I arrived in Xi'an at the crack of dawn (5.22am to be precise!). I decided it was a bit too early to head straight for the hostel so I wandered around and picked up some breakfast. I'd been walking around for about an hour when I checked my map and realised I was only 10min away from the hostel - so my inbuilt GPS must have been working! Quickly dumped my things in the hostel and then I was off to discover this new city! I went for a walk to the Muslim Quarter w...

After my adventure into Inner Mongolia I spent the rest of my April weekends in Beijing to save some money (or at least try to!) 11/04 - Paul Oakenfold weekend - We heard Oakenfold was DJing at Banana in Beijing so we bought some tickets and had a brilliant time dancing on the bouncy dancefloor! 18/04 - Girls weekend - the boys had gone travelling to Harbin so the girls had a nice girlie weekend in Beijing. We stayed at Wanfujing hostel which is now our "h...

Time is just flying by here! Can't believe it's been over a month since I last updated this thing! There's been plenty going on so here's a run-down of the latest happenings in China... Shenyang - My first trip away from Beijing and I went to visit some of the people I met at UIBE during the first month of teacher training. The trains were surprisingly easy to figure out and I got to Shenyang without any hiccups! There's not really much to see or do in Shenyang ...

So far I've survived 2 weeks of teaching at Yangzhen No 1 Middle School. Loved the first week, not so keen on the second week and it's picking back up now I'm in my third. The kids are pretty well behaved, alot better than in England anyway, but when you've got 50 students in one class, it makes things a little hard. With the amount of homework that's dumped onto them everyday plus constant exams their favourite hobby does tend to be sleeping - especially in cla...

Time for another update... Been a busy couple of weeks with all our lessons and the start of teaching practice. Myself and four others were given a class at Beijing No 7 Middle School for a week to teach them a short course of English lesson. Although it was hard work at the beginning, by the end of it we were all pros and the kids we taught were so willing to learn (a nice change from England). On Friday we had to say goodbye and a couple of us (5) ended our ti...