The Shangri-La Hotel, Beijing

... Just like "cultural" is pronounced differently in french and english, "can" symbolizes different sounds in mandarin and english -- the sounds represented by a certain letter are not always the same in different languages.

Therefore, when learning pinyin, instead of referring ...

... Elle compatit avec moi, car elle aussi souffre d'une mexicanite aigue. Elle envoie un serveur a la pharmacie acheter un super medicament. ET m'offre la bouteille en cadeau. Et puis m'offre une demi bouteille de vin. Pis la je me saoule avec la chanteuse pis les barmaids, pis ca fini topless toute la gang (Ben juste moi... maudit tatoo) pis la le vieu proprio arrive et nous donne des gateaux, et puis du Canard etc etc. Je me sentais mal faque j'ai demander un shooteur ...

... other cultures, he also talked about the 787 jet's new features, including bigger windows, real time lighting, higher humidity (for less jet lag) and so on. Next, we went to a kongfu show at the red theater. This show was a mix of kongfu and a play. It was about a young boy who trains to be a strong monk, then grows up and faces temptation, but overcomes it and breaks wood and metal! It was really good; they jumped from amazing heights, broke real metal on their heads, and did ...

... the VW group are having a whale of a time as Audi seem to have snaffled the exec/security car market too, we've seen more jet black A6s with tinted windows than ever before. The people are somehow friendlier than I imagined, you even get some chat and smiles from the many soldiers standing on guard at each and every junction and major attraction. They do like a good gob though, real guttural hacking spits too unfortunately. They even do it ...

... I hope to repeat. The entire next day was spent in bed once we made it home. Kevin was a trooper doing all the unpacking, laundry, cleaning, etc. I think he was happy when I was in good enough spirits to help out again. At least he let me be on "sick rules" for 2 days. That should pretty much have caught you up on life with us! We have gotten back into the groove teaching about Autumn and Thanksgiving. I'm ...

... here" photo of me and Jo in front of the big slanty thing that was so intriging. First we went to see the "Treasures of the Louvre: Greek Art" exhibit as it was it's opening day. It was quite good actually, but a lot of the items on display were reproductions which was a little disapointing. Among the real stuff though, there were some beauties, but I found the most intruguing thing to be the Chinese habit of lining up (pushing aside, more like actually) to ...

... over-priced coke!). Yep - found this at the Great Wall. Must be tricky for the bin men to collect... When we reached the end of the trek we took a flying fox rope slide down to where the coach was waiting for us - excellent! Despite being ...