Everybody on the water and sail! (was the message from this morning...) after 1000 words explaining and many many patience, we finally received our marks today, so off we go!

The kids made a nice circuit, rounding 2 marks, bumping each others back, screaming it was too hot and after all learnt a lot on one morning!

(by the way, the local people are sooooo lazy...)

We explained with our hands and feets that a collision is forbidden when you're sailing. So, let's have a look. What will kids (from 8 'till 15 years old) do? Yessssssssss : Bumping! Collisions! So; let's have a closer look: What will those two blond teachers do? Yessssssss : screaming! loosing their voice! Our best sailor 'Fan' is an example for everyone. We set up a little competition concerning 'knots', and after 30 minutes of training the whole group knew all the knots.
After the course of today, a business relation from my daddy picked us up at our hotel and showed us his office, really nice by the way... what a view! After spending some time there, we went to a very famous chinese restaurant - indeed, chinese! I told my tommy, come on boy, let's give it a shot! Evelien wispered some nice words to that poor little duck and ate it with big taste... so good! We were completely satisfied, and we had a nice talk during dinner about China and Europe, it also appears that his sun joined the NOCSP program last year, and he was very pleased about it. It was an honour to him to invite us tonight, and it was an honour to us to meet this very kind people, and to end this day: It was a pleasure (my tommy says) to eat so tastefull chinese food! Before we go sleeping, we have to prepare our trip to Shanghai tomorrow... we will meet our Shanghai friends in Downtown - huge city, and we will spend a nice saturday evening and Sunday visiting... looking forward to this!

kisses

This morning the wind was perfect to sail, so all the kids went on the water and made a nice tour behind the motorboat (we still have no marks on the water...). After some theory and making a lot of noise, we played 'Dikke Berta' - the kids became crazy.
It's remarkable how much those kids eat for lunch... when we see those plates, my tommy is saying "NO NO NO..." Lunch is the first (and only) moment when the kids are quiet, we become completely 'zen'...
My High fashion sunglasses
In the afternoon we couldn't sail because the wind was too strong, so we took the kids for a motorboat-ride, in the mean time we teached our translators how to handle those machines. After 10 minutes they were like 2 'Johnny's on a motorboat'- wearing those tiny little sunglasses and making noise for the whole bay, lot's of fun and the kids had a great day.

Today was extremely hot, but the kids made us forget everything. The day started very fast, and all of a sudden all the kids were sailing and having fun, they were so good! We told the kids to follow the motorboat, and it seemed like they were used to do that!

We gave an interview to the Xiamen television, they wanted us to tell about sailing in Belgium and I gave an extra interview about RBSC, they all were very enthousiastic. The guy who was asking me those questions was so happy that I could almost eat his micro...
Evelien talked about the safety in sailing and how we handle the kids during this week.
The kids are really trained to bring the sails to the boat... very cute to see!
And here they go ...
On the picture you can see Johnson, Howard and Nana. Howard is really the funniest home...

In the afternoon, after some theory about the olympic games, we filled balloons with water and played a very nice game... The kid in me was there too...

After our work was done for today, we took a KAMIKAZE taxi to the city (this time is was a women - disaster) and visited the Xiamen university, very big and luxuriuos.

Behind the university was the 'Nan Pu Tuo' temple, original and very impressing...

We tought, why won't we climb te mountain where more temples are situated? The area of the temple was huge, and the view on top was beautiful. I won't talk about the tears I cried when I climbed those stairs... so hot! so wet!

After this major expedition we thought we deserved a great meal... so we went to our local favourit 'Tuto Bene', we said a prayer for that poor duck and lamb and ate like two..... Chinese!

What a day, what a lovely day!

kisses,

The Xiamen girl-grill (lobster and nutella) power team

picturesssss

Yesterday evening (Monday) we took a KAMIKAZE taxi (we really tought this was going to be our last trip alive ever...) to the Carrefour. I've never seen a shop so big like this... what a mess!
The Carrefour was located in a very nice part of Xiamen, guess it was a 'rich' neighbourhood.

Monday morning, the first day... We gave an introduction, and let all the kids yell 'RBSC!!!'
We devided the group off 15 kids into 2 smaller groups. The kids only had a chinese name.. but our pronounciation is not so good... so we gave them an English name! Big fun! On the picture you can see : Bob, Johnson, Fan, Howard, Feebee, May, Nana and Fay. We had two very strong looking guys... both wearing glasses, so we tought, let's call them John and Johnson!
Learning the kids basics of sailing ...
In the club they all know that I (Paulien) have a little bit of problems with the chinese food... or better, not I, but my tommy, so they made pasta bolognese for us! (with a little chinese flavour in it...) but really nice !

kids!

Hello everybody,

Yesterday evening was really busy, because Dirk had to leave to Qingdao and we took a taxi to the 'Carrefour' - in downtown Xiamen... I was hopefull looking after Nutella and cookies, because my tommy can't get used to all this food here - me & my toilet are really good friends!

This week had a very nice start... our first training week! The kids are adorable, and very happy when they can be on the water. We have 15 kids, and about 12 of them are orphans, really special to see but very very nice kids - we love them.

Yesterday we teached them how to rig their boats, and some basics of sailing. Because the wind is very light in the morning but comes up in the afternoon (round 12 AM), we have to sail in the morning and use this time very good. In the afternoon the kids went on the water (2 kids in 1 oppi) and paddled the boat everywhere... our motorboats were very thirsty!

Today, all the kids went on the water in 2 groups, each group had an oppi. Because we wanted to see what the kids could do, we let them sail one by one, the whole morning. We had a lot of fun, because some of them were really good and some of them were laughing with theirselves... In the afternoon we capsized an oppi and all the kids jumped in the water to 'save' the boat. One of our kids yelled 'sailing is fun'! great mission...

Later this evening i will drop some photos on our blog. At this moment we will have a walk on the beautifull beach here, and after that we can start searching after food...

kisses,

The girl-grill power team of Xiamen

music to my ears

When I hear the word 'weekend' in the future, I think it will sound like music to my ears...Why?

Friday morning the optimists arrived, and a few hours later everything was done, what a job! The sun was really burning, so working was very hard, but we have to get used to this!
Saturday we trained the translators, and Suzy (one of them) capsized the boat all the time, funny because she said she liked swimming very much... first day on the water in a motorboat was big big fun, and my legs and arms were on the barbeque, let's say steak seignant...
Saturday evening our lovely friends from the shanghai training team arrived in Xiamen (Anne Sophie, Laurent, Mathieu and Alexandre), we had a nice dinner in an italien restaurant with extremely good steaks! and guess what... The boss was a belgian guy!
The opening was very professional, and Dirk gave a very nice speech. Many kids and parents showed up, so the whole morning was one big attraction!
after the opening ceremony, we went with 'the gang' to the beautiful swimming pool, situaded in our hotel... funny detail : everybody had to swim with a 'swimming hat'...- the boys really liked the flowers... - no questions!
We had a little swim, searched for some shells, climbed rocks, ran as fast as we could over the beach (because the sand was grilling our feets) and after this beach session, we went to the city (downtown xiamen) to do some shopping.

we were looking for an oyster with a pearl - think we have to get these in the shops...

This weekend was amazing, and it really felt like holiday. The Shanghai trainers had a hard 'first' week, so I think their batteries are loaded and ours are ready to start tomorrow...

Let's give it a shot,

kisses,

The Xiamen girl-grill power team