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!
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