Hi, my name is Manuel! I am from Spain and I am a Student Advisor at LTL. I’m now based at our Seoul School after living 3 years in Taipei.
Hi, my name is Mojca! I am from Slovenia in Europe and I work as a student advisor at our Shanghai school.
LTL Great Wall Trip
Depending on preferences of the group we do this either as a one or two day trip. The LTL Great Wall Trip is probably the most popular school trip we do and we offer it frequently. Several sections of the Great Wall have been renovated and opened for mass tourism, with loads of vendors, tour groups, souvenir shops and the like. This is not where we go. We hike along an old and untouched section of the Great Wall with amazing views, completely undisturbed by other tourists.
Climbing up an old watch tower that has been sitting there undisturbed for hundreds of years all by yourself is an amazing experience. The pictures you will take will be even more breathtaking. For two day trips we stay in the Chen family farmhouse, have a BBQ together in their yard and explore another section of the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs on the way back on Sunday. We leave early Saturday morning and are back either Saturday or Sunday evening.
Cost: 350 for two and 250 for one day trips per personThis includes transport, tickets, local guide, all food and for two day trips, accommodation. The cost can vary a bit depending on how many people go, as transport gets cheaper in a bigger group. Usually it is between four to ten of us going.
We host a Monday welcome breakfast on every 
Name something and there is probably a museum dedicated to it in Beijing, such is the size of this city. We’ve been to a tap water museum before, a museum dedicated to tap water, it really does exist. There is also a Watermelon museum, the Bee Museum and a Police Museum. For our weekend trip we often visit one of Beijing’s museums, going to another one every time to make sure that our long term students get to see different ones every time.
Getting competitive with the locals is a great way to brush up on your Chinese and make more friends. We have a basketball court in our school complex and there is a Chinese university with football and tennis courts just across the road. It is great fun and light hearted generally. That doesn’t stop us from wanting to win though!
Hai Di Lao Hot Pot is one of China’s most famed restaurants and when you visit you’ll see why. Gorgeous food cooked in front of your very eyes in a number of different flavored soups. However, if you think the food is great, the service is sublime. Always busy, always bustling and a brilliantly social way to enjoy some divine Chinese cuisine. It is about a 15 minute walk from the school and it is a very popular choice for our Wednesday mid week school activity. Watching the “noodle dance” when we are served our noodles is also quite an experience.
The Hutongs in Beijing are a sight for sore eyes. Narrow and tight but there is so much to uncover in one of Beijing’s most famous draws.
China as a whole is littered with markets that sell anything and everything you could possibly imagine at dirt cheap prices. There are countless to mention in Beijing and the food also must be experienced. There will be some memorable sights along the way so be sure to breathe it all in and enjoy the atmosphere. The most popular and frequent market trip we do is to Panjiayuan, the old Beijing antique and flea market where you can get anything from propaganda posters of the communist area to several meter tall stone Buddhas.
Pub Quiz is our favourite Wednesday tradition at QMex Bar but Beijing hosts many more throughout the week if this is your kind of thing. This Chinese/English bilingual quiz we go to gets rather competitive every Wednesday night and we send down an LTL team very often. The quiz is well run, and open to foreigners and Chinese with both languages spoken. Oh, their sizable Nacho’s are half price also!
Food in China is the best around, we genuinely believe this is true. Every week we like to try something different. We usually rotate between spicy Sichuan food, Xinjiang muslim food and southern Dim Sum, but are always open for special requests. Dinners are usually on Wednesday evenings and we leave together from the school at 6:30pm.
KTV stands for karaoke and is one of the more famed Chinese traditions. Getting together with a group of other students and singing long into the night is a great way to have fun and see contemporary Chinese culture in action. KTV is great fun. The venues are very smart inside and the rooms are fully equipped with everything you need. Both foreign and Chinese music is available. We assure you, this is a great way to spend a night. We usually go for KTV on Fridays as we usually end up signing until pretty late into the night and often move on to a nightclub afterwards.
If you don’t know what Bai Jiu is now, you will do once you’ve finished with Beijing. China’s most famous alcoholic spirit is traditionally drunk by Chinese and traditionally disliked by foreigners! Truth be told, once you get beyond the early taste it’s actually quite enjoyable. There are many different flavored variants to enjoy. This is our most popular option for Friday night after school drinks.
The LTL lunch club runs daily at the school between 12-1pm. Students have the option to get together in a group rather than exploring the streets of Beijing for lunch. We order the food, you kick back, relax, and eat away. Each day we order something a bit different so you are always trying new things.
People in Northeast China close to the border of North Korea are of Korean decent and are considered China’s grandmasters of BBQ. Korean BBQ is a cuisine you must try. There are flavours that send the taste buds wild. Food is cooked right in front of your very eyes and whilst your mouth waters. We have a Korean style BBQ place just five minutes walk from the school and this is a popular choice for our Wednesday school dinners.
Dashanzi, also called 798, is enjoying a growing reputation for it’s artistic community and it is not hard to see why. The community started in the abandoned factory buildings of a former arms manufacturing company that was closed down in the 90s. There are hundreds of different art galleries, from exclusive providers exhibiting works from world famous artists only the super-rich could afford to small ones that show the works from young and new local talent. The area is full of little tea houses, restaurants and shops and there is something interesting to be found around every corner. We usually go to 798 on a Saturday afternoon, strolling and then all have dinner in one of the restaurants there.
We turn class room number three into a little private cinema after class and watch a Chinese movie together. The movie will be in Chinese but the subtitles are in English so even if your Chinese level isn’t too high you’ll still be able to enjoy. These evenings tend to be very popular with a lot of our students.
Internations is a networking event that LTL sponsors in Beijing. That means our students get reduced entry fees and we always have a staff member going there. Internations events happen every second Friday and are always at a different bar in Beijing. Often they are very close to our school as we are located right in the middle of the Central Business District, but sometimes we have to take the subway to get there. As our school is located right next to the DaWangLu Subway station where lines 1 and 14 cross this is usually only a short ride though.
