First, there will be a “Birthday Party” on October 22nd, followed by a Halloween themed Movie Night on October 29th and finally, finally a real Halloween Party on October 31st.

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Right now, we are picturing the students attending classes along with the Chinese students for math, Chinese, physical education and other classes, like art and music. The classes will be primarily in Chinese, with an English speaking teacher to help students, who need it.

Other classes, like English, social studies and other humanities will be taught by a Western teacher, using Western methods. Individual thinking and creativity will be encouraged and cultivated.

Guilin Sunny School is a progressive, well appointed school, with professional, free thinking teachers. The school currently has some foreign students and is fully committed to the goal of creating a parallel program for international students, outside of the national testing system. Class rooms are available for our exclusive use.

As parents, we are bringing together curricula from our various home countries (US, UK and Australia) to create an effective program, designed to help our children learn to be not just scholars, but leaders and creative thinkers as well.

Unfortunately, the timing of our organization of this program is a little awkward, as school is about to begin. A few of the kids in our group, including our two children, currently attend Guilin Sunny School and our hope is to get the program up and running soon, so our kids can join the program this semester. Other parents have already paid for this semester at another school and they will join this program at the start of the next semester.

At this point, the program is starting to gather momentum and we invite all interested parents to join us and to help create the curriculum and environment for the school. I can be reached at scott@filley.net or at 139-773-96705. Contact me and I will add you to the online collaboration workspace for the international school project.

The exhibition is divided into 5 halls of which one is for real estate, one for decoration companies and the remaining three for cars.

The real estate hall is divided into three themes, famous construction companies, boutique housing and real estate in the newly developed areas around Lingui.

So if you’re looking for a bigger place or you want to spend some cash, this is the place for you to go. (If you don’t have a Chinese driving license, click here for instructions how to get one)

The festivals activities include: “Books Drifting”(whatever that means), “Browsing through Guilin’s Culture”, Speech Competitions, Youth Animation Competitions, Youth Scientific Knowledge Competition, Good Books Recommendations, Book Collectors Advice, National Book Donation Drive, Intangible Cultural Heritage Exhibition and so on.

After the official opening ceremony, Guilin Central Square will hold more activities such as book and video exhibitions, promotion of intangible cultural heritage, philatelic exhibitions and author book signings.

Source: Guilin Evening Newspaper, 24th June, p.2

Each of these four parks have their own characteristics. They are different from the other parks in Guilin. The Jingpingshan Park will be made an island park including Douji Mountain, Jingping Mountain, Dazhou and 10 small islands. The park will be located in the Wayao Area in the south of Guilin.

Maoershan Garden Park will be a future flower park. With the Maoer Mountain as the center, it divides into an Orchid viewing area, an Orchid historical and cultural district, a Green Mountain Recreation Area and an Orchid cultivation and breeding area.

Lidong Park will include the Dongjing Nursery and some of the land of the Garden Construction Company. As there are a lot of universities close by it is planned to be a “sports park”. It will include many fitness equipments for the youth.

Guilin Garden and Plants Park will be build as a exotic and friendly “Garden City Style”.

These four free park and another 17 new roads will frame the outer city from all four directions. They are also believed to increase the value of land at the outskirts of the city for possible development.

source: http://news.guilinlife.com/news/2010/06-19/116079.html

The flight number will be China Southern CZ6307 and the scheduled departure time 08:05am to12:10am on every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. The return flight is CZ6307 from 1:00pm to 5:00pm.

The airline expects that the opening ceremony of Qingdao beer festival at the end July will become another hot travel destination after the Shanghai World Expo.

original chinese article: http://news.guilinlife.com/news/2010/06-20/116224.html

When coming home from shopping today, an old man put up is little knife-sharpening business in front of our compound. There were many people around, including many families but only a very few brought knifes to sharpen. The rest just pointed and explained their young ones: “Look, this is how it has been in the past”.

While sharpening our knifes we talked to him and while he didn’t tell us his age he said he is doing this business for over 50 years. Originally coming from Anhui Province he told us with pride that  he sharpened “many 10.000″ knifes in his life.  But nowadays business is not good for him anymore. People have their own electric sharpeners or buy cheap new knifes instead of giving him the business.

So, when you see him in front of your house, or you hear him calling out for business, don’t be cheap and let this old guy sharpen your kitchen knifes (for RMB 2 a piece). Maybe it makes an old profession survive a few years longer.

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We are using Secure Tunnel for about a year now. It is one of the few providers that is also running smoothly on Ubuntu Linux. They are offering different kinds of services, but if you just want to get your fill of youtube, the cheapest, US$10 per month SSL Tunnel should be fine.

We will have a small “After-work Party” this Friday, march 19th in Shangri-la’s shiny new U-bar. Please feel free to pop in and bring your friends.

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