May I suggest that you excise caution in the age of participants on the trip. Min age should be 16years old. Unless accompnaied by parent/insurance does change for under age 16 as well.
Hey, I’m from the UK and the idea of going to Shaolin’s been floating around the back of my mind for a while. 2003 sounds pretty ideal as well. Any idea how long you’d be going for?
I might go in 2003 if I can raise enough money I need to finish a deciet job frist the rooms for food and rent or like 400 a month ( maybe 450) so Iam staying for a year( because its only right that I pratice through all of shaolins seasons) So I think that maybe if I save and get a really good job when I move I will have enough to travel for a year. every 2003 or 2004.
how much is it cost you to travel to their just air lines
lee- i am going to the northern one so i’ll see you there, anyone that wants to meet up in shaolin or travel with us then email me and we’ll try to organise something.
I think for 3 years i’ll need about £6,000 - £8,000 as a minimum. An open return ticket from london - beijing is about £500, but i think there’s a limit on the time (1 year i think).
so which school is everyone thinking about going to? i’ll probably go with mr. heming, it’s supposed to be a really good school.
i’ve just started learning mandarin so in a year and a half, when i go i should be able speak resonably well, i think i might go on to yahoo voice chat and go onto the chinese section and try my mandarin out.
Stubbs
Not trying to imply that you won’t make it in a year and a half, but when I was in high school I lived in Japan. I picked up Japanese real quick. I was even into kung fu then, so I started taking mandarin lessons from some Taiwanese friends on the weekends. These people taught me week after week, and yet no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t master the accent well enough for them to be able to understand what I said. My japanese is fairly fluent and I’ve been told many times that I don’t have the “typical foreigner accent”. I put the same effort into my Chinese training, with no results. I have continued Chinese the last 6 years- trying to speak conversational with my Taiwanese friends. People still, often, act like they don’t know what I’m talking about eventhough I’m using correct vocabulary, grammar, and syntax. About the only thing I can speak well are the cuss words because they are usually pretty unique words, and not words that have one pronounciation for many meanings. The 4 tones are truly hard to master if you are not living in China and are not surrounded by it & forced to speak it every day.
Good luck! I’d go if I could; but if I work for the NSA, they don’t really like their employees going out of the country, especially china.