Living in Daxing, Beijing by Aiden

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I have made lots of friends near my apartment here. Sometimes they come to visit me and we get in trouble from the lady who lives under our apartment because we are too noisy. Chinese kids are on school holidays because it is summer here. We play in the courtyard downstairs when it is cool. We can play a coin game where you try to flip the other persons Pokemon coin over to win it and we also play Badminton and Ping Pong.

Across the road from our compound is the school I will go to in September when the school year starts. There are no other Australians there. Now my Mum is making me do some study with a University student who is on holidays. My tutor is called Angela and she is helping me learn some Chinese characters so I can read and write Chinese for when school starts. I have to study for 2 hours a day on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and write some Chinese characters for my homework.

Sometimes I get to watch movies in Chinese with subtitles and my teacher Angela pauses the movie to see if I can recognise the Chinese characters. There are so many characters and it is a bit tricky to write them because I am left handed. I have learnt about 50 already! Sometimes I like learning the Chinese and sometimes I don't want to do all of my homework because I want more time to play.

My brother and I found a really cool place to play at. At the end of our road it is a dead end and you sneak through a hole in the fence. Behind there is a big paddock and they are going to build a freeway there after Christmas. Now we can play in the dirt and walk on the pipes and sometimes when its really windy we can fly kites on the grass bit. There is a good outdoor restaurant just near the dirt pit and I like to go there to play with my friends and wait for the toasted bread on a stick or some other food and stay out until it gets dark.

This week I have been going to some soccer training. My coach is from England and he says I am winning the loudest mouth competition. There are 14 kids. One is from Finland, two are from England and one is from America and the rest are from China. Some of the Chinese kids lived in America before and can speak some English. Everyone in our group had a soccer ball and two of us had to try and kick the balls out of the square. Another girl on my team and I broke the record. It was 33 seconds and we did it in 25 seconds! Have fun!

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