Let it snow and new China family!

Last night, we had the second snow of our China experience. I went outside and bits of it could touch my knee! To be fair, that was where old Chinese people were shovelling all of the snow off from the road, but I'm going to pretend that it was naturally that deep. The untouched snow reached mid-shin though, which is still very impressive!
So. That's all very exciting.
Here are some photos of me and Tessa enjoying the snow!

The past week of teaching, I've been playing my students 'Mulan'. They've found it utterly hilarious! There are bits which I never really noticed before but each class was roaring with laughter! To be honest though, after watching the first half of one film 18 times in a row, it can get pretty tiresome.

(The next section of blog was written about a week after now.....)

The week of lessons AFTER Mulan consisted of me teaching my classes sections of 'Fairytale of New York'! It was so much fun and it all felt very Christmassy and parts of it were hilarious. I filmed them when they got the hang of it and put it all together into a China Christmas video! When I was planning the lesson, I thought that I'd really need to stretch out the learning of the song or that I'd need to put some extra things into the lesson but it turns out that 45 minutes is a good amount of time for Chinese 16 year olds to learn a verse or two of the song! To be honest, parts of the song are VERY fast so it is pretty impressive that they managed so well! I think the bits that were particularly hilarious was when the most innocent class of mostly girls had to sing 'you scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot...etc'. Very comical. Obviously, being a good teacher, I outlined what it all meant which caused great amusement for everyone.

Click this link for the video of the finished piece! A link to the youtube clip will open in a new window.

Yesterday (sunday 9th) was a brilliant day.
Y'see, in the past week or two, my friendship with a girl called Roxy in one of my classes has grown. First, she offered to take me home with her friends every day as she lives just across the road from me which was lovely. She has really good English and her dad is very funny so it's always nice to be with them all. Then last week, Roxy, Tessa and I went out for lunch together which was also lovely. We were slightly worried it might be a bit awkward as sometimes the Chinese don't really know what to do in casual situations.. But she's completely normal and fine. And then yesterday, we went out shopping together with Tessa and one of Roxy's friends. After getting myself a lovely Christmassy jumper, she took us to the cinema. Best thing ever. There is a huge games arcade which was SO busy. Because Chinese school runs from monday-saturday, when it gets to sunday all the kids rush to the arcade to let loose! There were what seemed like professional drummers on a guitar hero game, amazingly fast dancers on those dance mats and guys who took the shooting games VERY seriously. It was so much fun! There was also popcorn for sale which was amaaaazing! ALSO there was a 5D room which cost 15 kuai each (about the same for one the popcorn) and it was so fun. We were having roller-coaster films and the seats moved and the screen was 3D and in parts of the film, when you went outside, you'd actually get rained on! In the second film it was winter and it started snowing inside the room! It was amazing. I cannot stress how much fun this whole thing was.........
Anyway, then it was about 7pm so we went back to her house as were we previously invited over for dinner.
The whole family is beautiful! Also the mum is such a good cook. We had these chicken wings in a sticky BBQ-y sauce, AMAZING prawns in I don't know what, a very spicy chicken dish and various vegetable dishes. It was all so good. Then after the meal, because it was my boyfriend's birthday, I went onto my laptop which I conveniently brought with me and had a good chat with him :) we had to leave at about 11pm though...
Apparently the whole family loved meeting us and we're welcome at any time! So we are very chuffed with that. We will definitely make the most of that offer and make sure we see them at least twice a day. So they are now officially our China family. Huzzah!

This week and next week in class, I will be showing my students 'Elf' as it is a very good Christmas movie. Now I know I showed the Mulan the week before last, but Chinese students are always so overworked so I try and make my lessons as fun for them as possible. And when I was a student, there was nothing more fun than films in class! Also it's Christmas so that deserves some fun. I promise I'll do more actual teaching after our holiday!

So that's all really.. I'm pretty chuffed with how things are going. And now, whenever we're bored sitting at home, we will just pop on over to the best games arcade in the world.

Halloween and dog and visits and Fukang

I have a lot to cover. Nothing really that big has happened since we last talked but there have been a few small and fun stories which I will now share with you. I currently have the day off as after a hard weekend of party, I have lost my voice...... I'll get back to that later though. Read on.

So a few days after our last talk, Georgina and I went to Dushanzi which is a small and lovely city about 20 minutes from Kuitun. We went to look around this private school as they've been asking for us to work there. We sat in on some classes with 4 year olds singing and dancing to English songs (so cute!) and then just as we were about to leave, Rebbecca (the woman in charge of that school) trundled up to us with a dog bouncing along behind her. He was a sort of 'Lassie' breed and very handsome but looked mad. She then thrust the lead into our hands and put food and bowls at our feet and we realised he was now ours to look after. His name is YuYu and we were very happy to have him at the beginning as we missed our dogs at home. However he was terrified of stairs and the dark and very flinch-y and barked all the time...... So we weren't sure if it was the right decision.. Getting a dog on our gap year in China.

Anyway the boys from Fukang (Jony and Jamie) came to visit us the weekend after. We were excited to show them the delights of Kuitun but on saturday evening Tessa was very ill and by sunday, Georgina and I were also very ill. When I say this, it was a race to the bathroom to attack the toilet in all sorts of ways. The boys walked YuYu and fetched us some drinks and then decided it would be best to leave, cutting their visit sort. That sunday I decided to post some letters before my illness got worse (Tessa was a day ahead of us and was much worse, so I was living in fear.....) Anyway I had letters to Chris, family and friends waiting to be sent so I thought I better send them. But after sitting in a busy and stuffy post office with the Chinese shouting over me (posting letters here is really rather exhausting as it is) I decided to leave it until I was feeling better. I had Rosie with me to help with the process and we started the walk back to her car but I felt like I was going to faint or something.. So I took a walk outside the post office while she was waiting in her car.. I sat on some stairs outside a small shop and threw up a lot of things. The shop lady came running out to tell me off for doing so just by her shop and was trying to get me to move (the Chinese are so caring) and I moved my head to utter a 'due bu qi' (sorry) to her but as I opened my mouth, I only threw up some more. It's a graphic story but was really pretty comical. I didn't enjoy it at the time however.... Anyway Georgina was rushed to hospital by her school that week and was put on a drip (the answer to anything here) and after about 5 or 6 hours she returned feeling much better. Sadly Tessa and I weren't offered such luxury so had the next week off with food poisoning...

After going back to school for a couple of days the following week, we found out that we had the thursday, friday and following monday off due to Eid - a Muslim holiday. Not the whole of China got this off but we did as there are a vast amount of Muslims in this area. I spent the long weekend adding the finishing touches to my UCAS application and I sent it off applying to study Chinese and International Relations at Nottingham Trent University. I love this uni so much. I'd like to start learning another language on top of Chinese and French, something different, and NTU offers Arabic courses. So that's just perfect really isn't it! So I am very excited.

Also that weekend was the weekend just before Halloween and on the monday, Tessa, Georgina and I were invited to a Halloween party in Dushanzi. Now seeing as hardly any of the Chinese know what Halloween even is, we weren't quite sure what to expect. We took a taxi to where we were told to meet and saw Rebbecca. She then gave us funny, colourful afro wigs to wear and told us what we needed to do. We looked around and saw hundreds of small cute kids all dressed up. We had witches and pirates and fairies and pumpkins - the lot! All of the teachers were dressed as pumpkins and it was just a brilliant sight to see. Also it was their first Halloween and they were all so excited! We began by teaching all of the kids how to say 'Trick or Treat' and then we all marched off to KFC..... bit odd I guess. I think they were trying to find the most western place as Halloween is a western holiday and KFC is the best they could think of! Anyway once we got to KFC, some of the staff pulled Georgina and Tessa behind the counter so that they could serve the kids little party bags full of chips, a lolly and a KFC voucher. So they handed me and an American teacher these to hand to the children after they said 'trick or treat' to us. It was pretty strange actually... After KFC, we moved on to a bakery where a similar process happened but with bits of cakes and bread instead of chips. After all the food fun and slightly strange Chinese versions of Trick or Treating, we headed to a car park to play games with the kids and have a costume contest. We got to be the judges which was brilliant. We were told to pick the funniest, scariest, best home-made and cutest costumes in each class (some of them were really very cute!). After a cold, long wait while they all played their games, they day was over and all of the teachers were invited to a hot pot banquet for dinner which warmed us up nicely! There was quite a lot of banter at the table which was nice as everyone spoke good English and had a Western sense of humour which was really nice to be around for a change!

Then I went back to school and taught an almost full week! Rare. So that went well.... I had a fun lesson on Halloween which involved telling the kids all about the holiday and why we have it and then playing 'board slap'. This involved there being drawings of Halloween characters on the board and there being a person from each team up at the front. It's then a race to see who can slap the picture quickly after me saying it. It's a very fun game and the kids all love it! Sadly not many of my drawings survived after it being played a few times with different classes..... Then to 'wrap' up the end of the lesson (you'll see why that's so hilarious soon) I bring out lots of toilet roll and tell them to make each other into mummies. This was very popular too caused much excitement. What a fun lesson.

The following monday however I woke up with a horrible neck cramp. It was one of those things where you can't move your head in any way at all or it would cause such horrible pain.... I had this on Monday and Tuesday and on Tuesday, Melany (my leader at my school) took me to hospital...... I was poked and prodded and scream a fair bit there and they said that I could either have some pills for 60 kuai or an injection in my neck for 60 kuai. We both screamed in horror of the idea of the inject and the price and she rushed me out to go to the 'private doctor'. Now in Britain hospitals are fairly nice but going private is utter luxury.. I found that in China, that is not the case. We walked into what looked like a small horrible house which had a door which lead to squatty potty covered in things I'd like not to describe and I just felt like I was going to die. I asked Melany if she knows the man and she reassured me with saying that when she was little, she was brought here and now she has a son, she brings him here. So he was obviously a trusted man who's been going for a while! He gave me a lovely neck massage and laughed when we said the hospital suggested an injection. He gave me 2 mixtures of 7 pills to take with a 3 hour gap between them and when I woke up in the morning, it was much better. However I got that day off too to 'rest'. The Chinese love a bit of rest.

So! I've missed a lot of school recently....... However the lessons I have taught have been fun. The best lesson I've taught so far goes as follows...
I begin by asking how they are and chatting a bit.. Then we recap last lesson. Then I draw and compass on the board and get them to label it. Then we work on pronouncing them all brilliantly. Then we move on to 'up, down, left, right, forwards, backwards'. Then I get them to shout out the Chinese of all the words and they write them up on the board. Then I introduce the clapping game where in pairs, one person says any of these words and the other claps in that direction. Then they swap so the other person gets to clap.. THEN we play simon says which is lots of fun. It takes a while to explain the rules and I usually ask someone who looks like they understand to translate it into Chinese so they all get it.. Anyway, this game is lots of fun. I've found that they all learn best when they are standing up and need to do something with their bodies........ Anyway we play this for a while and then when they've got these directions well enough, I introduce NE NW SE and SW on the compass.. We then play a more complicated and challenging simon says which is lots of fun. By this point, I've usually just got 15 minutes left....... I then rub out everything and tell them that I want to make a map of Kuitun on the board so they need to shout out things like 'cinema' or 'bank'. So we do this, creating a birds eye view of a city.... Then I give them useful phrases for asking and giving directions and let them direct me around the city for a bit.. Then I get 2 people to come up where one person asks and the other person gives directions. They then choose 2 more people to do the same and this happens until the bell goes. Done.
It's a really fun lesson and gets them all thinking and involved which is good!

Now. Last week has been a roller coaster of emotions. Tessa and I were very homesick and generally depressed at life at the beginning of the week.. This time of the year is known as the hardest as the weather gets colder and nothing is new and exciting any more, everything is just annoying and different...... But on thursday, our desk officer (Jonny) from Coll came to do his yearly round of visiting, bringing a new desk officer called Dave. We were all taken out that evening to a huge, posh banquet where there about 20 people of high importance. We had our helpers and headteachers from each school, the minister of education, the man who fixes our shower and other very important people.... There were many toasts that night where people 'gambeeeey'ed each other.. This is the Chinese for 'down it!!!!!' so if this is said to you, then you have to down a shot of Baijiu. There were LOTS of toasts.... And sadly, lots of 'gambey's...... Long story short, we all got very drunk. The food was really lovely though. My favourite was basically a tomato soup. I positioned the lazy susan so that the soup was in front of me constantly and I'm pretty sure I had the whole pot to myself. Very happy with that.
After the meal, we stayed with Jonny and Dave and took them to meet Jasper at the other end of the city. Once we arrived, Jasper covered them in hugs and gave the men free beer and us girls a pitcher of our favourite Jasper cocktail (it's lemony and not really sure what else...). He then brought threw these test tubes with coloured liquid inside each..... Jasper said how they are very strong and after 60-70% Baijiu, we were expecting the worst. Soooo we had a few of these, made our way to the 'friend' table where only the best get to sit and were given many more free drinks....... I don't know how much we drank in the end but we had a very drunken and fun night with Jasper and his friends and our bosses (ha). Lots of things happened and lots of photos were taken but I have been told by Jonny and Dave not to publish these in fear!
The following morning was painful for everybody except me (victory - but only because I threw up all of the alcohol into my bin in the middle of the night...). We were taken out for lunch at this amazing and beautiful Uighur restaurant. The walls were made of wooden carvings and everything was just utterly lovely. I can't explain it. So nice. ALSO we had a very nice meal! Uighur food is really very nice we think.. We had dumplings in soup, kebabs (lovely) and pollo. Pollo is a very traditional Uighur dish with rice and mutton and usually something sweet like raisins. Anyway, Tessa and I had a peak at the menu and saw that pollo was only 20 kuai which is pretty good! Because the restaurant is so beautiful, we were expecting it to be much more expensive. So yes, we will definitely be going back there soon!
The boys and I then went to my school where we had a meeting with the head and important school people where we discussed things that we'd like to change or ways to help me. It was very fruitful! They then sat in on a lesson of mine. I was doing the direction lesson that I talked you through earlier and they said at the end that they were very impressed and that I was a natural teacher. They seemed very surprised! They actually said how they didn't expect people to be that good at teaching even in a couple more months.. So. I was pretty chuffed with that!
That evening, we were taken to a Kazak restaurant where the table was sunk into the ground and you sat around it in a sort of hole on colourful cushions - very cool. In that meal there was a sort of potato, carrot and beef stew which was very popular on a cold night! We didn't drink as much that night but really enjoyed it. Half way through the meal, we looked across the table and the minister of education was passed out with his head in his food. So funny. Apparently it's usually the most powerful and high up people who end up passed out as most of the toasts are directed at them!
After this meal, we treated Jonny, Dave and their translator (Ricky, he was so lovely) and took them to our local ice cream place. I had a card which gave us 100 kuai worth of ice cream for free so we used that well. We basically ordered every flavour they had and we covered it all in sprinkles and sauces and had a merry time. Ricky comes from Yili (9 hours to the west, 15 minutes further west and you'll be out of China!) and speaks English well. He was a lot of fun and through the night was teaching us Chinese tongue twisters! There was one about 8 warriors on horses running down the north side of a hill or something but the Chinese equivalent is something like 'ba bing bong bue, bung ba peo pong...' etc.. Sadly that's where I forget it.... Anyway when you say it fast, it is so difficult! But very funny.
After the ice cream, we all had to say our goodbyes as the boys were leaving to the next project early the morning after... It was sad to see them go. It was really lovely having some friends around again and they really cheered us up from the mood we were in before they arrived.

We had a full weekend planned to sustain the good mood. Georgina decided to stay home and take on extra hours of work for more money, but Tessa and I travelled to Fukang to see Jony and Jamie and the Bagang girls came down too. So we were all together again! It had been a while that the people from each Xinjiang project had been together and it was really nice. Jony cooked us AMAZING food - lemon chicken, beef in a black bean sauce, ribs in goodness, beans and a broccoli dish. So good. Jony really is a good cook... We are planning on spending Christmas day in Fukang due to their amazing hosting skills! After the meal, they got out the alcohol and drinking happened again... We got through about 3 bottles of vodka, half a bottle of gin, a thing with a real snake in it (no idea..) and various other things..... Hannah and Alice had created a drinking game before hand and we played this for hours. It involved taking cards which said things like 'finish your drink' or 'take a shot' or 'lick the person on your right's foot' or 'talk in parstletongue for 5 minutes' and lots of funny, weird things! It was a good night. And again, very very drunk.
The morning after Jony cooked us up an English treat. We had toast, jam, butter, beans, bacon, yogurt and honey and fruit all on offer and we were possibly the happiest we could be. We had to leave shortly after sadly as the journey for me and Tessa is pretty long... We left at 3 and got back to Kuitun at 10! We were planning to be back at 7 but it was much longer for some reason... We are getting very used to long bus journeys though so it wasn't too bad.. As soon as we arrived back, we went straight to Jasper's where we met Georgina who's birthday it was! We gave her a very nice angry bird hand warmer thing (which is needed now it's started to get much colder) and we celebrated her day with cake and not much alcohol for us.....

Now that was yesterday! I woke up this morning with no voice. When we were in Fukang we all were saying how we had sore throats and something may have been passed around the group.... But now I have another day off as I really can't teach a spoken English class when the English teacher can't speak!
I will 'take my rest' and do useful things today. I do plan on sending Christmas pressies home to my family soon so I could make a start on that process....
Anyway. That has been all that's happened within the last month!
We are currently planning our winter travelling and are very excited! Also, we just have this week of normal lessons to teach before starting our Christmas lessons so everything is going to feel very festive soon which is very exciting.

So I will update again soon when I have enough to say, much love to all!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

PS. We got rid of the dog (he's back with his actual owners who do love him) and have a kitten now.

The last month...

So when I last left you I was about to leave for Fukang to see Jamie and Jony.
We had a lovely weekend with them - we watched 3 films all cuddled up together, Jony made us his famous chili con carne (with a Chinese twist..) and we explored the city. We arrived on the Saturday and didn't really do much other than eat.. But on the Sunday we walked around Fukang, met their South African friends and went to the local park. Every park in China is the same - no swings or slides or anything but beautiful flowers and fountains etc. They took us on a tour around the park in the boiling heat and we had a rest by the pagoda at the top. When we got back to the bottom we hit a lake with a tradition Chinese bridge and building built over it on stilts. It was utterly beautiful and we sat happily there for ages. When we thought that we wasted enough of the day there, we got back on our feet and began to leave the river. However while still on the 'floating building' we were ambushed by a group of 70 year olds. They were playing traditional Chinese instruments and singing at first and we stood and watched until they were finished. Then as soon as they were done, they jumped up and pulled us over to a nearby square (all still over the water...). They then began the music again and looked at us expectantly, wanting us to dance. We had a small group meeting and then burst into a ceilidh. We pulled some of the elderly into the dance too and taught them what to do. After a good few dances of this, they began a dance of their own. Each one chose one of us to dance with and they taught us what to do! We all swapped partners so that we danced with each person, each time learning a slightly different move. After this they decided that the time had come to bring out the alcohol! A clay bottle full of Baiju came out along with shot glasses and they began to toast us each, one after another. The rule in China is you drink until the person who made the toast stops....... So that was interesting.... After many many toasts and lots of alcohol, we thought the time had come to say bye. After a few photos of course! We quickly went back to Jamie and Jony's flat and picked up our things just in time to dash off for the last bus back to Urumqi and Kuitun.

We had one more week of teaching before leaving Kuitun again for two weeks! Me, Tessa and Georgina spent a night in Urumqi where we found and tested the Pizza Hut (very good I'll have you know) and explored shops. In the evening we jumped in a taxi and shouted various things at him where he looked confused. I called up our good friend Jasper and asked him to ask the man to take us to a piercing place. Me and Georgina both wanted piercings so we thought why not! We were in the taxi for a very long time and he kicked us out at a dead end, in the middle of a market, pointed to the left and said some things in Chinese.... After about an hour of asking people where it was he was talking about, we walked into a set of market shops and saw a board with tattoo designs on.. So we knew we were close. We asked the woman there where the piercings were and she pointed across the building. We walked over and saw a selection of body piercings hung up on the 'wall'. I pointed to my belly and she nodded and grabbed me, grabbed a piercing gun and began cleaning everything. I was surprised and confused as I was expecting it to be done by a needle and belly ring.. Not a piercing gun and earring! After much deliberation we thought 'oh why not'. So I got it done. In a market. In China. It was completely clean and safe... Just a bit different! Georgina got her lip pierced while we were there too! When we got back to our hotel I looked at it.. It was basically an earring but in my belly. The end was secured by a butterfly and everything! I talked to Tessa who is a piercing pro and she said that when she got her belly done, they put the belly bar in straight away. So we sterilised the bar for 30 minutes, took the earring out and put the belly bar in. Well.... we tried to. We discovered at this point that the belly bar was much thicker than the earring so my piercing wasn't having any of it! After about 30 seconds of trying to get the belly bar in, I gave up and put the earring back in.. Again..... I tried. By that time, the piercing had healed because it was so new! I tried forcing it back in for a painful hour or so but gave up.... So I had a belly piercing for a full 3 hours! I plan on getting it re-done at some point but I'll leave it alone next time!

We took a train over night to the capital city Lanzhou in the province of Gansu where we met up with a few other volunteers. We then all took a taxi to where we'd be staying. We spent the first night in University dorms and this is where we met up with all other volunteers. We all went out for a meal and then went to a bar where we all drank a lot... Drunken Chinese games were played and everybody had a really good night - the morning after was a bit worse!
In the morning we were taken by a bus to the school where we'd be spending the next week. We were here to take part in the language course and we spent the week living with host families. Once we got to the school we had a 'welcome talk' with some of the important people at the school and then we met the children we'd be living with. Each volunteer had a child each and they took us to and from school. Mine said she was called 'Jessy' but spelt it 'Girthy'..... So not sure what happened there..... She was really nice and throughout the week we became really good friends. Her mum was lovely but didn't speak any English and she had a cute little brother. One evening her grandmother, aunt, uncle, someone else and a child of some relation came over. The aunt and uncle spoke fluent English so we had a good chat which turned into a 3 hour Chinese lesson for me! The food cooked in that house was brilliant and they looked after me really well!
As far as the actual Chinese lessons went..... It wasn't great..... They were teaching us things like 'this is what a 50 kuai note looks like' which was just patronising and a waste of time... By that time, we had been in China for over a month so a lot of what they taught was pointless. It was really good to see everybody again though and swap teaching tips! We did get a calligraphy lesson though which was really good.

After the week in Lanzhou, a lot of the volunteers travelled to a nearby city (well, 8 hours away by train.. Near for China!) called Xi'an. Now Xi'an was absolutely beautiful. In the hostel that some of us stayed in, there was even a wall dedicated to previous PT volunteers! It was pretty cool seeing who had been there before and where they were from etc.. We made our mark too obviously! We spent most evenings at the other hostel, where the other half of volunteers stayed. It was such a cool hostel. It was huge with really cool decor.. There was a restaurant which served western food and there were westerners everywhere! It was so surreal seeing white people so often..... Downstairs there was a bar, always completely packed. There was a stage which always had someone performing on and it was just brilliant. This bar is where Tessa and I found our love for sex on the beach and screaming orgasms.

One night, we all went to the bar and played pool for a while. After a couple of hours, a lot of the volunteers went to bed but Tessa, Ella and I joined a table with some friendly strangers and a few other PT vols. We got chatting and one of them bought a few rounds of tequila shots. It was about 3am when they shouted 'we need to go to a club!' so we all jumped in various taxis and went to a club! The club was brilliant and full of drunken Chinese and Western people. We danced a lot and drank some more and after a few hours us 3 girls went outside for some air.. Within literally 10-20 seconds of sitting outside, a group of 4 men came up to us holding wads of money and saying 'how much? how much?'.. We shouted back 'too expensive' in Chinese and after a bit of them trying to sort out money, we ran away. So.. that was an experience! We got to bed at about 6am and I woke up at 7am to leave for the Terra Cotta Army. Busy me.

We did the general sight seeing in Xi'an but nothing was as good as the day we spent in the Muslim Quarter. There was a huge food market selling all sorts of things which opened up to a never ending market which sold 'genuine' designer clothes, really nice Chinese paintings and basically everything you could think of.. I spent 350 kuai there on 6 really nice things which is only about £36! You have to be a good haggler to go shopping in a market though.. For example I was looking at a fluffy, warm Abercrombie hoodie and the lady said it would cost 360 kuai.. But after being brilliant I got it for 90. It's really fun! We went round the corner and into another section which was possibly the best thing I've seen in China. It was another huge market-like place full of colour with Chinese music playing and the most traditional looking, beautiful Chinese things I've seen. It was a brilliant experience just standing there and we all remembered exactly why we wanted to come to China.

After a really good week in Xi'an it was time to take the two long trains back to Urumqi. We said our goodbyes to the other volunteers and left for home! When the bus got closer and closer to Kuitun, it was so good. We really missed our city and we forgot how lovely it was! We feel so lucky to be in Kuitun and as soon as we got back we went to see Jasper again. He fed us free food and we used his wifi and life was good.

I started teaching again yesterday and it was weird to go back after being a student for a week again! But I was teaching new classes and they were really lovely and friendly. I gave them my QQ number (like a Chinese MSN) and I now have 31 best friends! One was saying last night how she wants to take me shopping, another said how I should come round and eat some of her mums food and another said 'There are many students in our class are love you, want to let you when they girlfriend' which is sweet ahah

I have a day off today due to exams in Grade two which is nice! I go back 5 lessons tomorrow though which is a lot..

We plan to get a dog soon too. A friend of ours said that we can look after his dog and when we go travelling or when we leave to go back to Britain, he could just take him back! Tessa, Georgina and I all have dogs at home and miss them SO MUCH so it would be so nice for all of us to have a dog around the house again.

Basically life is still good here.
I'm getting very close to applying to University now too! I'm so excited about it at the moment by seeing loads of freshers photos. In the past couple of days I've read all there is to read about Nottingham Trent, Nottingham city itself, where the Nandos in Nottingham is, EVERYTHING.
So yes. Very excited.

I will upload another blog the next time something exciting happens, but it looks like we'll be in Kuitun pretty much solidly until the big holiday around Christmas and New Year. So I'm not sure when the next exciting thing will be!

I can't upload photos on here.. I think the internet is too slow.... So if you want to see photos then click here and you can see every photo ever! https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4492273874346.178447.1515259728&type=1

Much love to you all
xxxxxxxxxxxx

Life in China!

So. A lot has happened since we last talked.
Sorry it's been so long but this website, along with other things, was blocked in China. But we've found a way around it! The things I do for my readers.....

So I'll start from the beginning.

Me, my mum and dad left home on Thursday the 23th August - about three weeks ago! We drove to London and arrived at our hotel at about 7pm.. I knew that some of my closest friends who'd be coming to China with me were staying in a hotel nearby and I persuaded my parents to let me go and see them. We started the walk there and about half way there I saw three figures dressed in bright hoodies reading 'Project Trust'. I then wiggled my arms to the side as a test and they did the same. We ran to each other and I through my arms around Jony and he spun me around. I then did the same to Jamie (these two are really my favourite guys in China. I can't explain my love for them...) and hugged the third, Alex. We then walked and chatted about how mad it was that we were together and that we'd be finally flying to China, not to return to Britain for a whole year. We had talked about it for months and it was so surreal that it was about to happen... After a last meal out with my parents, we met up again with them and some other volunteers and talked for hours about everything.

The next morning was mad. We woke up at 5am and ran around trying to get everything sorted and checking that I brought everything I needed for the year. We left to go to the airport, met up with the 26 other volunteers and said our farewells to our family. Again, it was surreal to say goodbye to my family, but knowing what my year had in store for me, made leaving so much easier.

Tessa, Alice, Hannah, Jamie, Me, Pete, Alex, Jony and Georgina - the Xinjiang group (excluding Pete and Alex)

Last photo with mum and dad

Mum and dad took a last minute photo of me just before I went through the gate...

Once we walked through the gate, we went straight for breakfast then jumped on the plane. We all had seats on completely different places on the plane but in the grand scheme of things it turned out that me and Jamie were sitting next to each other. We spent the following 7 hours watching films and being brain dead. Once we got closer to Abu Dhabi, it was amazing. The views of busy and green England had turned into an empty, dusty desert. It was towards the end of the day in local time so the sun was setting and again, it was beyond surreal.

The roof in Abu Dhabi airport was cool and it was like we were in a doughnut. Jony thought he'd be cultural and have a Costa followed by a McDonald's.

Anyway this blog is taking a while to write so I'm going to skip over a few things...
We got back on the plane, made Chinese friends (again I was sitting next to Jamie), watched films, ate GOOD plane food, got off the plane, went through Chinese security (scary times.....) and to the main building.
Time for a story.
We met Alicia and Mike - our country reps. They're the English people who live in China who are linked to PT in some way. So they looked after us for our first week in Beijing and if something goes wrong that is specific to China, it's good to ask them as they know what's what.
Anyway, we met them in the last building so then the 27 (now 29 of us) made our way out into the big wide world. There was a travelator leading from the building to the outside so we all piled onto it. I was enjoying a nice, pleasant ride and awaiting my first step into China. Then suddenly... I heard a few crashes and saw Jony jumping around. We got word that there was a pile up on the travelator as someone at the front forgot to move the luggage trolley once they reached the end... We were further back so though we were ok but then as the travelator continued, more and more trolleys got stuck behind each other and people were being crushed and THERE WAS NO ESCAPE. Quickly, the panic reached us and I managed to avoid some of the pain by crawling up the sides of the travelator. Anyway, Alicia stood in to save the day before any Chinese people got hurt by some stupid Westerners. But that was our first step into China. Falling out of a travelator surrounded by bags and screaming teenagers. It was a beautiful moment.

Bus ride through Beijing, it was huge. Arrived at our hostel (very nice actually, good rooms and really nice bar area, I recommend it.) Then after about 1 hour of having a shower and putting our bags in our rooms and recovering, we left for Tienanmen Square. It was all just so huge and still so alien to us and the whole thing didn't really sink in for many of us as we were all so exhausted.
Me, Jony, Jamie, Ned, Tessa and Hannah went into the Forbidden City. We took a lot around and found some benches in the shade by this beautiful lake. We saw that Chinese people were lying on them so we thought that it was ok. We joined in with the lying and basically fell asleep in the Forbidden City for 2 hours.
We met up with the others (after awakening to Chinese people staring at us) and went back to the hostel and had our first Chinese banquet. The food served wasn't what we were expecting at all. There was this thing that was basically chips fried in a way that they stick together so were basically slices of chips.. So that was cool. There was also delicacies like whole fried fish and mashed potato!
We then explored Beijing for the first time before going to bed and having a well deserved, long sleep.

Day two in Beijing was filled with a cooking lesson and a scavenger hunt. In the cooking lesson we made Stir Fry Noodles (everything made from scratch, including the noodles. I'm a pro noodle maker.) and Gong Bao Chicken. They were both so tasty and I will make these dishes whenever I can. In fact for the first night at our flat, I made the noodle dish!

Tessa being all proud with her noodles

After this, we ate the food obviously (yum) and then went back into the centre of Beijing for a 'scavenger hunt'. Alicia gave us a sheet of paper on with challenges and we had to walk around Beijing to complete them. These included finding and trying a local drink (it was like yogurt in a grey clay pot.... really really nice!), asking a stranger if they were hungry and finding and writing the characters for male and female. We went around as the Xinjiang group and stumbled upon a bar. I tried a drink called 'plum nectar' which was pretty nice! There was live music playing and the general atmosphere was pretty lovely.
That evening we jumped on a bus to take us to a hostel near the Great Wall. We had another weird and slightly wonderful meal here then about 20 of us crammed into one of the girls rooms. The 'bed' was for 10 people but we managed more. It was pretty cool though, it was just one huge pile of bricks with a layer of padding and some duvets and they called it a bed. It was painful but friendly...
That night we sang songs (with Dan and Jono playing the guitar), drank Baijiu for the first time and generally had a merry time!

The morning after, we set off for our epic hike up to the Great Wall. We were expecting the tourist-y part of it and we were greeted by the completely wild part. Apparently the section we were on was actually banned because it's pretty wild.. But the locals let us. It took us about 30 minutes to climb to the top (no luxury of a chair lift..) and I am proud to say that I was the first girl out of the group to be on the wall! Also I kept up with the fast guys at the front so I'm proud of all sorts of things. Once we got up there, we waited for the others and wandered around. You could only see about 10 yards in front of you before the fog decided that you had seen enough.. But I think that that's what made the views so amazing. It felt like we were so high up and it was amazing seeing the wall disappear off into white.

Once we got back to the bottom, we jumped back onto the bus and it took us to our beloved hostel. That evening we had the best meal of our lives. It was really really good. There were 3 banquet tables with plates and plates of food coming out and being put in front of us. There was a sweet fried pork dish which was so tasty, a beef thing in some sort of sauce thing and Peking duck. The duck came with pancakes and cucumber and plum sauce (the whole shibang) and it was just so good. After the meal, Alicia and Mike took us out for an evening of karaoke!

We walked into the building and into this huge reception room with marble floors where everything was shiny and beautiful. We then made our way down this huge, wide staircase and into this other huge reception room. Then through a few more doors and we were in this smaller (but still big) room by ourselves. There were 4 sets of sofas/posh chairs to sit at, each with a coffee table. It worked nicely because us 27 can easily split into 4 mini-groups! I was sitting with my breth obviously.
Then a Chinese man walked in and gave each group a few microphones and took drink orders.
Then we all sung terrible songs.. Including Adele, Gotye, Party Rock, My hump my hump my hump my hump my lovely lady lumps (etc), Barbie girl and many MANY others. Those ones are just slightly easier to remember as they were hilarious.
I took a staring role with a couple of other people in the Adele and Gotye and the my hump one was played a few times and we rocked it every time. I didn't know the words before then but I surely do now!
Jony sung Pink by Areosmith by himself and it was the funniest thing any of us have witnessed. He just read the lyrics in his deep, depressed, serious Scottish voice and it lasted for 3 minutes and oh, we were all wetting ourselves.
After the karaoke, we decided to go to McDonald's because we are cultured and like learning about the Chinese food. I was pulled into a 4 seater taxi which already had 4 people in, so I was lying on top of the back 3 people. But in the transition into the taxi, my arm hit the top of the door which was really rather painful as my BCG injection was STILL healing... So I bled quite a bit back there.
We got out of the taxi and toddled into McDonald's and I asked behind the till for a plaster IN CHINESE and they actually gave me one. So that was a proud moment.
We then all went off to different bars and had yet more alcohol. We ended up in a bar called the Pool Bar (it had a pool table in it believe it or not!) so we sat and made friends with other English people there and obviously, played a lot of pool!

The day after was much less eventful. We had 2 meetings to sit through which was a challenge seeing as we were all shattered from the previous night. However that evening was lovely as we all went back to the Pool Bar and chatted and just had a lovely time. We also spent a lot of time in the bar in the hostel. We sat in the outside area where it was still warm from 11-1! Oh China. So warm.... Dan and Jono played the guitar and sang again and life was just lovely.

The morning after we had to get up nice and early in order to leave for our train to Xinjiang! About half of us left the hostel in the morning and once we got to the station, we split again to just 9 of us. There was us 7 going to Xinjiang and 2 boys going to the most north-west side of Gansu. After successfully getting our huge bags into the top bag compartment (with the help of some very nice Chinese people), me, Alice and Georgina went exploring to find the others. That journey was spent as a group in Jony, Hannah and Jamie's carriage as they had the nicer company! We made many friends along the train - Alana 1, Alana 2 and her Grandmother, London/Canadian man, Tom and Bob, Bob's younger brother and younger brother's friends!
Alana 2 was a little girl (she was our favourite) who was basically our teacher as she understood how terrible we all were at the language! So for example I asked her in Chinese if the boy near her was her 'didi' (brother) and she looked at me with horror in her face and shook her head.. I was trying to work out what I did wrong and lept to my phrasebook and then shouted 'gege' (with a 'g' like 'genie') and she again looked confused after shouting back 'gege' with a 'g' like 'got'. Basically this means that he was her older brother (gege) and not younger (didi)... So from that journey, it was already so interesting and we were learning new words from the start!

After being force fed seeds by Alana 2 and her Grandmother, we taught the kids some patty cake games, ate some more, sung, chatted and wrote to our new friends. They found it much easier understanding things when they were written down!

Alana 2 and her Grandmother. What a lovely picture.

The long train journey was made much longer by a few hours of delays.. So we got off of the train after 42 hours at about 1:30am in Urumqi. The smell of barbeques suddenly hit us and we were happy people. We walked towards a piece of paper with 'PT' written on it and met a few Chinese people who we assumed were people we'd be staying with for the next year... It was a strange feeling. We were introduced to our Waiban (waiban is Chinese for 'mentor'. They are the people living in your city and working in you school who take most responsibility for you. They are really helpful and we love them lots.). Ours is called Rosie and we've found out she is 27 and single and LOVELY, so if you happen to live in Kuitun and fancy a lovely gal, then there she is.

She took us to stay in a hotel in Urumqi that night and the following morning we were poked and prodded at the hospital in Urumqi. We had all sorts of tests done and us 3 girls had a weirdly fun time! Since it was pitch black the night we arrived, this was the day when we got to actually see Urumqi. It is such a beautiful city - much nicer the Beijing! Also the smell tops everything. After one last lunch in Urumqi we got into a mini van and they took us to Kuitun - the city where we'll be staying for the whole year. After a nice nap, we arrived and straight away we were taken to No. 1 High School - my school! We met Kai, who is a teacher at the school with good English and me and him are now pretty close.
We went round the other schools and met Mrs Liang from No 1 Middle School (Tessa's school) and found out that Rosie was from No 2 Middle School (Georgina's school). All of us then went around different serious looking places to get serious forms and things filled out. Rosie then took us to our apartment and we were all surprised with how lovely it is! There's a wall in the living room completely painted with mountains, branches with blossom, a stream, a tiger and a panda on some bamboo! There's a little balcony and 3 decent sized rooms and there's even a working(ish) shower, western loo and washing machine. We were obviously very happy.
The next few days were spent out shopping with Rosie to get things to make our new place prettier. We got pillows, cushions, a huge rug, a throw for the sofa, turtles, new bed sheets, a mirror, pretty boxes for our clothes, paint and EVERYTHING you could need. We spent about 500 yuan each all together which is only about £50! So China is very, very cheap. Happy us.

I've now been in Kuitun for two weeks.
We've gotten into the swing of teaching pretty quickly! There are some classes which are much harder work than others and there are some which think that they have perfect English so don't pay any attention! I wasn't told anything about my classes other than Grade 2 Class 24 is going to be much better than Grade 2 Class 5 as that's how the school system works.. But once I taught them, I found out that actually Class 5 are lovely and so much better than Class 24! So the first week was improvised to the max.
The last week was much easier. Not because I knew which classes were better than others, but simply because I was more confident as a teacher. I already have a pretty good balance between joking with my students, helping them and telling them off if they're being annoying. So that's handy!
We've made quite a few friends already and have favourite places to eat and go in our lunch breaks. After just 2 weeks we have a pretty solid routine! The usual lunch break is spent by going to a restaurant, then to the cake shop (the cakes here are just too good. We need to get booked into the gym...) and then to the park. The park here is the most beautiful thing I've been in and we just lie down on benches and soak up the sun. Because Xinjiang is so far away from Beijing, the hottest part of the day is at about 3-4pm which is the end of the lunch break! So we take that opportunity for sun bathing. Kuitun really is a lovely city though and every now and then we decide to break the routine and explore!

The cakes I talked about...

Last weekend Alice and Hannah came down from Bagang. We took them to all of our favourite places and let them meet our favourite people. We had a really nice weekend and spent Saturday night watching scary films and all sleeping on the living room floor. Then on Sunday, Hannah and Alice needed to go and find the bus in order to leave to go back to Bagang. Georgina took a taxi with them to the bus station (in the end, it was the wrong bus station so they needed another one in the other direction and only just caught the bus even though they were 5 minutes late!) so me and Tessa were left to roam the city by ourselves...... bad idea. Basically we walked past Dicos which is the Chinese version of KFC/Burger King. We popped in and got an ice cream (very nice thanks) and went on a hunt for the shopping centre. There are huge buildings with shops everywhere but one of them is the shopping centre with EVERYTHING in. We walked past the door for it and peeked inside and there were dusty Chinese men all doing work on the door. But we saw a little Uighur women walking in with a scarf around her face so we assumed that we must be allowed to go in too. We went inside and soon realised that the whole level of the shopping centre was being re-done. Also, the woman we were following wasn't Uighur or anything, the scarf was just to protect her from the dust as she was working there too. But because me and Tessa are proud, we didn't want to walk out straight away. We quietly followed a man who looked in charge of things to pretend we were with him and then made a loop of the whole level while nodding at the workers and saying 'good job' in Chinese as though we were just Westerners hired to oversee the work. It didn't work as well as we hoped though, seeing as we were in shorts and vests and eating ice cream... It was an adventure though!

So hot and sunny, even the camera thought so...

Me and Tessa covered in our shopping

A Xinjiang market

Lots of spices

LOTS of fruit and vegetables!



Tessa, Georgina, me and Rosie

Just a bit of the beautiful park

I'm picking up the language quickly too. I've had 2 Chinese lessons so far and try to talk to people every day. At first, when I wanted to translate something in my head, I automatically translated it into French... But now I'm struggling to even think of the French as the Chinese is just screaming at me!

It's pretty cool thinking that I'm actually in China and I can actually speak a bit of the language. We've made the flat more into a home now, with cushions and blankets everywhere. Also we spent yesterday painting the living room and my bedroom. Two Chinese men came round this morning to put up some shelves we bought and so I finally have places to put my things! I spent today putting up photos and cards and tickets or anything that I brought with me from England that reminds me of anyone or anything I love from home. So now, my room is finished! I am so glad as it actually feels like my bedroom now.

Tomorrow, we are going to Fukang to see Jamie and Jony for the weekend. Apparently we might be going to a wedding (?) and seeing the city. Nothing in China is ever really planned, things just happen and you have to go with the flow. It'll be lovely seeing them again though. We've found that we're missing other volunteers in China more than some people from Britain which probably just shows how close we've all become!

So that's basically three weeks worth of blogging condensed into this. I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to get around to doing this but as you can see, I've been pretty busy!
I'm having a brilliant time already and I weirdly love how everything is different and how we can't understand anything - be it the Chinese language, culture or any of it! I'm missing a lot of people from home and think about you all every now and then. I've got a lot to keep me busy though so that makes it a lot easier!

I might upload another blog in the next week if something huge happens, but if not I'll upload a huge one in two weeks time. We're leaving for our language course in Gansu next Friday and will be travelling for a week after - so there will be lots to talk about!

Much love to everyone! If you want to ask me anything or just talk to me then email me at msquibb94@gmail.com
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Last blog before I'm in China!

So after all of this hard work with fundraising, the time has finally come to leave England in a China direction!

I'm leaving home today and will be staying the night at Heathrow in order to get an early start for the flight. The first flight will be around 7 hours to Abu Dhabi airport (which apparently has an amazing roof) where we will wait for two hours, before another 7 hour flight to Beijing. Earlier today we were emailed the schedule of what we'll be doing while we're in Beijing and it sounds so fun.
We arrive at about 9am on saturday and we'll be met by Alicia and Mike (our China reps.. they're people who are linked to PT who can look after us a bit while we're in China) and they will take us to the hostel. We get a chance to freshen up before dashing off to Tiananmen Square for the day! We've been warned about pickpocketing in the area though so it might be a bit scary.. I'll let you all know how that went on in my next blog! We will then all go out for a meal in the evening at Yunnan Restaurant - my dad looked it up on google and apparently they often have a few cats wandering around the restaurant, which is reassuring as it means that they aren't in fact on our plates!
The following day will be filled with cooking classes and 'scavenger hunts'. I assume this is where they give us a list of things to get and we have to try our best to talk to people and work out where to get things, how much they cost and how to get back to the hostel! That evening we will head off to stay at the Great Wall guesthouse.. Then surprise surprise, the day after will be spent walking around the Great Wall! Apparently you can toboggan down it too. So that's definitely happening. Later that day we will be given a Chinese Language class and then will eat out again at a restaurant specialising in Peking Duck. So excited for that.
Tuesday will be spent in meetings with important people and then eating with them in the evening.. that's basically all we've been told for that day so either it'll be pretty boring OR there will be surprises and it'll be SO fun! Let's hope it's the latter.
Then on the Wednesday we will leave the hostel bright and early to go to Beijing West Railway Station. This is where 27 will become 17 and the long long train journey to the west of China will begin. The 10 volunteers going to Zhangye in the province of Gansu will get off at 4:54am on Thursday 30th and me and the 6 other volunteers going all the way to Urumqi in Xinjiang will stay on the train until 7:59pm. So that's a pretty long journey. Then we'll be separating into our pairs and threes and we will hop on a bus for 4 hours to get to Kuitun.

So that's the plan for the next week! I'll be keeping busy I assure you.
As far as getting ready to actually leave goes, I think I'm packed. After 3 practise packs which weighed in at 15kg, I felt pretty confident. But as soon as it was time for the final pack, my bag suddenly put on over 10kg. Which isn't cool. So I've had to say bye to numerous pairs of jeans and hoodies and boots and things.. it's a sad time for us all. However, now my bag is bang on 23kg so hopefully I'll be allowed in the country!

I've said bye to all of my friends, old friends and most of my family now. It's strange saying bye for a year because usually you just expect to bump into them.. it still hasn't hit me that I won't be bumping into anyone I know for a year.. or anyone English come to that!
But I will have such an amazing year and can't wait to live with my partners and work out how to live in a completely different country.

SO thank you for reading this far. It's lovely that people are interested and care about what I'm doing! And if you've helped me in any way to get to this stage where I've raised the money and am saying bye, then thank you so much.
Have a brilliant year and I wish you all the luck!

I will hopefully keep you posted on what's happening but it may be an issue trying to sort out internet or banned websites or something.. so bare with me!

The boy.

So the last week I basically spent time with my boyfriend at his house as he left for Honduras earlier today... If you didn't know already, he's going to Honduras for a year with Project Trust, like me. We're both teaching english but the main difference is that he's learning Spanish and I'm learning Chinese while we're out there... Also he leaves about 3 weeks before I do!
Anyway. He had his leaving party on friday which was basically a whole day thing - people came at 2ish and we had snacks and a water fight and watched some of the Olympics and then in the evening the party started with some Just Dance, some alcohol and a lovely BBQ! By the end of it, everyone was shattered and people had to begin to leave. Which was really pretty emotional... It suddenly became really real for him that he wasn't going to be seeing all of these people for a year and many tears were shed. It was also pretty sad for me as I've gotten really close to his friends and it was kind of a goodbye for me too!
Then yesterday, we had a last minute panic shop in Basingstoke, he had a last minute hair cut and then we had to come home for last minute packing! It was all very stressful.. and in the end we watched too much of the Olympics and didn't do enough packing.. so we finished at about 3am. Not fun.
The best bit half way through the packing, probably at around 1am was when still a lot of his stuff was laid over the sitting room floor and we were just looking over what was needed to be done. Then all of a sudden his mum walked in, holding a tray and just said 'I made you custard!'. Basically they made a list of food that he wanted before he left and apparently custard was on the list. So there we go. We were given late night custard. It was lovely.
We were more or less ok emotion-wise previously, but once we finished packing and headed up to bed, the crying began. We were just lying there and listening to music while slightly dissolving in tears... It was hitting me even stronger that he was going and we wouldn't see each other for a year, but I guess I still didn't fully believe it.
We woke up this morning at 6:45 - 45 minutes later than planned! We wanted to leave at 7 so it was a VERY rushed morning... We had our cereal in the car though which was exciting.. The milk was flying everywhere! Brilliant. Once we got to the airport we soon met up with the group of people who he was going to Honduras with, including his partner Jameel. After about an hour of sitting around the airport, he checked in and booked his bags on the plane. However there was a scary moment where he lost his passport. He emptied his hand luggage bag all over the front of the queue (everybody was waiting for him) and then he found it! In his pocket. What a fool.
Shortly after this, the group decided to go to the next stage of the morning and leave the people who came to drop them off. Chris hugged his family goodbye and it was all pretty sad.. his dad was manly but kind, his mum cried and his big brother was manly and laughed. We then had our goodbye hug and kiss and cry for about 2 or 3 minutes.. When I say cry, I was surprisingly emotionless... he did all the crying. I knew that he was going and I would see or talk to him for a long long time, it just didn't completely hit me. So he left and my parents came and then it hit me. After him walking away for about 5 seconds I was a blubbering wreck so had to go again for goodbye number 2. He got my hair wet and I got his neck/shoulder wet and we then parted for good.

So that's that. The next time we see each other will be at the same airport but in a year's time, and our years away will be over... So surreal.

So now I just can't wait for me to actually leave. When I'm still at home it feels as though I should be able to talk to him or for him to be round the corner but when I'm in a new, exciting place, I'm sure it'll be much easier.

Update on fundraising

So right. Yesterday I got an email from Project saying that they have about £4,850 banked from me.. aaaand I got a cheque the other day for $200 and I have about £150 in the bank for them.....
So basically, that's me done!
I have hereby finished my fundraising, I have raised over £5,100, and wow it feels good.

So now, all I have to do is send the rest of the money in, fill out this Chinese medical form and send that to them, fill out a visa application form and send that off, write my personal statement for university, read through everything project gave us on training, read books about China and learn more Mandarin and plan various leaving parties....... not much at all!

Training - such an amazing week.

Ok so I've been neglecting you all quite a bit recently. Sorry about that...
Quite a lot has happened to me since we last spoke so I think I'll post 3 different blogs talking about each. The first I should cover is my training week! There will be lots of photos.

SO!
On Tuesday 26th June I travelled back up to Coll (an island off the side of Scotland) for my training course where I would meet the group of people going to China with me. For a few months before training, I met one of the people going with me and we planned to meet up on the train so we had someone to spend our 9 hour (NINE HOURS!!!!) train journey with! We then met up with someone else, then someone else and by the last leg of our trip there was 10 of us on the train to Oban.

Me looking so excited on the train...

Once arriving in Oban at 9:30pm(ish) we took a walk to the hostel where everyone Project Trust related stays! I knew there was going to be a fair few of us (there's usually about 24-26 people in the China group... by FAR the biggest group project send out! For example, the Senegal group was in our training course too and there was only 8 of them!) but when we walked into the main room, the vast amount of us suddenly hit me. Suddenly we were looking at 20 strangers and they were all looking back... you see in a normal every day situation where that may happen, you'd feel awkward and wouldn't really know what to do, BUT straight away we just made best friends with everyone.

Some of the people when we walked in...

 One of the best moments in that evening was when we walked in and got our bags and rooms sorted.... I walked over to this strangely tall lad (called Jamie, soon to be one of my best buddies) and asked where in China he's going to which he replied 'Xinjaing' and I said something along the lines of 'ME TOO!' and then looked over to Jony (someone who I had spoken to quite a bit before training, also really rather tall) and shouted 'JONY HE'S GOING TO XINJIANG!' at which point they both ran to each other and shouted 'FUKANG?!' 'FUKANG!!!' (the name of their city) and embraced each other tightly for a fair few minutes... For those of you that don't understand, that was the point when they found out that they were partners - that they would be living and working together for the year. It is such an exciting moment but those two probably won on excitement level!

Anyway. For the rest of the evening everyone drunk alcohol and got to know each other and almost everyone found out who they were partners with! It's very common to have 2 people living together in PT partnerships (like Jamie and Jony) and I was talking to people to find out who I was with. I then talked to a girl called Tessa and I found out I was with her, but THEN she said that this other girl, Georgina, was also with us. So we're a three! We're the only three in the China group so it's different to the norm but I think it's better in a way as there will always be someone there for you. Also in the days to come we found out that we all get on very well so I am now really excited to be spending a year with them!

Anyway at about 2 or 2:30am people started to head off to bed knowing that 2 hours later we would need to wake up for the ferry leaving early in the morning......

The following day was long. Getting up at 4 in the morning is hard work... especially after just 2 hours sleep! We left for a 5 hour ferry ride to arrive in Coll at about 10:30. As soon as we arrived it was straight onto hard work! Project Staff were at the ferry terminal and welcome us and drive us the the Hebredean Centre - it felt so good to be back! We were taken to the main room (the rank room) and were told who we were partnered with (even though we all found out in the previous night) and where our rooms were. In the selection week we stayed with families scattered across the island, but this time we were staying in the bedrooms in the centre. This was good because everyone was together so we could bond in the evenings!

A wall of the Rank Room all decorated with China things!

So in this first day we met our desk officer (the desk officer is the staff member in charge of your country group.. so in our case we have a guy called Jonny who is lovely!) and had a chat with him about China... we talked about boring things like insurance and sponsorship/fundraising so far and talked to each other and found out about the other people in our group. During that, me and Tessa plaited Jony's hair. He looked really rather dashing.

Jony looking oh so happy with his new hair style

That evening everyone had a choice to either play football against the Coll football team (I was surprised there was even enough people on the island to make a football team..) or to walk along the beach to look for seals. I obviously went for the seals. 

If you look closely, you can see a seal!

Me and a couple of my favourite guys.. (Jony and Jamie)

We're the ones in the blue!

The day after, the Thursday, we learnt how to be a good teacher when teaching a language people completely don't understand. We got an idea of this from the student perspective as Nick (one of the PT staff) walked into the room and got us learning words and phrases in Sinhalese (the main language in Sri Lanka). But the most interesting and exciting bit was he didn't say anything in English at all. He didn't even brief us on what was about to happen, he just walked in and straight away got us saying 'ayubowan' to each other (hello) and then how to ask 'how are you?' and various responses etc... In just an hour we learnt 'hello', 'how are you?', 'I am good', 'I am not good', 'what is your name?', 'my name is...', 'where do you live?' and 'I live in....'. So that hour taught us that you can teach a completely foreign language without needing to know any of the language of the people you are teaching to.... which is a very good thing to know when you're going to China and don't have a great understanding of Mandarin! (yet..)
We had more talks about serious things like culture shock and the rights of the child and things we should know about...
AH!
I HAVEN'T TALKED ABOUT THE FOOD YET! The food was basically the best part of each day. Jane (the cook) is a goddess. For breakfast you get cereal, then toast and jam AND THEN a cooked breakfast as well. Amazing. Then for lunch you get soup with a freshly cooked roll and then a meal meal.. like jacket potato or something... and then for supper you get a meal meal and a pudding! So good. We weeped with happiness at each meal.
Anyway where was I..? Yes! We had boring, serious talks about serious things and then had supper (brilliant) and then had the evening to relax. Well technically we had to plan a 10 minute English lesson for the morning after.... but a lot of us relaxed. Obviously we got the work done too.. but watching Braveheart took priority. However it was terrifying watching it around such strong Scots.....
OH! Another thing you need to know.... there's only a few Scottish people going to China this year.. but they are ALL going to Xinjiang with me! There's only me and this girl from Leeds who are not Scottish and it is terrifying. Most of the Xinjiang population will be learning English with a heavy Scottish accent - which will be rather entertaining...
Anyway back to the film.. I made the mistake of sitting on the sofa full of the Scottish ones and they all got very loud during the fighting scenes... so as to blend in I pretended to be Scottish for the evening and cheered for their side. It was all very fun.

The cute couple

The opposition... look at them being all not Scottish and stuff.. ergh.

The day after we had our 10 minute lessons... This freaked me out quite a bit. It went well but the hardest bit was to spread out things for 10 minutes - so no idea how I'll manage whole hour lessons! I held my lesson on 'what to buy at a supermarket' which was one of the topics on a sheet of options project gave us... I used flashed cards I made the evening before and sounded out words clearly so the 'Chinese students' could understand but it was just generally weird teaching people who could actually already speak English.... so at least that bit will be better when the students genuinely don't understand what you're saying!
Later on in the day we had a talk on health and safety and that's when basically everyone on the course realised how tired we all were...... Basically we all fell asleep during the talk. So Chris (the staff member doing the talk) kept getting us to jump up and dance around and things..... But wow! We were so tired. That's what happens when you get no more than 5 hours a sleep for a week does to you....
That evening a lot of us decided to take a stroll down to the beach and have a swim in the sea! The weather was beautiful - cloudy, windy and rainy. Just beautiful. But that didn't stop us! We were in the sea for 15-30 minutes and bloody hell it was soooo cold. We were shivering non stop but it was just so fun! Getting back out into the windy wind was the worst bit...

look at that lovely blue sky...........

Us in frozen hysterics afterwards... (I haven't talked about Hannah yet.. but the girl on the right is Hannah and she is very important. She is a brethren member. I haven't even talked about the brethren yet.. shame on me.)

We then got back with full intentions of planning our 20 minute lesson for the following morning. We (the brethren - this consists of me, Hannah, Jony and Jamie. We basically formed this on the very first night in Oban... We just bonded. Story over.) locked ourselves in one of the small work rooms but shortly got distracted by a board pen and a whole white board to decorate... also then Alana (a previous volunteer from China who got back last August who is helping project over the summer.. she loved us. She called us her 'china babies'. We love her.) came into the room and we all just talked about life for about 4 hours. By about 1am we looked at our work and had done about half a page of notes. Not cool. I did get some very nice photos in that time though which I think should be shared, so here they are!

The brethren with work and alcohol on the table. What a brilliant photo.

Actually doing work!

The 20 minute lesson on the final day was even harder believe it or not..! It's just hard trying to go through it slowly instead of rushing it.. So we did that which was followed by a well deserved coffee break. The rest of the day was filled with short but sweet talks of what we need to remember while we're out there... like don't have unprotected sex with random Chinese men.. which is good to know I guess! Then at 5, we had our closing address which rounded up the course basically... and theeeeeeen we all got ready for the ceilidh!
Basically the ceilidh is the best bit of the whole week and everyone gets all nice and dressed up.. so it was all very exciting! Once we got ready we made our way into the room with the TV and sofas (the Dulverton room) and many group photos were taken. (here's some of those photos..)

The Xinjiang group looking dapper

Me, Dan and Tessa

Me and ma boooys

Everyone going to China!

The summer staff (the previous volunteers including Alana) had made a rather alcoholic punch too, so lots of that was consumed! After a few toasts given by the staff, we all walked on down to the dining room where a lovely candle lit dinner with wine was waiting for us. Basically it was amazing. We had roast beef with everything and then pavlova for pudding - beautiful. Also after the punch from before and a few glasses of wine each, we were happy. Or 'so sober!' as Alana put it. So as you can imagine, the ceilidh was SO fun! Skipping around and doing really fast Scottish dances while getting increasingly drunk, due to the bar, was so entertaining and everyone had a great night. Here are another few photos of the ceilidh part of the night... sadly though I didn't get any photos of the actual dancing.. as I was too busy being involved in the dancing.

Jony being a proper stud

The brethren and Alana - so much love for this photo

me and ma boys again - starting to feel tired after such hardcore ceilidhing

The brethren plus desk officer Jonny in the middle!

After the ceilidh, we were all very hot and sweaty (nice) so we got changed into normal clothes and started partying away to less Scottish-y dance music. A great way to end the night! So the last few photos are of that section of the evening...

The morning after was sad as we all had to get ready in order to leave.. Everyone put on their newly acquired Project Trust clothes with pride and spent the morning saying bye to the staff... The worst bit was saying bye to Alana as our brethren bunch got very close to her.... But we helped her wash up after breakfast to spread the love!

We were driven back to the ferry terminal and caught the uber long ferry to Oban again.. This time we had a lovely nap though to recover from the previous night!

 When we arrived in Oban it began to get pretty sad as we had to say bye to the friends we just met for 7 weeks.. But knowing that in 7 weeks time we would all meet up again in order to spend a year with each other, that cheered us up.

After a night in Glasgow with the group getting smaller and smaller as more and more people left us, me and Dan were left once again as just the two of us on our journey home...

I had such an amazing week and have met such amazing people. I am now so excited to be spending a year with them doing truly exciting things! I will end this blog with a cheesy quote we were told of on the course... 'I went to training to meet the people I'd be spending a year with, and I came back to debriefing with my best friends' - lovely.