Dalian update: Podium!

After two weeks of - honestly - annoying and excessively time-consuming preparatory work, we finally had our class internal speech competition to decide who was going to represent us at next Monday's university-wide speech contest. I did not consider myself a favourite at all. Most of my today's eleven classmates have been living in China or Taiwan for longer and simply have an edge on me as regards pure conversational skills. But to finish first you have to finish first. And as it happened, several boys and girls succumbed under pressure, chickened out or failed to even turn up and yours truly scored an unanticipated podium result :-)!

Two of the three Thai girls were out of reach, though. In fact, luckily enough, otherwise I would be spending the whole of next weekend fine-tuning that bloody speech further! They forecast a sunny 16 degrees all weekend - perfect for some long training rides! I will need it, because as of Monday I will be travelling for a week through Shandong province (Yantai, Penglai, Qingdao, Laoshan, Qufu,...). After Monday's special university event - in which our class will also recite a rhythmic Chinese poem - there are indeed no classes scheduled until Tuesday, 4 May.

Travelling is a great way to test your language skills, too. I discovered that last weekend in Nanjing, where I spoke more Mandarin than in all previous Dalian weekends together. Here you always end up with fellow students, which is logical of course. More on Nanjing later this week, including photo material.

Tomorrow I am also starting conversation tutorials with a local university student, who in exchange wishes me to correct her English.

This week I also signed up for the upcoming University Sports Games on 20/21 May. I will partecipate in the shot put and javelin throw competitions. I had to resist the temptation to register for the 1500m and 5000m runs. My recent foot injury, which took weeks to heal and which stemmed from starting to run again too quickly, is still fresh in my mind. I am very much looking forward to doing the shot put especially, though. It will be a walk down memory lane. As a young teenager twenty years ago - Jesus Christ - I won three Flemish shot put championships in a row, and today I am still holder of the renowned AC Zele athletics club's record in the -13y category. In 1990 I threw the shot 12m63 far and nobody has even come within 2 metres of that bestmark. It does suprise me because I still had to throw with a ball of 4 kilograms, whereas in the last 16 years they can use a 3 kg ball! Bottom line: this summer season my record will stand for 20 years. I am secretly hoping that next month we will also throw with 4 kilos in order for me to compare present with past. Meanwhile, my 19-year-old record on the 80m sprint (10.74) got finally broken at the very end of last season by a certain Yoni de Bock (10.67). Well done, Yoni! Now it's still the shot put and the 800 metres (2.18.9) :-)