Having spent my penultimate week in China travelling around with Dad, my final week seemed to arrive very suddenly. The goodbyes started as soon as I landed in Qingdao, as I headed to my final English lesson with Coco straight from the airport. I gave her a DVD of Planet Earth as a goodbye present, which she seemed quite chuffed with, and she gave me a jade seal with my Chinese name engraved on it - a lovely, thoughtful gift. It was quite sad saying goodbye- she'd been a pleasure to teach over the past ten months, and I think she really enjoyed my lessons too.

The following 6 days went very quickly in a blur of lunches, dinners, packing, beach visits and the odd exams throw in too, just for lolz. I'd been having informal English oral lessons with my literature teacher, Ma, over the past few weeks, so I met up with her a few times which was great. She's a very interesting lady, whose research into feminism in Chinese literature is taking her to America next year on a scholarship. We ended up having our last 'lesson' at the micro-brewery in the old town. We sat outside in the sun, drinking beer and chatting, and ended up having street BBQ too. It was a perfect evening. I feel like I learnt a lot from her during the year, and she's one of the people I really want to keep in touch with when I leave.

I also had a goodbye dinner with my flatmates old and new on the Thursday night. I hadn't seen my old flatmate, Yuchao, since she moved out, so it was lovely to catch up with her. It was also great to spend some time with my new flatmate, seeing as I'd barely had a chance to get to know her since she moved in. Obviously, Chengyuan was there, as was her on/off boyfriend. They were to head off to Yunnan on holiday on the Friday morning, so I had to say goodbye to her that night. We hadn't had many chances to hang out during the year, but I was very fond of her regardless, so it was sad saying farewell. We promised to keep in touch - and she's dying to visit me in London some day.

Farewell activities climaxed on Friday night with a joint goodbye dinner for Helena and me. Around 17 people came to the dinner - a fairly good turnout! Afterwards we all wandered over to a bar, where a few more friends joined us to sit outside, we were drank and chatted until the early hours. We said our goodbyes to the Nottingham guys, Sam, Matt, Corinne, Aurora (the Chinese lady who often took me to random social gatherings/activities), Abby (who I taught for a while and who also set me up with lots of English jobs), Meng (Helena's weird flatmate- no tears shed there haha) and finally, William. He was definitely my best friend during the year and the person I was most reluctant to part with. Still, he's learning English in the hope of studying in the UK, so hopefully I'll get to meet him again in the future, and we'll certainly keep in touch in the meantime.

Saturday was a busy day, as I had lots of packing to do and errands to run. I managed to fit in a quick goodbye coffee with Scarlet, which was nice, and ended the day with a final beach session with Helena. Given that the beach had played such an important role in our lives in Qingdao, it seemed fitting to spend our last evening together in Qingdao chilling on the beach and swimming in the sea.

The next day I was up early, excitedly packing my bags and frantically cleaning out my ridiculously dusty room. I had just enough time to pop over to the Chinese traditional massage place around the corner to use up the final session on my member's card. I love that place- the guys there know me by name now, so I said a fond farewell when I left. I also popped round to the huge book store and stocked up on a few Chinese novels to take back with me, once I'd worked out I had enough room in my hand luggage! At 12pm, Kaka and his flatmate/my good friend Fei Fei came round so see me off. For some reason, Kaka and I had drunkenly agreed ages ago to write farewell letters to each other when I left, so we exchanged these - mine felt a bit pathetic compared to his, though, which came in two parts and added up to about 10 pages in total! Fei Fei also got me some gorgeous calligraphy to hang on my wall at home, which was really touching. They helped me carry my luggage down the six flights of stairs, gave me lots of hugs, saw me into taxi, and I was gone!

As crude as this is, I thought I'd write a little list of things I will/won't miss about living in China…

· I will miss the food. Chinese cuisine has to be one of the best in the world. I had some absolutely incredible meals during my time in China, and whilst I missed some home comforts, I was never bored by the range of food on offer. On top of that, food is ridiculously cheap - I'll miss being able to eat out so frequently without breaking the bank.

· I won't miss the smog. One of the main reasons I picked Qingdao over Beijing was to avoid pollution, but unfortunately it's pretty bad in Qingdao now as well. From light haze to days when you could actually taste the pollution, the air never felt truly clean, and it did some weird things to our health, both mentally and physically!

· I will miss the taxis. Partly because they're so cheap, but mainly because of the taxi drivers, who were usually great banter.

· I won't miss the way lots of Chinese people can be very blunt sometimes. The very personal questions I got quite used to, but I never really felt comfortable with the very blunt comments about personal appearance. I guess it helped me grow rather thick skin, but still, it's a relief to be back in England, where people are a little more tactful!

· Despite that, Chinese people are very friendly and un-awkward in some ways, and I'll miss their ability to start up conversations with strangers. I had many a lovely conversation with random people on buses/trains/planes/the street etc, which just wouldn't happen in Britain!

· I won't miss not having a good circle of friends. I've talked in previous posts about how difficult it was to make Chinese friends, so I won't bore you with that again, plus I did make some good friends in the end. What I didn't manage though, was to form a good circle or group of friends.Meeting up with people one-on-one became quite tiring after a while, and I missed socialising in groups - something that happens so naturally at school/university.

· I will miss the massages. As long as you can avoid the dodgy places, getting massages in China is awesome - so cheap and a brilliant way to relax.

· I both will and won't miss being stared at. Sometimes I found it hilarious, sometimes flattering, and sometimes incredibly annoying. I think when I'm back in the UK it'll be both a relief to be able to walk down the street unnoticed, and also slightly disappointing that I won't feel as special anymore!

· I won't miss the university. Although we had some lovely teachers at Ocean University, some of whom did give the odd interesting class, the lectures were generally fairly dull and uninspiring. Although this can be the case in Cambridge too, at least you're in a lovely city/university full of interesting activities to do in your spare time. This wasn't really the case at Ocean, so it was hard to feel like part of a community there.

· I'll miss hearing Chinese! Although I often got incredibly fed up with China, I never lost my love of the Chinese language. I'll miss hearing it around me on a daily basis. I'm going to try my best to surround myself with Chinese when I get home, but I know it won't be the same.

There was a lot about living in China that was difficult and frustrating, and when I look back on my time in Qingdao I don't want to forget that. There are important reasons behind why it was difficult that shouldn't be ignored, plus I feel like I learnt the most both about myself and about China when I was finding things hard. Having said that, I have a tendency to look back on past experiences with rose-tinted glasses, and I already think of my time in Qingdao quite fondly. I've been back in the UK for a few weeks now, and I still find it hard to summarise how I feel about the whole experience, but it's safe to say I learnt a huge amount, and it was certainly unforgettable.