Hello readers

Apologies for the lapse in blogging – our lives seems to have finally settled into a routine over the last few months.  We’re still enjoying our adventures, although they’re not as geographically diverse as last year!  Here’s a few highlights from the last few weeks:

  • Laura has come over from the UK and spent four weeks here with us in Beijing – she’s now travelling across China before heading into south east Asia.  Duncan arrived last week – he’s quit his 9 to 5 at Vodafone and has decided to relocate to Beijing.  He’s currently crashing with us until he gets a job and an apartment sorted – I think he’s starting to get into the Jing of things.
  • Laura and I took a trip to Tianjin – an unremarkable city to the south of Beijing.  The remarkable thing however was our trip on one of the worlds fastest trains – it took just 30 minutes to travel 100 miles.  The train was cruising along at 334km / 210 miles per hour.
  • Last weekend I spent the afternoon watching Jeannie playing rugby with the rest of the girls from the Beijing Devil’s team.  She’s becoming a local celebrity with recent features in many of the ex-pat mags.  I’ll scan them and post them here sometime soon.
  • We took part in a charity bike ride – 66km of hell cycling near the great wall.  The hills were horrendous and by the end of the 3 hour saga my arse felt like it was going to fall off.
  • I’ve been to a football game (those of you who know me well realise what odd behaviour this is).  We live just 200 meters from the local stadium so we spend an evening watching the local Beijing team take on a team from Japan.  Beijing won 2-0.
  • Last May weekend was also a holiday here too – we spent the monday in a local park having a picnic and playing frisbee – which attracted great attention from the natives.  We topped off the evening by going 10 pin bowling.  I feel 15 again.
  • I’ve bought a guitar.  No readers, I can’t play one.
  • Last night we went out with friends from the Migrant Children’s Foundation for an amazing supper at a local Iranian restaurant.  The food was amazing – check out the photo of the platter.

That’s all I think… all in all life is good – especially now the summer has finally arrived.  We’re bobbing along most days at 28 degrees or above, my skin is finally starting to loose its winter pasty-ness (as in pale) I now need to loose the winter pasty-ness (as in Cornish) from my belly.