Two blog posts in 24hrs!!! Get in! So far this is like all good new year’s resolutions: starts great…then… well, lets see how often you all are going to the gym in a few weeks, shall we? Anyway… back to the matter at hand. Lantern festival! It’s a festival that takes place 15 days after Chinese New Year and… well, I’m sure Wikipedia can tell you the boring stuff. These days people just set off LOADS of fireworks. It’s like bonfire night (if you’re in the UK) or the 4th of July (if you’re in the states) combined with new years. After a few hours of Lantern Festival, you have a good idea what it must have been like in Baghdad, circa 2003…

Those who’ve been following this blog for a while know that me covering weddings is a fairly regular thing. When you have a friends group whose age is around 21-25; it’s just what happens. Anyway, These photos are actually from back in September; I almost forgot I had them. One of the Aston CTs who I’ve known for a long time; Maggie – married her high-school sweetheart. Enjoy the pics!

Every year Aston holds an Annual Managers’ Conference (AMC) and, after taking the reigns of manager at Weinan, this year it was my turn to head to the meeting. This year it was hosted in the city of Dalian (大连) in China’s Liaoning province (in the North-East, see this map: click.) There’s not much time to explore the city, as most of the time is spent in meetings, but I managed to grab some snaps of the city…

It’s (or, it was) that time of year again. When we introduce our students to the strange and weird customs of Halloween. As always, the kids really embraced it. I guess it’s a pretty cool holiday – you get to dress up as whatever you want, and then people give you candy. What more could you want? As usual this proved a goldmine for photos, so… enjoy!

So, a while back, Max (the owner of our school) invited us to a tea festival he was hosting. Max owns a few tea houses around town (as well as other business) and he threw together a tea festival to promote them. It was basically a night of (mostly) traditional Chinese entertainment, and entertaining it was…

First off, Happy Birthday to my old man who turned 48 on Thursday, and Happy Birthday to me, I turned 24 yesterday! I’m half his age now — but not half as handsome.
Last week we went to watch the crucial England game against Slovenia. I invited some of my Chinese friends to drum up support. We went to watch it on west 2nd street, which we dub “barbecue street” because there’s a bunch of outdoor barbecue restaurants — win! Here are the photos…

Last week Weinan Teachers University (B’s university) celebrated it’s 50th anniversary, and celebrate they did. B and I went along with our cameras, but we were met with a huuuuge crowd. Luckily I’m acquainted with the head of the school’s dance society, who would be heading up lots of the performances of the night. With backstage access secured, we enjoyed the show and took plenty of pictures…

So, in my last post I alluded to this. On the way home from Fuping, I was looking at the sun and thinking “that looks a bit strange.” at first I shrugged it off as my eyes going a bit funny… but then it started to look more and more odd, until I realised… it’s an eclipse

So, Halloween isn’t really celebrated isnt celebrated at all in China, but at Aston we like to teach culture as much as language; so a few weeks back we set plans into motion to celebrate Halloween, including getting all the kids to dress up. It made for some excellent photographs…

On Monday the 2nd of November Geri and her husband got married. I was honoured to be invited, as was my camera. As you’ll know from my coverage of Rob’s wedding Chinese weddings are quite the affair. It started the night before with us going to their new apartment to meet the groom’s side of the family, and generally plan the next day. Myself and B went, and were then treated to dinner with the groom’s nearest and dearest. The next day saw a 5:30am wakeup, for a 6:00am rendezvous, we were collected by minibus and headed to the couples new apartment to again meet the groom…