Jinghai International Hotel Yantai

... service industry. Whereas in Yantai I felt like a traveller, here I feel like a tourist. Perhaps this dichotomy is illusory (and even pretentious). In Qingdao you are supposed to enjoy yourself because everyone knows how beautiful it is. And being a contrarian, this elicits the opposite response in me! The prominent visibility of tourists also lends the place a somewhat artificial feel. The domestic busyness of Yantai is here replaced by persistent hawkers and ...

... she joined in with children searching for jelly fish to squish and wonder at and then trade with other kids for sea weed or shells and then as we sat waiting for our feet to dry so we could dust off the sand she then smelt the salty air for the first time and all this was at Yantai's little pebbly/sandy Number One Beach after dark. <br><br>She then questioned what the floating ball things were in straight ...

... weird and a little wrong - and having other people's support and various knowledge was been more than a little helpful in doing something that is far from easy. Now I can speak Chinese about as well as a 7 or 8 year old. Oh, and the train... Train travel in China is everything I heard about. Cramped, six person sleeping cars, bad food, warm beer, and way to many people in a super small space. We had fun though. It was ...

Just recently I was visiting my best Chinese mate in the seaside city of Yantai. On this one day, while we were strolling through a mall, I heard this Chinese trance-dance song playing faintly off in the distance. I thought, "Oh man, that was my song! My friends and I used to jam to it at the many Chinese dance clubs we used to frequent". I never knew the name of that song, but I was about to ...

Ok folks, I've finally started writing a blog! Just getting to grips with this site, it seems pretty complicated so I'm not going to get down to any serious writing just yet. It's almost dinner time here, the weather's pretty nice today as it's just about the end of winter now and I'm just lazing around. Have been watching some random TV ...

... while bending it towards the victims head. It was not not painful. After a while of power stretching one realized that the benefits after (you can kick a lot higher because of it although on particularly harsh stretches you generally lift your leg, spasm and fall over) are definitely worth doing it to the maximum amount of pain you can take (when you either break out into hysterical laughter or cry, the first usually takes place to cover the second). You ...

... they did insane flip kicks and scaled walls easily. He also had a dragon tattoo, he definitely has potential to be the next Du Shifu. Wei Shifu was another Shaolin master, I've heard he's the best at Shaolin forms in China and from what I've seen that's easily possible. He was my tai chi master for a while and was one of the masters with better English, his favourite words were "more power." His younger brother was also pretty cool though he did not ...

... and it turned out that I would be the English speaker welcoming everyone at the beginned and thanking them for coming at the end. Fine. I could do that. I agreed to meet to rehearse it on Thursday. On Thursday, I met with the Chinese "host" of the show, and met my cohosts - a Japanese boy and a Korean girl, all with much much better Chinese than me. They've all been here for a couple years... We wound up rehearsing for 2 hours, and I was given a ...

Well folks, it's been an interesting few weeks - I'm really loving it here. The time is flying! O.K. going back a few weeks... I still occasionally get woken up at crazy o' clock. Stupidly answered the phone on a Sunday morning (so wasn't happy) and had to get up to see a visitor from GVN - don't people sleep in China? Anyway, was informed there would be a new volunteer in the shape of Mhairi (Scottish version of Mary - pronounced Mar - e) - a very lovely girl from Glasgow. It's ...

... the next day got back to Yantai late, had a late dinner and then nipped to Bohemia (our fave haunt!) for one last drink, which finished at 5am as well! Ouch! So I woke up a little worse for wear at 9am, packed my bags, said my farewells to the school, took Ashley for lunch and caught the 3:27pm train away from Yantai. I felt very sad, leaving so many lovely people, and felt quite frightened. Its now me and Cedric against the rest of China, armed only with a ...