I realise it's been a week since my last post, so after some nagging from various family/friends I decided it's time to update y'all on what I've been up to. Here are some highlights:

1) Staying up late chatting with my roommate, Chengyuan. She's so nice and interesting, I really struck gold with this one! Plus I now have a second roommate - she's called Yuchao and she's also in her late twenties and works in finance. She's loads of fun, got a great sense of humour, but is pretty difficult to understand … she speaks super fast and with a thick Qingdao accent. Think we're going to have a lot of good times together though, we went out for a tasty dinner of duck head on Sunday which was awesome, and they're both planning to throw me a little birthday party next week, nawww!

2) Swimming in the sea! Been a few times now with Helena and it is so so so nice and the best way to unwind. The bit of beach just in front of her flat is almost entirely deserted, and the sea is relatively clean and totally algae-free. Due to the amazing weather in Qingdao this summer the water is also really warm, perfect for swimming. Think I'll be paying regular visits to her flat for post-swim showers haha.

3) Furniture! Sounds like a weird thing to get excited about, but as I couldn't really unpack and get settled until it arrived, I was so pleased when it turned up on Saturday morning and was surprisingly good quality given how little I'd paid for it. I still need to fill my room out a bit with some tacky Chinese decorations, but having the basics there feels so good, like I'm finally settled. Plus after the delivery, I went out for lunch with Chengyuan and my estate agent Kaka (who has a massive crush on her hehe) and we had the most amazing fish dish… it was by far the most expensive meal I'd had since arriving in China but absolutely worth every penny.

4) Jobs! I'm going to be doing English conversation practice with a 15-year-old Chinese girl called Coco (oh dear) every Sunday morning. It pays around £17 an hour so I'm happy! Might be doing some other teaching on Monday evenings too, but that's not yet confirmed. That would be about £34 for an hour and a half, which would be awesome, roughly enough to cover basic living expenses for a week. Don't want to teach toooo much as I'd rather be focusing on speaking Mandarin, but a few hours a week will be the perfect way of topping up spending money!

5) Friends! On Sunday I met up with Aurora, a Chinese lady I made friends with when I was in Qingdao last year. She took me to her friend's flat to play a board game based on the bestselling financial management novel, "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". I'd never heard of it before, but apparently the book and game are HUGE in China. I was keen because it meant spending the afternoon with around 15 Chinese people - great stuff right? Well it was to begin with, the game was kind of like Monopoly (but not as fun) and the chat was good. But oh dear, it just went on WAY too long. Two hours in and I was suffering - I was utterly exhausted from all the shouting and struggling to keep up with complex financial terms in Mandarin. I also had a headache from lack of fresh air/water, and really wanted to make excuses to leave. The worst was to come, though, as when the game ended, the 'teacher' then gave a 'summary lecture' on the lessons learned from the game, i.e. how to manage your money responsibly. It was the most POINTLESS talk ever - just common sense stuff really, but they all seemed to love it! I was getting pretty annoyed by this point, why couldn't they just play the game for fun instead of making a lesson out of it?! Ah well, I guess it was good to meet some new people and see Aurora again. Plus, I treated myself to a Snickers bar when I finally got out - having not eaten/drunk anything for about 6 hours it tasted like heaven, and as easy as that I was happy again. Hah. Also met up with Scarlet again which was awesome, and had a HUGE barbeque dinner with Kaka and lots of his friends one night as well. Fun times.

6) Gym! Been to the gym several times in the past week…. Think I might write a blog post entirely dedicated to my experiences there, as it seems every time I go something hilarious/bizarre seems to happen!

7) University starts! Again, might write a separate post on this in a week or so when I've had all my classes for the first time. But let's just say it's been a bit of a shock getting back to work. I wish I'd kept up with my characters etc during the summer as I'm finding it pretty hard, especially as Saul and Helena are so darn good! At least this year doesn't matter in terms of grades and the teachers all seem pretty chilled… eek.

Anyway that's probably enough for now - I've left quite a bit out but it's impossible to include everything plus I'm EXHASUTED from the first two days of classes and dying to go to bed! Sorry for a very incoherent post. Photos on FB if you're interested, and would love to get emails/messages from those of you I haven't spoken to in a while!

Lots of love xxx

P.S. If any of you are wondering how the dramas in the last post worked out, Saul is now LOADS better and Helena moved into her flat today, happy days!