Hello everybody. Well, the day is here, the day that's gotten in my way for basically the entire time we've been in Beijing. And it really got in the way today. Everything inside the second ring road is closed, so there's nothing cool open, all there is to do is sit at home and watch nuclear nukes drive by the Forbidden City on TV, followed by little girls dancing around with flowers, and then more soldiers...crazy. Well, I thought there was nothing to do, but there were a few places open around Longze and Huilongguan where we are staying, so Kate took us out to a market. Again, I thought it would just be a boring market (I actually thought we were just going to grab something to cook with and I just wanted to get ... read more

Hello everybody. Sorry I haven't written for a while (again), I put it off and then we've had electricity issues the last couple of days, so I haven't been able to write anything out. Firstly, sorry, there are no photos this time, I didn't expect to be going anywhere worth taking photos of because I was just doing a bit of work with Lloyd, but the place we went to had some pretty amazing things to look at, so I'm a bit disappointed. Anyway, perhaps I can paint a vivid portrait with my words. Unlikely though. So we went to a place called Shahe (sort of pronounced as "sha", and then "heurgh"...that's the best I can approximate it to - say the word but get somebody to punch you in the guts as you say it ... read more

Hello everybody. Just quickly, some statistics. The world's population is 6,706,993,152. Victoria's population is about 5,500,000. Assuming an equal distribution among clubs, that means that, at best, there are 343,750 fans of the Geelong AFC, although they only have 37,000 members. That's 0.00000552% of the world's population. Troy, it's just not that important. Sorry mate. The outcome of the latest table tennis championships is statistically more important. On the other hand, the Broncos losing the semis is devastating to the entire world. OK, I'm done now. We've had pretty full days for this week, so it's not through boredom or laziness that I haven't written anything for the last few weeks, we have genuinely not had enough time! So that's a nice change to the last few weeks of being sick! Today, Lloyd flew out to ... read more

Hi everybody, Sorry we haven't written for a while, things here have been a little depressing, the smog rolled in a couple of days ago (the day I wrote my last blog I think), and that gave me some sort of disgusting head cold and a saw throat and stuff like that, and just when I started getting better I think Susie ate something she shouldn't and now she's not feeling so good...Although she's a little better this morning after drugging herself up. Anyways, because of that, we haven't really been up to very much in the last few days. On Saturday, Sue went to the Panjiayuan Antique Markets and went a bit crazy buying souveneirs and paintings and presents for people so that was cool, but that was the day I was sick. so I ... read more

Hello everybody! Went for a trip to the Summer Palace today, it's actually ridiculously close to where we are staying, only about half an hour by bus, so that was good. The place is amazing, like everything else I've written about so far. It was designed by the Empress (who was one nasty piece of work, read about her, she's a cow), so that she could get out of Beijing for the Summer. It was burned down a millions times by the French and the British, but they kept on rebuilding it. It's all built around a gigantic lake where you can take a bit of a sail around if you're keen, it would have been good actually but we didn't bother. On the lake is a marble boat - it's gigantic, and obviously doesn't float ... read more