We Travel World

Swine Flu masks on!
In the car on the way to the autobank!Grasp A Peacock By Its Tail

So today was our first day of organised acitivities in the Hotel. This morning after my toast and jam (no noodles this morning), we had a Tai Chi lesson for 2 hours outside. Luckily it wasn’t so hot that we melted like it has been the other days – it was cloudy but warm so a generally good temperature for Chinese martial arts. Howard, our Chinese instructor with a slight american accent, taught us some basic movements, then some stances, then hand movements, then some routines of the slow version of Tai Chi. He explained it is all about relaxing and letting your mind make your body move, rather than your energy – which was a good job really as some people had escaped the quarantine the night before to go clubbing and only got in at 4am and had Tai Chi at 9am!
So we learnt some techniques such as “holding a ball” to make our hands sit in the right position, and some “relaxing” crouching positions that were anything but relaxing and killed my thighs! But I actually found I was quite good at it and everyone got into it so it
Our pink kettle!
Loving it.wasn’t like you looked silly coz there were 50 of us all doing it (except one girl led in her pj’s by the side coz she was hungover – don’t know how she explained that one to the organisers!) Then Howard taught us some sequences called “weaving hands through a cloud” or something, “moving backwards and whirling both arms”, and “grasp a peacock by its tail”. Strange names but quite fun!!! “Grasp a peacock by its tail” was my fave!

After this we had our visa photos taken for our Visa extension and then lunch was much of the same food but quite nice, and there was a sweet and sour type chickeny thing which was good. After lunch we had an orientation meeting from an organiser of the course over here and he gave us some tips for living in China such as when they give you a present or a business card you must take it off them with both hands as a sign of respect. He also told us that they try to rip you off with counterfeit money, the example he gave was that a taxi driver would say 11 yuan/RMB (its called either yuan
Our beds
Mine’s the one with laptop on.or reminbi = 1.10) for a journey and if you only had a 100 yuan/RMB (10) note he would take it, exchange it for a fake one in the front of his cab, then hand it back saying he has no change and let you off the cab fare as its “only 11 yuan”, and of course you have unknowingly paid 100 yuan for it! How scary??? So we have to feel the bloke’s jacket on the note coz its raised on real notes and not on fake ones apparently.

After that they decided we could have lifts to the nearest ATM machine to get cash to pay for the trips next week to the Great Wall and the Summer Palace (550 yuan/RMB altogether including food = 55), so we got a rare trip out although we were told we had to wear our swine flu masks!!! See photo of Kirsty and the others in our car wearing the fetching masks. However, when we got there, we were told it didn’t matter anyway which was a good job as they’re rather sweaty to wear! Think we might have to wear them for our trips though which isn’t good!

The sink and bathroom
Yes the bathroom has a see-through door
Tea was the same type of food again, but really spicy tonight and I could hardly eat anything so Kirsty and I wandered to the bigger supermarket round the corner from the hotel where I bought 2 bottles of Diet Coke with orange (they didn’t do the one with Citrus) which were 2.7 yuan each = 27p!!!!!!!!!! I couldn’t believe it! I also got a couple of bottles of water for 0.7 yuan each = 7p! Some fruit bread, which was interesting, and a packet or strange crisps. I can’t get over how cheap everything is!
Tonight we just sat out chatting on the patio bit outside the hotel but it was pretty cold and I was tired so I came up here to do this and go to bed. I also took some photos of our room to show you what its like – although its not very tidy! Sorry!
Tomorrow we have Mandarin lessons and some more orientation stuff so I’d better go now! Night! xxx

Bathroom and shower
We have to notify our roomates if we’re using the loo so they avoid walking past!!!