April 29 - 06

Let the festivities commence. Chinese people have started traveling. 'Wuyi' (meaning 5-1, which stands for May 1st), is one of those holidays during which everything goes berserk here. I took the metro to Beijing Zhan, one of the train stations in Beijing, and decided I would try to capture moments reflecting the moving masses and the travel preparations. At the station, people sit during long exhausting hours waiting for their train to depart. They sit on their own luggage and eat food or play cards for what seems to be an eternity. People walk by, some trying to find tickets to take them across the nation while standing for more than 20 hours in a row. Others are there to try to get refund for tickets they couldn't use or simply trying to make a profit. Everyone is pushing forward, sideways, crossways, there are no rules or laws regarding standing in line or any type of conduct protocol in these stations. People show up to the ticket office with their money almost flying off their fingers as they yell the name of the destination in mind and that's a chinese train station in a nutshell.

April 28 - 06

Walking around Beijing's Hutongs. I haven't really had the chance to try my new camera. Today, after finishing some work, I decided to take it on a test drive. I feel like I'm learning about photography all over again.

April 27- 06

Business trip to Yiwu. Before I start, I wanted to inform my beloved website fans that I have changed my camera! I no longer shoot with a Sony DSC-F828, I sold that one in a black market and have now acquired a brand new, chinese smelling, beautiful looking, Nikon D70s with a 18-70mm Nikkor Lens and a 70mm-300mm Sigma telephoto.

On the other hand things seem to be cruising with the business here. I just got back from Shanghai and Yiwu on one of our first real business trips with positive results, only to come back and get even better news. I just spent 12 hours in a soft sleeper coming back from Shanghai because there were absolutely no hard sleepers left. It is almost May 1st, and for those of you who don't know it, along with October 1st, it is one of those weeks where you just don't really want to be traveling around China. During these days, everyone is trying to find a plane/train ticket to go x-country and visit one of the many sights this 'middle earth' territory has to offer. Guess where I'm going...nowhere.

The paragliding club (www.flying-man.com) I fly with here in Beijing is organizing some events and competitions during the first 3 days of the month. We will go to Mangshan and fly, play tennis, ping pong, moto-cross, and who knows what else. It should be quite entertaining, I promise many pictures.

April 17- 06

Waiter, more sand table 9 please!. We got hit by a sandstorm last night. I only realized it until this morning when I looked out the window and saw what you see in the photos below. A thin layer of sand covered the entire city as a result of strong winds carrying huge clouds of sand from the Gobi desert northwest of the Chinese capital.

Not only the ground is yellow but so is the air. People, buildings, cars, bicycles, animals all look yellow. The government was nice enough to advise people and strongly recommend us to stay indoors. Like anyone here is not going to go outside because of dust or pollution levels..right! I even spotted a few westerners and Koreans with surgery masks on to try and filtrate the scum we breathe every day.

"Hoy me siento sucio" (Today I feel dirty) -said Alvaro Rincon, as he walked into my apartment just a few minutes ago.

For more info and pictures related to this article:

Xinhua net

China Daily

April 15- 06

Finally an update. Umm...last time I wrote something on this website was like two weeks ago. What's been going on since? Well I have been busy with work, jobs on the side, my friend Maria coming from Barcelona for a visit, and that's pretty much it.

During the past week I have done some tourism around Beijing. I have revisited some very familiar places and have discovered a few new ones. We've also been quite busy with Viaco and CTC work recently and I'm doing some gigs on the side just to stay alive for now. I started doing some photo and freelance work for a new insert in the China Daily newspaper. My english classes are still on the normal course and have adopted a few new students.

Mindy: a full-throttle on-the-go Chinese businesswoman in her mid 30's. She's the financial VP of an Internet Provider company here in my neighborhood in Beijing (China's silicon valley). We've met twice for conversational English and I have already learned a few interesting things about the internet boom here in China.

Raynor: a 12-year-old Korean boy. I'm actually just filling in for his real teacher, Tavey, who had to leave town for a week. Here's the letter he left for me at the office, I thought it was kind of funny and frightening at the same time:

Ok, so I like this kid a lot, I really do. But it's really hard keep control of the classroom with him, especially as you have no leverage against him and he really doesn't care too much to learn. Like all kids, he's got a lot of energy and is easily bored and frustrated. As his replacement teacher, you may find yourself in a "grace period" which you should ride for as long as possible. Failing that, you're teaching on his terms, which means you may wind up playing hide and seek.

Bring candy?

Have lots of creative and fun games ready and energy to match his own.

Good luck. Tavey.

Great huh?- I actually just came back from our first class. "Hi, my name is Daniel, where are you from?" was the first thing I said to him. -Where are you from? he responds. "I'm from Colombia, where are you from?" -Where are you from? - he repeats. At that point, I understood the boy spoke close to no English at all. We played a few games, learned some colors, clothes, the classic hangman, and well...that got me through the first hour of class. For the most part we were both able to stay in the same realm and there were few distraction episodes. Interesting experience still.

What else is new? It snowed last week. Yes, in April. After we had permanently stored our winter clothes in the most remote corner of our apartment, some wintry weather decided to hit once again. The past week has been extremely windy which creates those famous spring sandstorms in Beijing. Just go out on the street, open your mouth, close it and you start tasting the flavor of city and sand. Yumm.

Alright that's all for now, here are a few pictures from last week.

eating bugs in wangfujing	a chinese man peeks while i take a picture	a Daoist monastery in downtown Beijing
maria signs autographs to school kids	a hole in the Great Wall	Christian and I get ready for a meeting at the embassy	Christian, Andres Mora and I at the flower expo in Beijing