4 weeks in Yangshuo

I spent 4 weeks in Yangshou at the Omeida Academy learning Chinese.
What works well. The good.
-The Academy is set up with an English school and a Chinese school. The programs are designed to provide interactions with the students from the other school. The school set up a language partner for me (and anyone who requests it) so 1 hour a day I met with a student from the English Academy we timed 30 minutes where no English was spoken, then 30 minutes where no Chinese was spoken. This provided good practice for my Chinese.
-Many activities planned by the school. Each week there is a Saturday activity when I was there they were 1) a visit to a tea plantation 2) climbing the TV tower mountain in Yangshou (fabulous views from here) 3) river tracing. Each week there was a Wednesday cultural session (1 hour).
There is a weekly English corner activity for the English Academy. Two times there were dinners/barbeques for all the students. You could choose to attend or not attend any or all of these events.
-I lived in the school dormitory and could have chosen to have a roommate (Chinese national) from the English school. That would have provided further practice for my Chinese skills.
- There is a study room/lounge/coffee shop that provides a very active place for interaction.
-The school is close to many small restaurants/street vendors. When I was eating at them often times students from the Chinese academy would see me and join me for the meal. More oppurtunities to practice Chinese. Plus the communication with the local vendors is in Chinese.
-The school is well set up to provide many opportunities to speak Chinese.
-The teachers provided lessons that were generally fun and learning experiences.

The bad:
-There is a lot of turnover of students. Students come for times varying from 1 week to many months. They also have varying abilities in Chinese. This means there not a real opportunity for the teacher to direct the instruction in the long term at you. The class are relatively small typically 3 or 4 students. The last week one class has 2 students in it. In that class the teacher was able to focus the lessons for the 2 students she had.
The school does the best it can with the situation it is in.

Take home. I would recommend coming to Omeida if this was your first exposure to China, if you want to brush up your Chinese (1-3 weeks), or if you are starting at a no Chinese level. The school is set up for you to learn a lot in the time you are here.

For me, I have lived in China for 10 years and for the classroom experience think I would have been better served by one-on-one sessions.

People from all over the world, and of all ages were here. They got along quite well and had a good time together. I give the overall experience a 5/5.