Woke up Ancient City Wall When Zhu Yuanzhang, the first Emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), captured Huizhou, a hermit named Zhu Sheng admonished him that he should 'built high walls, store abundant food supplies and take time to be an Emperor,' so that he could fortify the city and unify the other states. After the establishment of the Min...

The train arrived in Xian this morning at Xian is the capital of the Shaanxi province in the People's republic of China and a sub-provincial city. As one of the most important cities in Chinese history, Xi'an is one of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China because it has been the capital (under various names) of 13 dynasties, including the Zh...

Hi everyone, First of all, apologies for not writing to you all in along long time, I've been really lazy! Well, as you can imagine a fair bit has happened since I last wrote to you all, I'll do my best to keep it as short as possible not to bore you too much. So, my Mum and Dad came over to visit me in the middle of Feb, was really nice to see ...

Welcome to the third part, in true internet style, it wouldn't let me back onto the web page to upload this part yesterday! So here it is now. We had New Years weekend off work and New years day was given to us as holiday before then, so actually worked out quite well for us. We decided to spend the new year in Xian as we thought there would be ...

Hey everyone, I can't believe it, I'm now just over half way through my contract. Time has flown so fast. We had mid-term (very american!) exams this weekend thats just gone, think it's the easiest weekend of teaching so far! We had set exams for each class level and took them into a different room, in either 1s or 2s and gave them a spoken exam...

Hi all, Thought it was probably easier to set up this blog site, so you can dip in and out when you want, plus this is where i'm planning on putting my pics when we get the internet in our appartment, which should have been yesterday, but the phone isn't working (and no its not the batteries - as the chinese keep telling us). Anyway, am well and...

Hey all, We've had another entertaining week, prob rather more entertaining than usual, due to certain things. We'll start with the electricity - one morning, at our flat, we (as in we I mean me!) turned on a light switch in the bathroom and BOOM - the light blew, ok need a new light bulb - nope - no electricity in the whole flat - bluddy great ...

Hey all, Have a few mins off on my busy saturday, im supposed to be in a help session, but as its only the 2nd week non of the children have been sent to them yet - but trust me, the way some of mine were last week there will definatly be some in them next week. Weve had a fun week, Me, Sean and Hannah ate at a resturant with no pictures, just c...

Hey all, Well, im well and truely settled in now. Moved into our appartment this morning, its very nice, and the boys are jelous! Had our 1st weekend of teaching. Was hard work, but good fun. Have some classes which are great, but i have one class inparticular, who my chinese teacher described as "extremely slow!" Its really good though, time do...

Hi guys, Well, I made it here and I have to say of what I've seen so far this country is absolutly awesome! There are 5 or 6 (depending on if someone has to go to another school - not me though, dont worry I'm staying put) of us newby teachers teaching in the school. Everyone seems really really nice and the chinese teachers who we teach alongsi...