Marina Yantai

... wielding tourist guides.<br><br>And finally, mention must also be made of the ubiquity of brides and bridegrooms. They are everywhere you look: in the parks, outside the churches, on the beaches, on the cliffs. They all wear identical costumes (bride: western bridal dress, in white, with veil and white trainers!; bridegroom: white suit with white bowtie) and are being photographed. The sheer number of couples each day is staggering. You can stand on a ...

... Luo Wei at the beach to help do so. <br><br>As you have read above, that I did!<br>That was last night and today was a new day.<br>The hotel money was already paid and we could begin afresh!<br><br>Today I decided to do my best to show Luo Wei the coast line and the LP states that Bus Number 17 takes you to both beaches and from looking at the bus schedules at the bust stops Bus 17 also seems to have the ...

... definitely on the lonely side. I have discovered I'm capable of taking a language class entirely in Chinese, though; and frankly, it's about time. The group of people is great though, and from all over and from all different backgrounds (we have one sorority girl and a Honduran guy from the Bronx whose mom only went to school through 3rd grade). It's actually become a lot of fun to speak in Chinese - using English actually ...

... out. Turns out the song was playing real loud on some Chinese guy's cell phone, he was trance-dancing right there in middle of the mall! I said, "Say man, what's the name of that sweet song?" That boy didn't even stop dancing, he just said,"Bing He Shi Dai". Needless to say, now I jam to it on my iPod. For the best China travel information and tips on the Internet check out: www.askreddragon.com

... learning a bit of Chinese, snacking and drinking tea - taking it easy until training starts again tomorrow! Our group has a week until we're to be tested on the first proper fist form that we've been taught so I imagine this week will be a tough one. That's about all there is to report but will hopefully start updating sometime this week

One of the oddest things to get used to out here is the strange hygienic practices. The people seem to think urinating is not something which necessarily needs to be done in private. For one there are not always doors on the public toilets and even when they are they are not always used. I learnt this the hard way at the academy when I walked into the toilets at 4am to use the cubicle I normally do in the centre and just as I went up to it the dim ...

... 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 ...

... than the trains (about twice as much). Secondly, they take the same amount of time as the slow train, which stops at every little town. It took us 15 hours to cover about 300 miles. In addition, during the holiday season, more people want to travel on the buses than there are beds, so they solve the problem by selling floor seats. That meant that my already narrow bunk was invaded by the knees and elbows of a sketchy looking, overly made-up girl who managed to poke me ...

... of school came on and sat in a row with red scarf's tied round their necks and talked for nearly an hour about god knows what (one of the lowlights) I also got to hear Auld Lang Syne in Korean, Chinese and English, however no one seems to believe me that this was a Scottish song and they think Im just a crazy Scottish person.The highlight of the day had to be the primary 4 kids dancing around in red army uniforms. Que lots of cute photographs in my photo ...

... sometimes I have a teacher in with me, and sometimes I don't. My seniors and 1st grade have good behaviour regardless but sometimes the 2nd and 3rd grade can be rather naughty. I generally find embarassing the offending kids works well. For instance if they are talking and have their books open on the wrong page I just casually go up and turn it the right page, and all the other kids laugh at them. I think some of the Chinese ...