Yantai Xinkaiyue Hotel

... and look down at the rocks by the sea and count a dozen such couples all being photographed in a small space. It is corny in the extreme. And the forced expressions on their faces somehow manages to be both nauseating and comical. I can't work out what is most objectionable about this phenomenon: the mawkish sentimentality, the artificiality, or the completely unimaginitive repetitiveness of it all: I'm just willing one of the men to perhaps wear a light grey suit.

... 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 ...

The main product of shaolin training is ability in forms. That is doing specific combat movements using certain techniques and trying to make them look good. They pretty much always looked good when the masters did them obviously but it was a lot harder for us students. At the end the most advanced form I did was called tong bei and my favourite one was the staff form though tai chi and the sword form came close. The most obvious thing about a ...

... really knew how old he really is) with a big dragon tattoo, a dangerous smile and never ending enthusiasm and energy. He moves faster than any other master and liked to channel his energy into dancing to fast music (great break dancer) and every strike he did came with his patented "da!." His favourite words were "Gooda and hokay," he was a lot of fun. A great moment was when I lent him my ipod and he was listening to the world's greatest by R Kelly ...

... a cab to an island... Anyway, Shenoa and I went to this island and the cab driver took us right to the horse riding place, which turned out to be an old race track. When I say old, i mean REALLY old.. as in it looks like it's been at least 10 years since they've raced there. They did have horses, however, and we had a wonderfully exciting trot around the race track. It wasn't exactly the picturesque meandering ...

... we were rubbish but they all started clapping and looking at us expectantly. Realising we couldn't turn down a room of 70 Chinese people we had to oblige! So cringy! Sang "Lean on Me"! Had to then teach it to all of them - was a beautiful moment! It was then time to go, but not without an interview for the TV people first! For lunch the teachers took us out to dinner, where we were presented with so much food and beer, it was incredible ...

... Over all though Beijing left a much better impression in my mind this time than on the previous occasion. This weeks lessons have consisted mainly of descriptions of people. Which has turned up some funny cultural differences. Apparently its ok to describe a friend as a 'little fat' or not very beautiful if its obviously true. (Iv decided they are banned from describing me though for this very reason.) With the arrival of the Americans DVDs this week ...

... quite hard because the communication is so limited; their English stretches as far as "hello, how are you" - and they probably have no idea what they are even saying - but I struggle through. The students are really adorable - I'm building an impressive collection of pictures and stickers that have been given to me as gifts, not to mention the oranges,toffees and chocolates - it's so great. If only the boys of BGS were so nice... Outside of school, now ...