To my second family...

You got a whole lot left to say now 

You knocked all your wind out 

You just tried too hard and you froze 

I know, I know 

What to say, what to say 

Just take the fall 

You're one of us 

The spotlight is on 

(Ahh ahh) 

Oh the spotlight is on, oh 

You know the one thing you're fighting to hold 

Will be the one thing you've got to let go 

And when you feel the wall cannot be burned 

You're gonna die to try what can't be done 

Gonna stay stay out but you don't care 

Now is there nothing like the inside of you anywhere 

Oh just take the fall 

You're one of us 

The spotlight is on 

(Ahh ahh) 

Oh the spotlight is on, yeah it's on 

Because everyone would rather watch you fall 

And we all are, yeah 

And we all are, yeah 

Just take a fall 

You're one of us 

The spotlight is on 

(Ahh ahh) 

Oh the spotlight is on 

(Just take the fall) 

Now you're one of us 

Now you're, (oh) now you're, (oh) now you're, (oh) now you're one of us 

Now you're, (oh) now you're, (oh) now you're one of us 

Oh the spotlight is on 

(Ahh ahh)

Amazing lyrics, and yet, I fight to grasp the meaning of it, and feel it pounding inside my head at the top volume my ipod goes, close my eyes and just feel it. 

I am fighting to hold on to the thing that in a couple of months I will have to let go, but not entirely. I will have to leave behind my family, my friends (well, the few ones that live here) and my second family, the Academia Sino Basileira. To all the people I am leaving behind in the training hall, I will miss you dearly, miss training with you, jumping, kicking, running, fighting till we drop, sweaty, tired and sore, to the cold stone ground we train on. I have the impression it's been long, but not too long since I first walked in there. Sick, tired, skinny and helpless. Thomaz, you taught me a lot, you are the big brother that I never had. Charles, one of my best friends, you taught me so much, not only of kung fu and daoism, but of myself and what it means to be true to what I believe in. I will always cherish the time I spent there, along with these people and other people that did not last too long. Six years, I suppose it is a heck of a long time, almost a third of my life. But now it is time to move on, move away. This is the right choice. I cannot be away from the love of my life, and I will not be away from the Way, from kung fu, or from training. But being away from the place I spent most of these six years is hard. The place i was most comfortable in hands down, the place I learned more about myself, the place I grew up in. Not that I will ever grow up really, but you know what I mean. I will miss the clock whose hands move slower than any other clock in the world, miss the cold stony floor where I laid on broken after "relaxation", miss the weapons on the wall, my bent spear and crooked broadsword. Miss the bench I slept on countless times. Miss the burning hot tea. Everything it encloses, the secrets, the moments, my past. Thank you all for taking me in when no one else believed in me, thanks for teaching me to be myself. Thanks for teaching me to never give up.

ShieShie.