So here I am sitting down for the second time today to write this blog post, because this infuriating website decided to refresh when I tried to save my last copy.. so I will try and rewrite what I had before, which was of course brilliant, hilarious and undoubtedly the best blog read yet..

I guess you could say my problems all began last week, I'll start from where I left off... our visa problems. You would have thought it would be a fairly clear and simple process, but noooo.. Unfortunately our visa application was denied, its seems that despite having to go through rigorous testing to make sure we are 'Foreign Experts' and therefore qualified to teach here, the office in Urumqi hadn't really made that clear to the police in Yili. So, the reason why our work visa was denied is because the police in Yili simply dont believe that we are 'Foreign experts' because we are young and have only just finished high school.. Luckily we were able to haggle for an extra two months extension to our current visas, in which time we hope our visas will be sorted out. We left Yili on thursday for a frightfully boring 8 hour bus journey, though I have to say it was comfortable compared to the 30 hour journeys we made to and from Kashgar.

Last Friday, a cold start to the day running in a t-shirt, not sure i'll be doing that anymore, temperatures havent gotten above -7 this week and are expected to reach -17 tomorrow, 这是很冷 (it is very cold). Anyway after that I went to my Chinese lesson, but the teacher failed to turn up which was slightly annoying. I then went to the train station and had to queue up for an hour and a half just to buy tickets to Urumqi, they say England is famous for long queues but seriously that was a pain. Anyway I then went for lunch with some friends and mistakenly ordered some gross tasting eggy rice. My lessons were probably the best part of the day, quite quiet and relaxed which is unusual for a friday... although the students in class 9 (4 of them) always give me a hard time asking questions about girlfriends and other prying questions... Not that I mind, its nice to actually have a conversation in English. Anyway I then rushed to the station and boarded the 3 hour train to Urumqi to meet our friends for a sort of birthday party. At the station we got a taxi (worst mistake of my life) who drove us round in circles for 40 minutes because he didnt know where he was going. We spotted a burger king, and if you've been reading my other posts you will know how much I crave burgers here. Anyway we decided to stop and have dinner (it was now about 10 o clock). We bumped into a odd little man outside of burger king who enthusiastically shook our hands and borderline shouted chinese at us in his excitement (not an uncommon occurence at all here, we're surprised he didnt whip out a phone and try and take a photo) . Eventually we escaped him... and set all our stuff down in burger king ready to have a decent meal when.... I reached for my pocket... and realised my Iphone had been stolen, right out of my front pocket. So obviously i did the only thing i could do, I sat down and had two really large really tasty burgers. So tasty, so after searching in vain for my phone and trying to contact the police etc, we decided the best thing we could do was go and join our friends. We got another taxi (at least this guy knew where to go) and joined our friends in 'Fubar'. We were greeted by cake in the face.. thanks... exactly what i wanted.... I soon livened up and before long a full on cake fight ensued where I was smeared in the face by Laura, Reece and Azmat, they all got their just desserts...

Anyway We spent the weekend in Urumqi which is a gargantuan sprawling mass of urban markets and dodgy looking flats, we celebrated on saturday night and went to a place called 'room escape' - yes you have to escape from a room, and yes it was as bad as it sounds. Anyway it was overall quite a fun weekend. This week has been relatively boring, teaching as usual, lots of planning for spring break and quite a bit of chinese revision. Yesterday was Thanksgiving which was great because the chinese mistakenly thought I celebrate it so I was treated to free lunch and dinner, I had fried dumplings for the first time which was really nice. I was also invited to be a part or two english clubs in Kuitun, so of course I said yes... which also means I will be getting free dinner on Sunday, yummy. Possibly the strangest thing was that I was roped into acting in the school's short english play for the competition in Kuitun.. I will be playing the part of general Li in a rendition of Mulan (great story) with a couple of drawbacks, one I have to marry one of the students in the play... and I also apparently have to wear a ridiculous costume, thats not even the worst part, i have to sing a chinese opera at the end. Hopefully i'll be able to dodge the chinese opera, but the rest of it will definitely be fun. Callum and I ended yesterday by going out with our friends and having a some food and drinks which was really fun.

Today has been another cold day, we had a bit of snow again, and possibly the most exciting thing, a wrapped christmas present arrived from my Grandparents, Christmas is getting really close, and im starting to get childishly excited..

Thanks for being such faithful readers,

Harrison x