Oriental Ocean Hotel 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 ...

... br><br>Like everything else on planet earth we have almost made the shark extinct.<br><br>Yet we continue to do so without thought or care of what will happen to the world beneath the surface of the big blue once those at the top of the food chain have either been totally eaten or have dwindled down to so few that they barely mater anymore. If you are wondering what in the world I am on about just think ...

... to see the city slowly (and I mean slowly, we were going like 30 mph tops) fade away into the night and the ancient splendor of China reveal itself. The distant, obscure mountains, the sprawling farms, and the centuries-old communities centered on buildings in the old style, steeped in and still home to the world's oldest tradition. And we all got to take a 14 hour respite from Chinese-speaking on the train. We got to ...

... 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

... the victim and stretching well beyond where they expected their leg to be. There were sometimes repercussions for students who were too enthusiastic about stretching the other guy when it came to his turn but that usually just meant everybody was crippled together, good times. I had one experience that I will always remember as the day when I kicked myself in the head. To be fair I leaned forward a bit and I think it was my shin that hit me but it was still ...

... to stay at the academy because he preferred monk life. Wang Shifu went to the shaolin academy with Wei Shifu, he was very well known for his great abilities in sanda, he's one lot's of medals and competitions (they all have but him especially for sanda). He trained his class hard, discipline, no smiling or jokes. He was a great personality though, he adopted Spot the young dog, gave really good speeches and gave annoying students what they deserved ...

... a skit too, or I volunteered myself for it. That was when I called the Korean boy I agreed to help with the GRE that afternoon and cancelled our lesson. Looks like I was going to miss that one too. The skit rehearsal went pretty well, other than the fact that I had no idea what was going on and my brain was ready to shut down. It was definitely on overload. I really just had to follow the korean girl around and mime what she was doing... it's something ...

... I basically stand in front of the class and do stupid things whilst they laugh - it's great! The kids are as cute as ever - telling a teacher you want to be their friend is followed with agreement, as opposed to scorn and endless bullying from fellow classmates, love it! The bursts of music that blast twice every hour from the school is starting to grate a bit - somebody change the record - but it is great to be in such a happy environment, such happy faces everywhere! One ...

Well I have now reached a level of fame of truly epic proportions. After being snapped having a picnic last week and being put in the paper to show how truly beautiful the weather was if Westerners could bring themselves to venture outside, I have now got my very own article! Of course I wasn't warned about this until the journalist had turned up at the school, and I suddenly had to pretend teach a class who were in the middle of ...