Dear friends and family,

The last few days we had quite some work; an overview:
Because of the closing ceremony on Saturday we held the race for the kids on Friday. There was a good wind and some kids showed nice sailing skills. The first one to cross the finish line was Bowen.



After the race we prepared all the boats for the sailing performance on Saturday and we also put new stickers of our sponsor ODICE on the sails.



On Saturday the closing ceremony started at 13:00 with the sailing performance at 14:00. The goal was to let over 60 kids sail within 90 minutes with 30 OPI's. It worked out smoothly.
After that there was a (crazy Chinese) photo shoot with ALL the kids and some speeches, under which Thomas Annicq was one of the speakers.



We closed off the ceremony with a traditional Chinese buffet.
Because the Chinese traditional food is quite different from the Belgian traditional food, we didn't eat that much... Luckily we were invited afterwards by Thomas in a nice restaurant in downtown Shanghai with a great view on the skyline.

After a short but good night rest we started to clean up the sailing area and store all the boats. We said goodbye to our beloved Dianshan lake and the local people who helped us a lot. Yesterday night we ate for the last time in the 'Canting' (Chinese restaurant where we ate the whole month) -HALLELUJA-!
Now we are packing our bags and we leave for downtown in just a couple of minutes... Our work is done here!

So about the rest of this week: we have our flight to Beijing tomorrow where we will visit things like The Great Wall, Tiananmen square, The Forbidden City, etc.
Then we fly back to Belgium Friday night with all that rests from this vacation are the memories of a beautiful time and an extraordinary stay here in China.

We would like to thank everyone that made this possible; RBSC, the Twaalfhoven family, NOCSP, CYBP, Price Waterhouse Coopers, the locals, the translators, Toni and especially our sponsor ODICE.

Thank YOU also for your interest in this magnificent program and we hope to write to you again next year!


Greets,

Pieter, Nicolas and Niels

all hell broke loose

After an exhausting trip to Qindao, we finally arrived at our beloved Dianshan Lake. We resumed the lessons in the afternoon as it seemed to be another beautiful day with the proper amount of wind. But all of a sudden all hell broke loose, in no time the wind came up till about 6 Bft. and when we saw the lightning, it really became a dangerous play. So we decided to bring the kids immediately into safety. It took roughly a quarter of an hour until the wind settled down and we were able to assemble all the boats, fortunately there was only little damage caused.



Today, we could finally sail with the kids in normal conditions. First we gave some theoretical lessons and than we could start the practical part. This afternoon was probably the hottest moment we had during our stay in China. It was about 38°C and on top of that there was almost no wind. So we held again a little water fight to get some refreshment.
As you can see now the weather here on the lake can be very unsettled and treacherous...


Greets,

The Flying Shanghai Team

Qindao International Regatta

About our weekend to Qindao...
After a delayed flight because of the typhoon we finally arrived Friday night in Qindao. We were staying at the CYBP office on the 21st floor with a nice view on the new Olympic harbour!


After meeting up with the Qindao trainers we hit the town and had a very good time.
Next day we visited the Olympic harbour and we saw all the boats coming in after the regatta, including Carolijn Brouwer and Sebbe Godefroid.



Saturday night we had a great western meal and had a lot of fun in some famous Qindao bars where we pretended to be Belgian coaches wich saved us a lot of money!
There wasn't much time to sleep because we still had to visit a lot next day... So we woke op a little bit drowsy and head off to Jimo Lu (a well known Qindao fake market). Afterwards we went to 'Computer City' and the famous Tsintao brewery.
Sunday night we kept it calm because we had to catch our flight early Monday morning...


Greets,

The Shanghai Team

24 sailors were born this week!

The last 2 days the kids were bothered by a strong and gusty wind but we enjoyed it a lot, when we went sailing on the Tirion yacht after the training!
Today the circumstances for a race were perfect. The weather for the moment is very unsettled, so we took our chances and started up a race. We’d only just got on the water when the weather started to change, the wind started to get stronger and a mass of clouds covered the clear sky. After a couple of minutes the wind was dropping to a moderated breeze, which was actually almost perfect for an exciting race. There were 5 boats that could break away from the pack, they won finally by a large margin, still it was a tense race for who would come in fifth.
Tonight we take the plane to Qindao where we will spend the weekend with other trainers from Belgium and the Netherlands. One of the plans is that we follow the sailing regatta that is part of the pre-Olympics, taking place in Qindao.
You’ll here from us soon with pictures of the weekend!


Stay tuned,

The Shanghai Team

Death calm

Today we needed a whole new approach because there wasn’t a breath of wind. To deal with this problem we had to give some more theoretical lessons, which is after a while quite tedious. Nevertheless we decided to take the kids on the water. After bobbing a time up and down on the water, we started a water fight. This was not only pure pleasure but it was a good ‘lesson’ as well for the kids to get used to the water and their boat.


In the afternoon the wind was again death calm. There was one kid who didn’t sail in the morning because she was only 6 years old and didn’t know how to swim. We thought it was too dangerous for her to take an OPI. So we took her on the rib and afterwards she got some private lessons together with one of the trainers.



At the end of the day the wind started to come up, it became a light breeze. We found it most regrettable because the circumstances were ideal to learn the tricks of the trade, but we had to come off because it was getting late.

Greets,
The Shanghai Team

Babyface

So about our weekend...
We left the Da Yuan Garden at noon on Saturday and head over to downtown Shanghai. It was raining like hell and we were soaked after 5 seconds so we were forced to go to a Mc Donald’s. We enjoyed our western meal very much!
After the rain came sunshine and so we went for a walk and visited Xintiandi. It's like a western neighbourhood with similar bars and restaurants. After a couple of drinks we were more than happy that we found a steakhouse!
Later on the evening we went to a typical Chinese club called Babyface where we had a great time with some locals.



Sunday at noon we visited old Shanghai and also the famous YuYuan Garden. There were like thousands of other people with the same idea and it was 35°C. We were sweating like hell. But it was definitely worth it, just look at the pictures!




After a short visit to a (crazy) black-market-cellular-phone-building we went to a Carrefour and bought everything we could lay our hands on that didn't look Chinese!
To close off our weekend in harmony we ate a good western pizza!

Go go Cheryl!

Because it was our last training day of the week we wanted to evaluate the improvement of the kids on the basis of a race. In spite of the fact that there was throughout the week a fierce wind forcing us to go on the inside lake, we could take the best sailors with us on the big lake, were they learned a lot.
Today the wind was less strong so we could do the race on the big lake. The track was an Olympic triangle. The kids sailed very well and it was an exciting race. The outcome of the race was 1: Cheryl, 2: Jackson and 3: Mark.

After cleaning up the sailing area we are now free for the rest of the weekend. Downtown Shanghai here we come!

Stay tuned, you'll here from us shortly!

The Shanghai team