Hi!! Sorry, sorry for my absence - I have been very busy teaching, lesson planning etc but also arranging travel and accomodation for National Week. China's National Day is on October 1st, after which the whole country has 5 to 7 days off in which to travel - a bit like half term really. So, myself and the other english teachers, both here with me and the others we met in Beijing, have been sorting out travel plans. As the whole country travels, and train travel...

Here are a couple of photos I managed to find - courtesy of Leon, our amazing contact person in Beijing and throughout the whole process really! Both are of all of us foreign teachers, from our visit to the Forbidden City but for some reason are massive when you open them so the link to them is here:- https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/13219df676342643 I look bald in one of them ahaha xxx

This week again has gone quite quickly - counting down the days until National Day and a week off in the first week of October now! The weather has decided today (unlike wednesday) to be a lot cooler, even drizzling, so whilst the drop in temperature and humidity is welcome relief, it's been a pretty grey day ! On Friday I went for a meal with Julia, my co-teacher, to a restaurant - I think they're a chain - where the food and interior is modelled on the old-fas...

Another boiling day today, so annoying how a few days ago it was a nice, moderate temperature, quite cool after a few days of rain, and now its full-on Sweatsville again! I hope, after living in this climate for a while, my body will learn to sweat less so I'll be able to handle the heat better when I'm holiday etc! The picture (bit blurry I know) is another from Beijing, when I was invited to a Beijing Duck restaurant by an old friend and business colleague of ...

Pingxiang In the words of 'Baby' from the film 'Dirty Dancing'- 'I carried a watermelon.' I actually did. Yesterday, we were given melons and mooncakes as a gift from the head of Foreign Teacher Affairs at the college (Bob) so I carried this melon up all the four floors to my apartment. These gifts were because it was the Mid-Autumn Day yesterday, where mooncakes (round cakes to resemble the moon, with either a sweet or savoury filling) are eaten and families of...