Ni hao true believer! Welcome to part two of a Beijing cocktail where our heroes tale continues with even more excitment you lucky dogs..... We left the hostel on the Monday (I believe), it was a sad time for all involved. I seriousley have come to love that hostel, the cheap booze, friendley enviroment and Che Che the dog (bless that dog) made it a great few days stay. We headed with Mike to the subway with all our bags, giant suitcases and 85 L backpacks... it was never going to end well. Every subway has a security check so we all put our bags through and we have come to learn it's all for show, they really do not seem to look/care what is in your bags. Until that day. 'Who has a knife?!' they ask. We all shrug until Dan took out his small, 1.5 inch pen knife and we thought 'all this trouble for that?'. Then in a ' y' call that a knife!' moment Corlijin pulls out a near machete (exageration, it was a 5 inch blade) from her bag that her dad gave her. Well, that was 'confiscated' (Mike gave it to a fruit seller to pick up later) and we went on.

We got on a cramped bus after our subway and finally arrived at the school where our language course would begin. It was a brand new, amazing school bang in the center of Beijing and I loved it. We started learning Mandarin (turns out i'm not great but not awful either) and it seems those from Scotland have great accents with Mandarin (think 'Cuuurly Wuuurrly hilairtity level). Also Tsao laoshi (our teacher) is the most adroble woman ever. Everytime she spoke I collpaed into fits of 'awwww', she was just The cuteness. Anywhom, that evening we met our hosts. Me and Jacob (a fellow volunteer) were put with two guys who were best friends so stayed together all week. They were amazingly lovley guys and took us for (another) duck meal with their famlies who were, again, amazing to us. We went to one kids apartement where the parents left us so we could do what we wanted. The two lads were DOTA 2 obssesed (a game a spent far too mcuh time on at home) so I ended playing that most of the night then found out he loved guitar and had a Zak Wylde gibson (Oooh yes) and played some tunes for him, t'was great fun.

Next day was KFC for breakfast, it was weird, then language course for the day. That night we went for a talk on the enviroment with one of Mikes friends in Beijing university park. The talk was on a boat made of stone planted on the edge of the lake. It was really good in the end and I learned a lot about China's major efforts to push enviromentally friendly solutions forwards to lower pollution (who would've thought it). Then out for another meal with our hosts and DOTA.

Rinse, repeat for the next day and at night we went to the Forbidden City. Now, this was an intresting affair. More photos were being snapped of us at every opporyunity and Mikes friend Luke (a history major) lead us around giving us a good description of the history of the place. It was truly beautiful to behold and i'm amazed any invader ever managed to strorm it. There are maybe 6/7 courtyards with huge walls before you reach anything of value and even then it was the emperors bath house you could tear to the ground in year fury. It eventually became a little monontanous as the place all looks very similar but we reached the back where there was a beauitful park. Me and Dan (another fellow volunteer) were lagging behind when a 'friendley' seller came over offering us a cheap plastic dragon at 150 yuan. For the crack dan went '30 yuan'. Dear God. This man followed us shouting '120?' '30' '...100?' 'No,30' and wouldn't stop following us. Eventually after 5 minutes of shouting 'NO 30' Dan got a uselss plastic dragon he didn't want for 30 yuan but the wonderful experince of barganing like a boss. It made my day.

Similar day the next and the Pearl Market at night. The Pearl Markert is where you find all the cheap, rip off and knock off products China is reknowned for. You could get anything from 'Tikes (nikes)' to 'Kalbin kleen (guess)'. The prices we're hilairiousley exspensive so haggling was a neccesity. Ed got a 3500 yuan shoe down to 200 through pure force of will (it was brilliant). I didn't buy anything due to it all being 'tat'. After this our hosts took Me and Jacob off to a 'western restaurant'. We qued for 30 minutes, got in and chaos ensued. The menus had 5 choices and we had no idea what any of them said. I orderd a steak when they came over and the woman got extermley flustred, brought over another girl who said 'we recommned you choose more' so I did, which they didn't like. So in the end it turns out it was a 3 course meal of which I got a Steak. A darn good steak, but the whole meal looked good. Translation problems are always ripe. That night I played guitar for the hosts famlies (they loved it) then we exchanged gifts and went to bed. We thought we we're staying with them the next day but apparentley not...... *prepare for trouble*

Next day we had our language course, all sad as the next day we knew we were all breaking up to go to our projects when our teacher comes in. "I'm sorry, some of you have missed your train, the others must leave now". What. Turns out dates got mixed up. We though it was saturday we we're leaving, it was that friday. And Xinjiang province (Me,stephen,Corlijin,Chlow,Tim and Marcus) had missed our train. After rushed goodbyes everyone headed off leaving us stuck in Beijing. We had no idea what was going to happen as there wasn't another train for a wek so Mike booked us in to a very fancy hostel for the night. What a twist! (told you there was excitment to come).

We sat in the bar, down trodden and defeated (well, a little confused really) when Mike told us he had managed to get us a flight at 10 Am the next day #Hero. We Spent the night in the bar enjoying the 'atmosphere' and met a lovley German student and an Oxford medical student who also enjoyed were enjoying the 'atmosphere' (atmosphere= cheap booze). We drank a fair bit due to knowing we were all seperating the next day, again details ommited for 'gap yah' purposes. We hit bed knowing from the next day, we would be responsible adults and offically teachers in our respetive provinces.

Tune in next time for my first week in Fukang, the apartment, Mr Tian, teaching and banquets ahoy! What a story to tell....

Wow that was a long blog! Thanks for reading once again true believers, it really means a lot to mean that so many people have helped me get here and now i'm here i'm still getting a great response! Don't forget to check out the photos on this blog as Beijing has been uploaded with Fukang and apartment photos to come,

See you next time reader,

Excelsior!