Blogs from Haikou, Hainan, China, Asia - page 3

I have actually been at university all this time, not only going on adventures! This blog will look at what it's like to be a Chinese student in both it's meanings: Firstly, what it is like to study Chinese, and secondly what is it like to be Chinese and study. Both are not particularly photogenic but hopefully interesting for those who aren't studying or being Chinese. Chinese takes about three times as long to learn as European languages, because there is almost nothing about it that is similar. Those funny little characters represent roughly one word (or basic meaning) each, although many words are made of two or three, and there are no spaces separating where one word begins and one ends. In total there are 50,000 characters that can be learned, each one unique, although ... read more

A collection of photos from around Hainan in first semester.... read more

On the morning of the 11.01.2011 we left for BoAo on the newly opened fast train service in Hainan. It wasn’t the super bullet train that China has been making headlines with it sure was nice and not to mention fast. It did around 250km/hr. We decided to upgrade to first class which was 48 Yuan (about NZ$10). It was double the price of the standard fare but well worth it. We got a two seater cabin to ourselves it was fantastic! The highlight of the day. Hmm What can I say about BoAo hmmm about that. There was pretty much nothing there. BoAo held some Asian international business forum a few years back and they use the site where it happened as an attraction FUN . Oh and they also had a boat ride to ... read more

Here are a few videos of me failing at various athletic events in the Hainan University decathlon. This was back in November. Me and Ben signed up all full of confidence, mistakenly believing that we would have a higher average ability over ten different events than most Hainan students. The fact that neither of us had ever tried a pole vault before, and that I had a sprained calf muscle, and that some of the students specialise in athletics for their degree didn't really phase us, but maybe it should have. We spent the month before the competition going to the sports ground every few days to see what pieces of equipment happened to be out that we could paractise with. Health and safety was non-existent, as people would be practising javelin with people still walking ... read more

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 ... read more