Catch up!

I am terribly sorry for not posting a recent blog guys!
Y'see, in the last 2 months, nothing huge has happened.
Until recently that is... Which is why I am writing now to update you!

Firstly and most importantly, I am coming home early. Now I know what you're thinking, I'm such a cop-out and all that. But I will have you know that I am finishing my teaching here and then going home after that. So I am simply going to spend the last 1-2 months which is my holiday somewhere other than China... So it's fine really. My students still get their favourite teacher until the end of term so it's all good!

Also, my family are here at the moment! So that's lovely.
They came last sunday (the 28th April) bearing a few suitcases - one of which practically full of gifts for my teachers and friends here and chocolate and things for me! So that's just great too.
They had a pretty long journey to get here (London to Amsterdam to Beijing to Urumqi) and I cried a LOT when I saw them all. China has really broken me. Then we went to Bagang to where Hannah and Alice live to drop off the heavy bags and I treated them a gotye, a fried dumpling Bagang speciality. Then we went back to Urumqi and got on the train to Xi'an! Two days later we arrived in sunny, beautiful Xi'an and over the next 4 days we went to the Muslim Quarter (my favourite place in all of China where you can buy lots of things for very very cheap), the Terra Cotta Warriors, the Xi'an City Walls, the Great Goose Pagoda and lots of lovely western restaurants!
Tessa and her mum were also in Xi'an at the same time but when me and my family got on the train back to Xi'an, we had to say farewell as Tessa is spending the next 4 weeks travelling around China with her mum and then she will go back to Scotland.
So we got back to Kuitun on sunday (5th May) and I think they were all surprised of actually how nice Kuitun is. I don't know why they were expecting it to be dirty and small and things but they were genuinely shocked how lovely it is!
So far, I've taken them to a few of my favourite restaurants. One which serves duck wraps but instead of duck, you get donkey which is soooo nice. Another which we go to fairly regularly which serves lovely homemade noodles with vegetables and it's just pretty basic but very tasty. The night before last my school took us all out with Georgina for a banquet which was also great! Kai and Melanie were very friendly and my family loved them both. We had lots of food to eat and LOTS of wine and baijiu to drink which made for a fun night all round!
Lesson-wise, I have been taking my family to my classes this week so that my students can see what an English family looks like and how they're different to Chinese families. I think my family have also been surprised at how good my students' level of English is! I am very proud of them all and I have developed a very good relationship with my classes, which is nice. The best student in one of my classes yesterday asked us if he could hug my family which was beautiful. He gave dad a lovely manly hug, mum and nice friendly hug, Geoff another manly hug then said 'so strong!' and started to go back to his seat by which point most of the class started shouting 'and Mary!!!', so I was lucky enough to get a hug too. Yay!

Tomorrow will be a good day. Grade two has a performance all afternoon where each class competes with dancing and singing and special talents. Considering most of my classes are in Grade two, I am very excited to see them all up on the stage! I will take my family to see that too so the pressure is on for my students!

I don't know what else there is to say...
We got another puppy.
When we got back from travelling somebody lost our cat so we were pet-less for a few weeks which just wasn't good enough! So now we have a beautiful, small, lovely puppy called 'Daisy' and she is the light of my life. Georgina will be staying in China for another year so Daisy will stay with her, so fear not, we have planned this!
Future-wise, I got an unconditional offer to study International Relations and Chinese at Nottingham Trent University which is the only one I really wanted to go to. My spoken Chinese is at a pretty good level now actually, I can understand a lot of what people are saying and I am even talking back a lot more now! I am also slowly learning how to read and write - I'm getting there! But at uni, I plan to study Spanish as a module in IR and French as an extra curricular thing. Then in year 2 I'll add Portuguese to the list and maybe if that's still not enough, I want to learn Arabic too. The plan for after uni is to be either a translator or work for the EU or the civil service or a journalist or something that gets me travelling!
Also, slightly unrelated but it's still a recent thing in my life, I recently weighed myself and I am not happy. I seem to weigh quite a bit more than I did before I left for China so once my family are out of my hair, I am going to start and extra healthy lifestyle! The plan has been foiled slightly in that my family have brought me chocolate and biscuits and crisps and EVERYTHING bad for you but I will persevere. I want to get back into swimming and cycling in a big way so I'll make a few trips to the gym.

Right. I think that might actually be it then.
I think I'll write a blog post soon after my family leave saying how the last few days with them went and how my school performance went so there'll be something else up soonish!
Again, I'm sorry for being so quiet for so long...
But if you are still reading this blog after 8 months of me being here, then thank you for taking such an interest! It really means a lot to me that you care so much to read me waffling on.
Lots of love!