Lessons this morning and then went to meet Connie and the other Korean English teachers (Efran who is Phillipino and Becky who is Chinese) to discuss how we were going to split the Saturday morning classes between us. They gave me all the materials which we are going to use to teach (dialogues which must be memorised) and told me I must test each student before they leave the class to make sure they have learnt it. If they do not get it right they are not allowed...

The classes were a bit more enthusiastic today and so school was far more enjoyable. Went for a walk at lunchtime and found a more scenic route back to our apartment via the lake. This evening we decided to go to food street for dinner and on the way saw a concert being put on by some of the local dance groups to mark the end of paraolympics, so we stopped and watched that for a while.

Back to school today and lessons seemed really hard work today. I don't know if it was just getting back into the swing of it or what, but the students just weren't interested! I tried teaching them the term 'couch potato' thinking they would find it amusing, but not even a smile! Then I tried playing 'Who am I?' where they ask me yes / no questions to guess a famous person I am thinking of, but even that only got a few of them participating. Might be a long week...

Had a lazy morning and then went to the local shops in search of post-it notes for my lessons this week. Whilst we were out and about we decided to try one of the more authentic Chinese restaurants for lunch. It was hard work! Despite having our phrase book and lots of pictures to point at we ended up getting an entirely different meal to what we thought we had ordered! Spent the evening lesson planning for the forthcoming week.

Got up early this morning and took the bus to Beijing where we went to see Lama Temple, a spectular temple whose highlight is a 55 ft high statue of Buddha carved from a single block of sandlewood. After this we crossed the road to Confucious Temple, a much more low key temple away from the large crowds. After having our fill of temples, we headed for Wangfujing Street, the main shopping area in Beijing to treat ourselves to a starbucks coffee and check out the F...