Dear friends, families and interested people!

Today we organised a race for the kids, the sailing conditions were excellent: not too warm and around 2 Bft. It was a neck-to-neck race. The ranking was: 1. Jackson, 2. Anthony and 3. Tom

The kids had a great week and improved a lot their sailing skills!

In a couple of hours we go to downtown Shanghai for the weekend with all the trainers! Anne-Sophie, Laurent and Martijn will take their plane on sunday.

We'll post something sunday night and tell you all about our trip to Shanghai!

Greets,

The Shanghai team

The new Shanghai-team has arrived!

Thursday at 13.00 the new Shanghai team; Niels, Nicolas and Pieter left at Brussels Airport and flew to Beijing International Airport. Then they took a domestic flight to Shanghai and after one hour in the taxi, arrived friday at 13.00 at the house and the lake. There we were welcomed by Ann-Sophie, Martijn and Laurent. This afternoon we went an hour with them and the children on the water until a storm with thunder and lightning came and we had to come off. The children enjoyed their time on the water very much this afternoon. Tomorrow we will also attend the lessons with them; there will be a race among the children.
We‘ll keep you posted!


The new Shanghai-team

TSAI TSHIËN Mathieu and Alex

Dear friends,

Monday... a new week for Laurent and Anne-Sophie and the last day for Mathieu and Alex.

Like every Monday we gave the kids some explanation about rigging up the boats, where to sit in the boat, etc... After lunch we learned them how to capsize. The kids could try it by theirselfs.

In the afternoon Martijn, the trainer from Qingdao, arrived in Shanghai. He will help us this week with teaching the kids, because Mathieu and Alex went back to Belgium.

Because it was the last day for Mathieu and Alex, we organised a bbq with the whole team. It was a great evening!! Toni had a suprise for M&A. After some beers and tipsy translators we went to our beds.

Next morning M&A left us behind with broken glasses, a broken bed, a dirty bbq and a broken bike ;-) . Anyway, we hope that they had a nice trip to Belgium!

In the morning there wasn't a lot of wind, so we did a nice paddling race with the kids. Mr. Wang, the head of the teachers, invited us to visit his school. We had a lot of fun with acting like chinese students.

Later in the evening Mr.Wang invited us for a nice meal. It was very spicy, but with a lot of beer we were able to survive it.

Greets,

The Shanghai Team.

Peking duck

Dear friends and family,

After a great week we were ready to catch our train to Bejing. Hurry, hurry, hurry... . Tai, the local trainer brought us with Toni's car, a Lincoln, to a little city nearby were we could take a taxi to go to the railway station.

After running through the station to catch our train, we finally arrived in our cozy cabine.

We had a lot of fun that evening, it was a really nice experience!! Next morning we met our friends from Xiamen at the Dawan hotel. Again we couldn't lose a lot of time, because our lovely feminin guide, Sally, was waiting.

We spent the whole day with a nice group of foreigners, coming from whole over the world: Italy, US, Indonesia, New Zealand, ... . First of all we went to the Ming tombs. Afterwards we visited a jade factory. Unfortunately it was to expensive to buy a nice bracelet, a ring, ... .

Now we were ready to visit the chinese wall at Badaling!! We took a funny train to get on the wall. You have to be chinese to invent such a thing! Totally exhausted and after running for about forty minutes we finally reached the highest top, what a view!! We had to run the whole way back because Sally was waiting for us to leave towards the last spot of our daytrip, the Silk factory! There they give us a special price, 300 euros, for a three layer silk blanket.Unbelievable low price!

After a good shower, we went to a restaurant to have a Peking duck for meal. We took a special bike and motorcycle taxi to get to Hoihai where we had a good evening in some of the many bars lying around a lake.

Next day we went to the Tian'anmen square , in front of the big picture of Mao. We had never seen such a big square before. Afterwards we entered the forbidden city. It is so huge that you actually need a whole day to visit the city. We had just enough time to discover the most beautiful places.

A cheap Mcdo gave us the courage to make a trip by foot to the Temples of Heaven. A nice monument to finish our trip to Beijing.

We took the plane back home to Shanghai at 9 pm and arrived at 10h30 pm.

See you later,

The Shanghai Team

Dear bloggers,

Last Friday we started with a nice race. There wasn't a lot of wind, but just enough to let the kids start.

At the second mark one of the opis was going ahead with some boatlenghts, but soon after the second mark Jerry, who was lying third, took over the first place. Now Jerry was leading and sailed three nice rounds. But just a couple meters before the finish, the wind changed from direction and three boys overtook Jerry. Finally Ben became the winner.

The race was fantastic!

Top 5

1ste: Ben

2de: Bob

3de: Peter

4de: Jerry

5de: Hu

To end a nice week we learned them the knots. We also explained the different types of boat of the olympic games and to finish we let them show a nice movie about sailing.

After the lessons we had to hurry to catch our train to Beijing!! Mao here we come...

Greets,

The Shanghai team