I have been in Yihuang (my project) for a good couple of months now and have been enjoying every minute of it. This blog is just to give you all a quick update of what I have been up to during the last few months.

After a month or so in Yihuang we were well and truly settled in and were kindly taken out orange picking in a local town where we ate pig heart and cow lung with noodles, Surprisingly both were very nice, the heart tasted just like any other meat and the lung tasted of liver but with incredibly chewy bits in it (certainly an experience I wont forget). The orange picking itself was fun and we were gifted with a large crate of oranges by the school which lasted us about 1 month with both Jacob and myself eating 6/7 oranges a day! After the orange picking we visited a tower in the local area and took pictures of the surrounding area which was full of rice paddy fields and really felt like the 'traditional china'.

At the beginning of the year I had a couple of classes where my students would just get up and walk out and when I confronted them about it they would be very cryptic about it. Here is a brief breakdown of how it would go (because this happened about 4 times)

*Students stand up and begin walking out of class*

Me: Woah Woah were are you going?

Students: Playground

Me: What, Why?

Students: Playground

Me: Yes, But why are you going there?

Students: We go Playground Now

Me: *Looking confused* Ok do you need to go?

Students: yes

Me: Erm ok

So yeh that conversation happened about 4 times and each time was just as cryptic and confusing as the last and the other teachers weren't much help either in telling me what it was that they were doing. It took me about a week to eventually get to the answer that the students had military training, where they had to run laps around the school grounds.

Other Interesting things that have happened:

l We had a couple of nights with no water or electricity for the entire town so ended up having street vendor food and eating it in the dark using my wind up LED torch and light from our phones :)

l Jacob received a whole chicken after he was off ill for a couple of days (plucked but still with head and everything else) So I spent a while trying to cut the meat off of it and basically ending up butchering it :(

l Befriended the street vendors and are now probably their main source of income (you can see their faces light up as we walk towards them)

l Had a visit from Tom (Project Trust Desk Officer) Who came to visit our project and make sure that everything was going well.

l Melted my laptop on one of the heaters (accidentally) so had to buy a replacement one, but luckily had my waiban to help me haggle the price down, so ended up paying 290 pounds for a very nice laptop. Case, Mouse, Mouse pad, Cover, Keyboard cover, Screen Protector and extra charger/battery :)

We also had a holiday for Christmas and New Year So for Christmas we went to the girls project in Chongren and had a nice Christmas party with the school which involved a lovely banquet, alcohol and karaoke. We then went back to the girls apartment on school grounds to watch a couple of films and relax, once we had finished we decided to head of back to our hotel but forgot that the school gates would be closed so upon seeing this the girls assured us that it would be ok to climb over the gates. As the four of us were in various points of crossing over the fence the alarm system set off which promptly sent us all running back to the girls apartment for fear that we might be shouted at by some angry Chinese security guard who was forced to wake from his slumber. The following morning was spent exchanging presents with each other, Skyping with family and recovering in the local Chinese cafe. For New Year the girls came to our project where we had a large banquet with the school and showed them around our town. One of my classes also set up a party for us and presented us with presents for the New Year (bath soaps in an Eifel tower glass bottle).

Teaching is going very well at the moment and I have lots of fun teaching my students and just generally talking to them in and out of class I have noticed that the students recycle the same questions though and that they always say the same things to me such as: "teacher are you cold? No? I think you should wear more clothes" or "Teacher I am good student do you know?" And my personal favourite; when I show them pictures of the other volunteers they say "oh is your girlfriend? NO? I think is your girlfriend". Watching Christmas films with the students has also been fun, especially Elf which the kids found hilarious. The people here are very expressive with their humour and often bang the desks really loudly when they find something funny. They are however uncomfortable when people kiss on the Film and will often turn to look at me as if to say "Is this ok? Can you show me this?" the best example of this was when one boy said to me "Alex, What are you doing?!?!" As if I had somehow committed some sort of crime for showing them a 4 second kissing scene in a comedy Christmas film :P Recently I have been teaching the kids about Christmas, New Year, Food, Halloween etc.

We are currently In Harbin for spring Festival and will be going to Shanghai next week and some other places later on. Pictures and Blogs to Follow.