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Published: December 6th 2010
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Powerful People
Having a Photo taken with the mayor of Wanning, which is a rather large city nearby...yep...i have my arm around him.. Right... I feel bad, as I don't think iv posted anything for about a bazillion days, so il try to get you guys up to date with my various escapades... I'm kinda doing this the wrong way round, but I'm first gonna talk about this weekend we've just had, at Hainan's international championship. It has been wicked! We went down on the saturday early on the morning, as we thought that there was gonna be loads on, which, in fact there wasn't, but we did get to explore a bit and meet quite a few people...an have lunch at a place called ma ma's. The beach that we went to is called riyueruan and it's on the east coast of Hainan, as that's where the best surf is at the moment. When we arrived the waves were probably about 10ft or so, but the ones that people were surfing were a lot bigger. We were dropped at the side of the motorway by our exceedingly useful bus driver, and then, thanks to Michelle's frantic arm waving, we managed to get a lift in a police car to the hotel which was quite interesting...Michelle sat on an officers lap, and 4 of
Waboba!!!
Playing Waboba at their specially set up pool on the beach, I think i probably played this for 4 or 5 hours...such a good game! us crammed into the back, talk about a stylish entry! Hmm...back to mamas, we all got there and you pretty much choose whatever fish/seafood you want and they get it out of the tank and cook it for you, which is awesome! We had a bowl of prawns, some fish and some nicely cooked cockles and mussels and stuff! That night we had a pretty awesome party outside the hotel, with Pablo, a professional DJ, possibly O'Neil sponsored surfer, and general amazing guy DJing by the pool. It was quite interesting really, as it was a big group of international surfers, with some other random Chinese people thrown in, and as the government was pushing for this to be such a big thing, we all got our rooms for free, and were generally allowed to do what we wanted..
The next morning we got up quite early to watch people surfing. There was pretty much a small podium set up on the beach for the judges and a few small stalls for other bits and bobs...including a pancake stall, a barbecue, a Hainan beer stall (they liked us so we got free beer all day and I got a
Chilling on the beach
just watching the surf competition, the Chinese around seemed to be just as interested watching us as watching the surfing!!! free T-shirt too!), and a Waboba stall. Waboba is a company that sells beach stuff all over the world, and makes these awesome squidgyish balls that bounce on water, and are great fun to play with in the sea. I made quite good friends with the boss of the Asian part of the company, called Chris. He's in charge of everything that goes on in China, including sales and manufacturing and shizz, and it was really interesting talking to him all about doing business in China. He also gave me a Waboba T-shirt and a couple of the balls, and I now have to find some interesting places In Haikou to play with the balls and make a video for a competition they're running, the prize being a trip to Thailand for 2 to stay in a 5 star hotel and do fun stuff...sounds awesome!!!
Moving on, while I was talking to him and messing around with the balls, the surf competition was taking place, there were quite a few famous people there, including Holly Beck, Wingnut(somewhat a local legend, but he apparently starred in the film endless summer), and a load of other big names that don't
Army Training
So relaxed...one of our Chinese friends got up at 6 to come and take photos of us, until he got told he wasnt allowed in the training area. mean a lot to me. We ended up being videoed playing Waboba for an advert thing that may end up coming out, and we generally just had a blooming good time!
Right, before that iv realized we actually did quite a bit! Pete and I did the compulsory army training for Chinese students, which was fun, we even got to give orders to the entire group of 70ish cadets...in Chinese, so we didn't really know what we were saying... That also involved doing a bit of martial arts training with them, which was quite good fun! Pete is going down to Sanya quite a lot, and cos it's quite touristy and expensive down there, the rest of us haven't really wanted to, so we've ended up doing a couple of trips just me and the girls. We went to Wuzhishan, which is a town in the middle of the mountains in the centre of the island, it was pretty heavy rain the entire time we were there, and as our plan was to go rafting, that kinda failed!
I've also started doing quite a bit of Martial arts, I'm doing 4 and a half hours of Mixed martial
Martial Arts Training-Chinese Army Style
Giggles, wed pretty much do a run and then some of this raining, great fun! arts classes a week, 4 and a half hours of Taikwandao, and I think 3 hours of boxing. It's great fun as I'm the only westerner in the class, so I've made some Chinese friends doing that, and it's also improved my Chinese loads as I have to listen to quite speedy instructions in Chinese. Sury, my Chinese friend also got a job in Hainan government planning building, which was cool because we got to go and visit, there was just loads of outrageously optimistic things about Hainan, and there was a big floor map of the entire island, with cool lights and stuff. Just a quick demonstration of how Chinese people think... Sury got this job so that she could pay to keep her dog, but due to the fact that the job took up so much time, she sold the dog and pretty much stopped going to uni. Then after a few weeks she decided that she didn't actually like her job, and she has some really important exams coming up to see if she can go to england to study next year. However, because she hasn't been going to uni, she's way behind on uni studying, so
Army Guards
These are 2 female Uni students, who in order to guard the training ground (sports field) are given a sub-machine gun and told to patrol... the chances of her doing well in these exams isn't so good. All in all, she now has no dog, no job, and not much chance of going to the uk...madness!
The other day we also had the university sports competition, which was great fun! Pete and I both entered into the Decathlon, but as we weren't actually told the dates until right before, I actually couldn't do the second day of sports. Even so the first day was really fun, we were given loads of red bull, and told to do awesome. I have to say that I was quite pleased with my results, there were 37 people doing the decathlon, and id say that after the first day I was probably in the top 10. I got 2nd in the Shotput, which was nice and had a lovely 400 race which nearly killed me, but in the last 10 metres I managed to overtake a guy who'd raced ahead at the beginning, and get 2nd, I thought I was gonna have a heart attack, but I seem to be alright now!
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