn't some weird abusive cultish initiation but a method of focusing your energies to a certain part of your body. (NOTE: nobody was harmed during this exercise but please do not try this at home!)
Food
The best part of training so much? You get to stuff your face! And… you get to stuff your face! After the morning run, we would have breakfast in a quaint little place which laid out a feast of delights- greek yoghurt, honey, fruits, eggs, bread and more! Mid-morning training on the beach was followed with fruits where I found that the rumours of juicy peaches were true! Lunch every day was a two hour affair and dinner each night was at Kristof's, where we ate course after course of delicious food to the sound of ocean waves and watched the setting sun while fending off little food thieving kittens. I won't go on and on, but we were stuffed each night and some even complained that there was too much food! (shock horror!)
Relaxation
Ha! What is this?? There was no time to relax! Admittedly I'm joking... but I'm not. There was not much time for actual, "let's not do anything" relaxation but who could fail to say that doing patterns on a beach was not relaxing? Also I found the mosquito hunting in my room every evening quite relaxing!
Identity
On the evening of Matt Damsell's birthday a group of us sat around in the "bar" and we played a game "which Hasslehoff are you?" Someone had a mask of David Hasslehoff (no idea why) and we decided to go around the group and each person would have to decide what sort of personality they wanted Hasslehoff to have and that this pose would be photographed. Who knows who came up with crazy game (if you remember please let me know) but the point I'm getting at is that Crete is the kind of trip which makes you actually think about the person you want to be and what kung fu actually gives you to become this person. It makes you think about the person you were… (Dennis: "Well why did you get that tattoo if you wouldn't have it now?" Me: "I guess I was young and stupid" Dennis: "Ahh" with a knowing look)… and who you are now. It is emotionally challenging and exhausting, not only in the physical sense but in the way that you try and push yourself to your own mental limits. (Adam: "Ricki you can run faster than that!" Me: "I CAN'T"! Adam: "You can! I've seen you!" Me: thinking "you are sooo lying!" but going faster nevertheless.)
I took the Mask of Hasslehoff back with me that night, and lay it on the pillow next to me underneath the netted canopy and thought about how to go forward in my life. Needless to say, Amy was very perturbed when she came back and found me asleep next to the Hof!
Who am I? I'm competitive and stubborn and I killed myself on the uphill bunny hops on the final day "for the team"!
Months later
I am writing this diary very much in hindsight and as such, have not been able to include all the little details of the trip which are forever ingrained within me. So what did I get out of Crete ultimately? On the last day Dennis asked us what we had learnt and was frustrated by our lack of response to the very same question. "What did we learn?" Our lack of response was not because we hadn't learnt anything at all but because what we had learnt was not so easily quantifiable. Yes, we learned all the things I had described in the training section, yes, we learnt the concepts of power, breathing, about the disconnection between all our minds and our movement, how everything is a circle and that how, as westerners we ultimately don't listen and subject everything to our own interpretation. But we have all taken something different back from this experience.
I personally, returned with a sense of the peace and wellbeing kung fu could give me and find myself constantly trying to recreate the same state of mind in class and in life with varying degrees of success. I've built life-long friendships and an understanding of my own possibilities, emotionally and physically.
Do juniors come back from Crete alive? Well I returned feeling more alive than I had ever felt before.
Acknowledgements
A big thanks to Dennis, all of the organisers and the people who went for making it such a fantastic trip!