Hi Everyone,
Just got back home after a bike ride,it's to hot we have been having a mini heat wave for last 2 weeks although thankfully we did have a day and half of rain last week, it was lovely to walk out after and smell the air.The whole area is awash with colours all the cherry blossom are in full bloom the trees,flowers grass,the gardeners are doing a lovely job in our complex,they have just filled all the ponds and streams and turned on the waterfalls and stocked it all up with hundreds of goldfish.
We went to the Beijing International film centre and railway museum the other weekend it's out close to the airport,the film centre was an amazing building on 4 floors a bit like our film and photography centre in bradford with film and interactive sets.The railway museum was a very large building housing about 15 trains steam and diesel as well as carriages and other stock,nowhere as good as our york one but still impressive especially the huge long haul steam locomotives.I got a good picture of a woman sat in the middle of all these trains but she was just watching a kids show of thomas the tank engine in chinese on a tv haha.
Went to a concert last Saturday evening a french group performing Vivaldi,s The Four Seasons,we went to the centre on the afternoon and walked for miles around the square and through some of the old areas (the hutongs) found a nice old run down cafe "the cafe of poetry" run and owned by a young woman they have music ,poetry and book reading evenings,we got talking to her about the photographs she had displayed on the walls,they were her friends who was having an exhibition on in Beijing so she gave us two free tickets to go and see them.She also showed us postcards of the photographs that she had done and said she could do some of mine for £4 for eight they were really good so I might get some done.
My driving is getting better all the time, i can navigate around good areas of Beijing now without getting lost so by the time we have visitors coming out they will have a good taxi service although their heart will be in their mouth till they get used to it haha.
It's May holiday weekend so Jun is off for 4 days so we are planning to go back upto the Monastery on the Sunday setting off about 6am to arrive for the first service at 8am.Also going back to the art centre of Beijing on Saturday to finish seeing it all,and we might be going to a place called "The Bookworm"tonight it's owned and run by some English people,they have a very large bookshop and library, cafe,bar they hold music,reading,talks ect evenings there is a talk and presentation tonight with photo's about a british engineer who had a a lot of run ins and adventures with the local manchu warlord when he was building the bridges and railways in the 1920's.We are not sure if it's the kind of place Jun and I will fit in with but we wont know till we give it a try.