Well what do you think of this. An update out of the plane.
We took the night train from Shaghai to Beijing. It's a trip of thirteen hours.


We’ve been visiting Beijing like real “trotters”, even though we didn’t find our restaurant a few times. We’ve seen the Forbidden City, the temple of love (ahum heaven…).


The art district which was really nice.
We ended this walk around with three big beers and some coke for only 15 quay. Today, Friday we climbed the great wall. And if I say that we climbed it then we really did. We arranged the trip yesterday at our hostel, left at 7:30 in the morning, drove for 2 to 3 hours and then walked for another hour to reach The Wall. It was really wonderful while this part of the wall was situated in the middle of nowhere.
This meant that there were no ski lifts or roller coasters. This part of the wall has not been restored yet so sometimes it was really hard to get up. But we had a really great experience, I think there is no better way to visit the wall.

Back in the hostel at around 5’O clock we grabbed some beers in the nearby supermarket, popped them and chilled out till our minibus arrived to bring us to the airport.
At the check-in we tried to get into business class while we weren’t sure in which class we were flying. At the gate Eise-Jan joined us and we got on the plane. Now we just had some “delicious” dinner (at 02:43).
But now I’m really getting tired and I’m going to sleep or at least try to.

The last few days were such a great way to end a beatyful summer and a wonderful trip to China.

Manny greets from the Praeters.
(Barbara, Mathieu, Niels, Nicolas, Pieter and Philippe)

The last dinner

Yesterday was our last day of our program. So we taught we might do something fun. With the morning group we held a MSPC (massive slalom paddle competition). With the afternoon group we went on a big tour to the marina. We got there... Un fortunately once we got there we saw that the currents were really strong. And we had to sail upwind to get back. So we started sailing upwind with one hour left. But after half an hour we were still tacking on the same spot. So we tugged them back to the beach, had a group picture on the catamaran and had some fun playing with the kids. After class Eise-jan went golfing with Zou-Qing.

I stayed at the beach to go wakeboarding with Shark. We were ready to go, he tied to start the engine but the starter handle came off. So out came the tools and open went the engine. I tried to repair it yesterday but hadn't enough time so I will try again this morning. It's sunday and the end of the program, so it's time to something special I suppose. We will have a day full of entertainement at the beach. We will hand out the certificates, shake a lot of hands but the best of all is the big race. We will have three legs in which all the kids of the season will be devided into three categories. Each winner will get a special price. After the three races will be a graduation hour in which we will give the certificates. And after that there will be a bbq for everyone pluss graduation party. I heard Lyndon will take Vicky with him from Qingdao so that's some great news. Tomorow morning I will fly to Shanghai to meet the Shanghai and Xiamen trainers and the next day we will fly to Beijing. Eise-Jan prefered to go to Qingdao because he already went to Beijing.