Bye Bye Rizhao

Dear friends and family,

Yes yes tomorrow is our last day here in Rizhao. Friday we will be replaced by Taco and Matthieu. For tomorrow we have organized a little regatta for the children as a closing ceremony. This has taken a lot of energy from us to organise something like this here in China (everything goes very slow and changes all the time). All of the kids will take part of this regatta wich will be held in the morning. We've decided to make four groups of 10 children each. So there will be no more then 10 boats on the water at the same time. We've also invited the local press and all the parents. The only thing we still need for tomorrow is some wind and good weather!!

Today we had finally again a beautiful day. We've decided that we let the children sail the same course as they will sail tomorrow. The kids didn't know it of course. We've noticed that there is a big difference between the morning group and the afternoon group. However the morning group sailed more than the afternoon group.

We also had our first television debute today. We had to do an interview with the local Rizhao television channel. They came quite unexpected so it was really difficult because we had to watch the kids and gave an interview at the same time

Before the regatta starts we still have a LOT of work to do so we will get up very early in the morning! (7.00 am)

Pray for some good weather for us tomorrow!!

Greetings

Pia and Thomas

DHL number one in logistics??? We don't think so!!

Dear friends and family,

Our day started with something that didn't surprise us. Yep the rib wasn't repared. We didn't bother and started our sailing lessons with our morning group.

Because we only had one rib Thomas went on the water with an OP. We've placed the course in such a way the kids had to beat to get to the buoy that was the farest from the coast. In the beginning they struggled a lot but once they could follow Thomas everything went great.

Untill we saw a huge storm heading towards us. The moment that we noticed that, we decided to go back. Afterwards was this the right decission because only two minutes after all the kids arrived at the slibway the hell broke loose. We de-rigged the boats as quick as we could and get them as fast as we could inside.

In the noon Pia's DHL package finally arrived after exact three weeks. So you could imagine how excited Pia was when she saw her beloved chocolate and Thomas with his genuine "duck tape". Because we did had to the hotel to get the package we didn't had any time left to fix the rib. So we started our sailing lessons ( storm was over) with our afternoon group and sailed the same course with Thomas again in an OP.

After finishing our sailing class we "repared" the rib. We also adjusted the turning circle together with the local employees of the marina. Hopefully our reparations will hold untill the end of the week.

Then we went to the local supermarket again where we bought our new addiction "OREO'S" (cookies) and all the different kinds of flavours of chips (ex. prawns, cucumber, drumstick, italian meat in tomato sauce, spare ribs). Believe us they were all grose but funny.

Greetings

Pia and Thomas

Just another day in China

Dear friends and family,

Today our weather here was "susu" (chinese for not good, not bad). In the morning there was a lack of wind. We revised the sailing directions, the knots and the priority rules. If tomorrow is again a bad day we have no more inspiration what we could do with our kids. So if anyone has some fun ideas to keep the kids busy during the bad weather, don't hesitate to mail us!!

In the afternoon the sky "cleared" up because of the upcoming sea breeze. So we put the kids immediatly on the water and yes yes we have some pictures of it. We placed two bouys in the water (because we only have two) and let them sail beam reach around the track for start. Later we wanted to change the bouys in such kind of way so that they had to beat to get to the other bouy and sail back broad reach. But we didn't had to replace the bouys because the weather gods were so kind to us to turn the wind from south to south - east so we didn't had to replace the bouys. (that is the most exciting thing that happened this day).

In the evening Thomas found a gigantic hole in the kiel of his rib. Wich gaved us the explanation of all our troubles with this rib of course. We've reported it to Miss Joe and she said that it will be repaired in the morning. We really wonder how they will fix that by tomorrow?? Anyway we shall see.

Greetings,

Pia and Thomas

The Kidnapping

From Thomas Annicq:
I apologize for the lack of communication from Rizhao. I am to blame.

I visited them this saturday and am very proud of our team from 'het Zoute'. They are running a really good programme. Very smooth. RBSC quality! I spent the afternoon with them on the water. Had a blast! I even jumped on board some of the optimists to teach from there.

In the evening I kidnapped them and took them with me to Qingdao, where on Sunday (Today) we had the closing ceremony and race of the Qingdao-Kiel Sailing Camp. A race with 380 optimists who had no more than 7 days of teaching. You'll get the details from our Qingdao and Rizhao bloggers.

So fear not, they will be back online tomorrow night!

Thomas (Tom)