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圣诞快乐 (sheng dan kuai le) - Merry Christmas!
(Yes, I know I'm a day late, it's been a busy week!)
But where to begin? Well, I left Yihuang on Saturday afternoon and caught my train to Lanzhou - this train journey took 26 hours and was just ever so slightly boring. Finding my hostel in Lanzhou was a little bit more interesting though. I arrived in Lanzhou at around 6.25pm on Sunday, but didn't get to my hostel until just after 8pm! It was a little bit harder to find than hostelworld suggested, but I did find it in the end (after asking around 6 or 8 different people for help) and got a pretty decent night's sleep.
On Monday morning I met Emma back at the train station and we took the 2 hour bus to LiuJiaXia (Emma and Gina's project). It was so good to see them again :D We went out to a club called KEE that night and I was introduced to the LiuJiaXia lifestyle.
Tuesday morning came and I was up and about pretty early. I went for a walk since Emma was still in bed, and Gina had to go and teach a class. I discovered a little cafe sort of place barely 10 minutes from their flat and breakfasted on vegetable baozi and some sort of tea drink which was really nice. In the afternoon we met with Emma and Gina's Chinese friend, LingYan (also known as Nora) and one of her friends. LingYan is amazing - she is basically fluent in English (mostly learnt from English songs), has an amazing sense of humour and even knows abbreviations, slang, jokes and sarcasm (this last one is really hard for Chinese people to understand in English). We went and had a late lunch of mianpian (a popular dish up in Gansu) in LingYan's parents' restaurant and did some last Christmas shopping. That evening we went out to Club 88 where I met some more of the girls' Chinese friends.
Wednesday morning was another early start for me, and I went for another walk (Emma and Gina were both still in bed even when I got in at around 11am :P ). I found another little cafe - a Muslim cafe, there's quite a number of Muslims in the north - and enjoyed some more baozi and tea for breakfast. After this I was walking along and I reached a bus stop as a bus pulled up, so I thought, why not? Hopping aboard, I paid 1元 (10p), sat back and watched LiuJiaXia go by. After about half an hour on the bus it came to it's final stop and I realised I was now directly across the river from where Emma and Gina's flat was, so I took a taxi back. That afternoon the other 4 Gansu volunteers arrived, and it was absolutely great to see Jess, Harriet, Laurie and Callum again. For dinner we ended up in LingYan's resturant again and enjoyed a selection of Chinese dishes.
In the evening, all 7 of us headed out to Club 88 (carrying our Secret Santa presents :P) and attempted to play Christmas and Volunteer Trivia - it was rather difficult to be heard over the thumping music - and then played a few of the Chinese drinking games I had learned this week. (ShiWuShiWu, DaXiao and good old rock, paper, scissors). As midnight approached we counted down every minute from about 20 minutes to. Now, at this point in the night, the club have a 'show' - this is a quieter period with no thumping music or dancing - they have some singers, and sometimes a clown. As midnight hit we completely interrupted this show by jumping to our feet and screaming jingle bells at the top of our lungs, much to the amusement of everybody else in the club (this was a completely Chinese club except for the 7 of us). We then Ganbei'ed our beers and swapped our Secret Santa presents. I received a beautiful pink wool scarf that is so so soft!
Christmas Day was a really good day. Started the day by getting up at 8am (after not going to bed until around 4am) so I could skype my family. My sister Rachel wanted to open her stocking with me as that's something we've done every year. Then, the 7 of us all opened the presents that Callum and Laurie had got us (even though we'd agreed to do Secret Santa). We then spent most of the morning just lazing around, listening to Christmas music and chatting. In the afternoon we prepped veg and with that veg (and some stock cubes courtesy of Emma's mum) I made soup. Emma and Gina had managed to get a friend of their's who owns a new western restaurant to let us cook our Christmas dinner in his restaurant kitchen. We transferred the soup to a flask to get it to his restaurant and then headed across. There was a disaster with the soup which I shall not go into details about. All that I'll say is that new veg was bought, and a new soup was made. Callum took charge of the chicken, Gina and Harriet made the cauliflower cheese and gravy, I was in charge of the fried onions and mushrooms, and roasted veg, our roast potatoes were supplied by another friend of Emma and Gina's who owns another restaurant (they know where to make their friends!), Jess, Emma and Laurie were in charge of re-making the soup. At the end of the day (around 7.30pm) we eventually sat down to our starter of soup, and then out main. And I will say, for the efforts of 7 teenagers, we had a really good meal.
Later that evening, after all the family calls home had been completed, we headed out to the club called KEE. I prefer this club over Clubb 88, though it is more expensive, it is bigger and feels cleaner. Now, KEE usually closes at 2am, and at 5 to 2 the 8 of us were the only ones left (LingYan came with us to the club). Next thing we knew, free drinks and snacks of popcorn and sunflower seeds were delivered to us and they stayed open until half past 3 for us!
On Friday it was just a kick back and relax day. Gina and I went around to LingYan's apartment to check up on her (and to steal the use of her mega hot, lovely shower - as Gina and Emma don't have hot water, they usually have to get a taxi to this shower place and pay 8元 each to shower). At half past 4 we met the rest of the group at LingYan's parents' restaurant where we ate because we were starving as none of us had made the effort to get anything to eat all day. The plan for that evening was to go to Clubb 88 for a bit and then go home, as Jess and I were getting up early to catch our trains. However, knowing us, this wasn't how it went down. The 7 of us (Jess decided not to come out so she could sleep) headed to Clubb 88 at around 9.30pm, however we weren't there for very long. After one drink we decided to switch to KEE. There we bumped into some of Emma and Gina's friends, which meant no paying for drinks in KEE - the Chinese will nearly always insist on paying, and if they offer don't say no, these places are expensive. We stayed at KEE until it shut at 2am, and this time we did leave on time, but then we went to the restaurant next door and had sweet and sour chicken and rice at 2.30am. Getting home after three and then re-arranging the furniture so Jess and I could sleep in the living room didn't seem like such a good idea when my alarm went off at half past 7. Ah well, we had a great night!
I had an absolutely great week - yes, we did end up in a club every night, but that didn't mean we drank loads - and it was really hard to say goodbye to everyone on Saturday morning when I had to get my train back to Nanchang. 48 hours travelling to, and 52 hours travelling back from LiuJiaXia was definitely worth it!
Until next time,
再见 x
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