Tonight I was so tired from a long weekend of working and fun. Today I had a midterm (yes, on Sunday!) and guitar lessons, so I was still very tired. But I decided to go watch my roommate's Wushu team demonstration at University of Maryland. Wushu is an ancient Chinese martial art that can involve lots of different weapons, or none at all. When I get to UMD, I discover that it's not just Wushu- it's a diversity event. The greatest thing of all is that they don't call it diversity training or anything lame like that- No, they call it ... Culture ExplosionHow cool is that? Who would not want to go to a culture explosion. I was only going to stay for the Wushu, but i got sucked in and couldn't take my eyes off of what was going on on stage. We had Punjab dancers, ballet, Bolivian dance, Balinese dance, and "singing Jews"! It was fantastic. Everyone was great and really entertained the crowd. People were up in the aisles dancing and shouting and waving their arms. I've never been to anything this exciting. Wushu was the last to go on. They used swords, bo staffs, some kind of staff with a blade on the end, and fans. It kind of looked like random flailing, as if the guy was about to cut his ear off at any moment. After the show I went "backstage" to see my roommate. Several guys were bleeding from the swords. Apparently they were real and you can get hurt! One guy's neck was sliced and he had a towel held to it. Even cooler.
