So, June 1st in China is children’s day. A holiday to celebrate…well, Children I guess. It seems pretty tough for the kids actually. They have to sing and dance and perform under pressure. But, they’re in the spotlight and they’ll often get some gifts from their school on the day – so, it’s all good I guess. Here are some pics from 2011’s Children’s day celebrations at Beitang. Many of these kids are my students past of present.

So, every summer Beitang holds a sports day. In 2011 there were two. They have the usual sports day for the school, then there is an inter-school sports day for all of the schools in Weinan. In 2011 it was Beitang’s turn to play host. None of the sports were particularly ‘serious’ sports, but some of the various school’s PE teachers were taking it quite seriously…

So, back in May of 2011 the International Horticultural Expo opened in Xi’an. Right off the bat, I’ll be honest – I have little to no interest in flowers or plants. But, it was just a stone’s throw away from me, and everybody was talking about it. So, myself, Beryl and Winfred headed there armed with our cameras…

Ah, the wonders of being almost a year behind with my blog. Things I post about from last year are almost relevant again! Like today’s post; Easter! So, at Aston we like the kids to “celebrate” the western holidays to try and absorb some of our culture. We don’t go into the details…well, in fact, we don’t even tell them anything about the holiday’s religious roots. They just think it’s a holiday about eating chocolate and painting eggs. Well, not too far off…

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…