Yesterday, Em and I decided to go for a walk to Beijing Chaoyang Park (Chinese: 北京朝阳公园; pinyin: Běijīng Cháoyáng Gōngyuán) 20 minutes up the road from her Grandparents place. Most Spring Festivals we usually head up and enjoy the festivities with, what seems like, the rest of Beijing. It wasn’t too cold so I decided [...]

Having visited Beijing on many different occasions, and now living here for the past 18 months, I decided it was time to finally get my butt down to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Park. A few of my work colleagues had gone and said it was a very nice and tranquil place to visit, so it [...]

Last Wednesday afternoon I headed out to Dongzhimen to met up with a few of my work colleagues at the local Irish pub, Paddy O’Shea’s. I arrived 30 minutes early, no doubt very surprised at the speed at which my bus flew me from Wangjing, but happy to sit down in the outdoor area and [...]

It’s summer, it’s hot, muggy, and I’m doing some long hour at work. so what better way to enjoy my day off with Em than head out of town and visit the Xiedao Beer Festival. Em brought up this event as something we could do together that may help me relax on my one day [...]

With summer camp just around the corner, and myself working 6 days a week for two months from the beginning of July, Em and I both agreed that we should make the most of our ‘weekends’ together. While we had a relatively easy and relaxing day on Wednesday, yesterday we decided to visit Beijing’s Botanical [...]

Yesterday, I managed to spend a lovely day with my work colleagues on the Great Wall thanks to a work sponsored team building activity. With a few teachers having left recently, and a handful of new faces around the office, it was nice to be able to go out and spend a day together and [...]

Four and a half years ago, during my big trip through China, I visited the Lama Temple in Beijing just before I was about to head off to Xian. With a free morning, it seemed like a nice peaceful excursion for myself, before sleeping in a train for the next 14 or so hours. As [...]

Last week, a couple of co-workers and I decided to spend the day at the China People’s Revolution Military Museum (中国人民革命军事博物馆). It’s a wonderful museum showing the history of the Chinese military and at certain points, gives an interesting viewpoint of key wars from the Chinese perspective. The sheer number of exhibits is astonishing, and [...]

Alas it finally snowed here in Beijing, last Wednesday, as I was told since I wasn’t in town. Instead of trying to escape the snow I actually found myself surrounded by it as I headed off skiing for the day with the rest of my colleagues from work. I’ve never been skiing before, so I [...]

Last nigh we had our Halloween party at the school. It was late by a day seeing as upper management didn’t want to cancel any of our core classes during the weekend or on Friday. For the whole week, we had to convince the students that Halloween was actually on Sunday and not Monday, and [...]