One lesson this morning then we seem to have been getting into a bit of a routine of going to 'Jack Hut' for lunch. 'Jack Hut' is a Chinese franchise smoothie bar, although they don't actually make smoothies! They have milkshakes, ice drinks and really good coffee! Generally if you want to buy a coffee here, it will cost you about 20 yuan but this one is only 5 yuan and is the best I've tasted - apart from obviously Starbucks! Thie evening we helped Miss Cao ...

Got up late this morning and spent until lunchtime catching up on emails. Meet Hannah for lunch and then I spent the afternoon making a board game and other props for our private lesson this evening. The boys arrived at 7:00 with gifts of fruit from their garden. We had a fun lesson playing "Tell Us About...", Battleships, Telephone Prununciation and Elimination Letter. The boys, Rick and Tony are very well behaved and eager to learn which always he...

Got woken up this morning to the sound of firecrackers again. Everytime a new business opens here they 'announce' it by letting off fireworks and fire crackers for a couple of hours. The fireworks are a bit pointless as they normally do this at 7 or 8 in the morning when it is already light and you can't see them! I only have a couple of lessons today but I spent most of the time in school anyway starting to research the areas in China I want to visit when I f...

Got stopped by the Mrs Liang on the way into work saying that the boys loved their English lesson on Friday night and could we extend it to 2 hours - not sure if the boys really loved it or just if the parents like the fact they are learning more English! Anyway, we can't really go out on a Friday night because of our early start on a Saturday so I thought we may as well do it and said yes. My lesson this week is on English schools which seems to be going down ...

Another early start to get into Beijing to go to The Summer Palace. The buses were crazy - we let 2 go because they were so full then decided we would have to get the next one regardless and ended up having to stand for the whole journey. At least it was a fast bus and only took an hour. Meet Rachel at the nearest tube station and we all got a taxi the extra couple of miles to the Summer Palace. It was a gorgeous day which only enhanced the grounds - they wer...