Ok the following is a catch up of my first week. It's pretty long, but I have been writing it on my laptop until I had internet access.

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MON 18 AUG 2008

Well I made it :) After a day or two of travel and a lot of flying stress!

I left home with my mum, dad and sister at about 10am on Monday morning (18th). After a super speedy check in and some sad goodbyes I disappeared up the escalator on my own.
I had over 2 hours to kill and bought lots of books and magazines from W H Smiths before settling down with a coffee. My flight was on time and I boarded my Emirates plane ready for my 14:05 take off, there was no turning back!

My first flight was not too bad once we were up in the air and I had distracted myself with some films. It was smooth, very fancy looking, and we landed in Dubai 7 hours later at around midnight local time (and 37oC outside!). I sat around at the rammed airport watching for my gate to be announced and a familiar looking guy walked up to me asking "Are you Jo?". My travel buddy Matt had found me :) We had another couple of hours to kill in the airport but it was good to have someone to talk to and the time passed pretty quickly.

We boarded the second flight on time, but the take off was delayed slightly after a random guy started shouting and swearing at other passengers and crew. I did not enjoy the second flight, there was turbulance all the way through which did not help my attempts to sleep. The food wasn't bad though and the Turkish buisness man sitting next to me was very pleasant. His company had a manufacturing factory in Shandong, I think he made some kind of lights or glass panels.
Eventually after a some very unpleasant 8 hours we landed in Shanghai, China!! (At about 3:30pm local time)

TUES 19 AUG 2008

Me and matt got through through customs and collected our baggage without any problems and managed to find out which bus we needed to catch to swap airports to catch our final connection to Changsha. There was a bus waiting for us when we reached the stop, the driver managed to squash our luggage into the hold and we paid our 30RMB and walked onto a bus full of chinese people. After about an hour racing through Shanghai highways in rush hour we made it to the airport.

We somehow walked into the right terminal, and without much hassle at all, managed to find our check in area! After a bit of faffing around with bags (the hand luggage limit was 5kg according to signs!) we checked onto the flight with no problems, and no extra cost, even though I ended up checking two bags which came to 13kg more than the allocated 20kg baggage allowance!
I lost my travel deoderant spray at the security control this time (no-one had even noticed it before then), the security guard pointed out to me that it was "EXTREMLY FLAMMABLE" and seemed to be laughing at me, but he wasn't scary and didn't lock me up.
We had about two hours to wait before our final flight at 20:30. After my first experience of Chinese style toilets, we bought some crisps and drinks and just sat waiting at the gate. The people watching was interesting, everyone was cheering at the olympics on tvs dotted about the place, and I was a little concerned about the woman with "I'm Not A Terrorist" plastered acoss the back of her t-shirt.

We finally got the call for our flight. By this time I was tired, and after the previous flight I was pretty nervous, so I was feeling generally grumpy.
The flight actually turned out to be very good and efficient. We boarded and took off 10 minutes early. The aeroplane was really nice inside and after we had reached altitude and the shaking noise inside had stopped, I calmed down and it was a really smooth flight. We got given a snack box with a "wet turban" to clean our hands and a packet of pickled vegetables that stayed in their wrapper.

We landed in Changsha in good time and got on a bus from the plane to the terminal, joined by one other westerner who had obviously been hiding at the back of the plane.
We walked out, collected our luggage, and found a girl standing waving at us with our names written on a bit of paper. She was also collecting another guy, who turned out to be Jonathon, the guy from the bus.
We got in a nice air conditioned mini bus and were driven into the city. The girl who had come to collect us was called Mary. Our main contact Amy couldn't come because she was getting some rest. We relaxed in the mini bus and stopped for some water at the main gates, before heading to our rooms.

The boys went to their allocated rooms to meet their new room mates, and Mary took me to my room where I would be staying with Elisha when she arrived later. She turned on the aircon (!!!!!!) and the boiler so I could shower, and left me to my own devices. My first shower was an experience. It was fairly cold because the water hadn't heated up yet (which was fine I was so warm), and I couldn't find a shower curtain. I ended up showering in my swimming costume to the possible amusement of anyone in the opposite block of apartments.
The next day I found out there was a pull down curtain I had missed...
Once I was clean and in my PJs I got into bed it was so nice to just sleep flat for the first time in two days!
When I got into bed it was 11pm in Changsha, 4pm UK time, Tuesday 19th Aug.

WED 20 AUG 2008

My first two days in Changsha have been amazing.

I was woken up early on the Wed morning when Elisha arrived. We briefly said hi then both went to sleep.
We got up again about 10 and had a chat before heading downstairs to the lobby to meet Amy and everyone else.

I guess now would be time to introduce the full group. There was me, Matt J who I met in Dubai, Jonathon who we met at the airport, Elisha who I share a room with, Richard who is going to the same university as me in Yiyang, Martin, Matt E, Michael who doesn't talk, Andy, Sam G, Jenny and Tony and another Sam T and Anna

We went for a walk into town as a group and Amy took us all out for our first Chinese meal. We were all nearly dead and very hot and sticky by the end of the 25 minute walk in the middle of the day. Luckily it appears nearly every building in Changsha has air conditioning which made things much more comfortable.

The meal was great, Amy just ordered a selection of dishes and we just had a litle bit of each. I avoided the slices of chili and (unfortunately becase it looked really nice) the fish with a layer of chopped peppers on top and it went pretty good :)

We then attempted to take a taxi across town to the police station to get registered. Since there were so many of us, Amy spilt us up and told the taxi drivers where to take us. So everyone else drove off and our taxi just sat there for about 5 minutes doing nothing until we rang Amy, apparantly the taxi driver didn't know where to go!
When we eventually got to the Police station we all waited around not doing much whilst Amy sorted out the documents. Once we were legal, we tried another 3 way taxi drive to WallMart, which went much more smoothly.

We re-grouped in McDonalds, just because it was an obvious place to meet, then headed into a pretty big shopping center. We went to the WallMart inside and split up to get the various bits of food (COFFEE!) and water (and beer) that we needed. We met up again about an hour later to go to get some dinner, however we lost 3 members of the party and had to do some running around.

Once we had everyone back together, we went up to the food hall at the top of the shopping center. Amy helped us load some money onto a card and then she went around with me and Richard helping us choose what we wanted to eat. It was ridiculousy cheap, I had a big bowl of beef noodles, a glass of fresh iced tea and ten dumplings, which came to 19RMB. That's less than £1.90.
When we had finished eating we left the shopping centre and tried to get some taxis back to the apartments. After standing around for a while with no luck we caught a crowded and non-airconditioned bus back to the university for 1RMB.

We had quite a long walk back for the front gates to our apartments, it took about 25 minutes and even though it was dark it was still really warm. Matt E was a huge help and carried one of my bags since I'd somehow thought it was a good idea to buy three 1.5L bottles of water, and a 6 pack of beer...
When we got back I headed upstairs and had a shower, complete with curtain. Elisha turned up a bit later, she had stopped with some boys to buy beer and explained we were planning to meet up for a few drinks.

When we were ready we eventually found everyone hiding in Andy and Sam G's room. We sat around and chatted, drank beer and ate crisps (and listened to bad music). We were up pretty late until Martin and Jon decided they wanted to go out on the town (it was about 2am by this point). The front door to the apartments were locked and they couldn't find another way out. I left them to it as I didn't fancy escaping to find nothing open, and not be able to get back in until someone opened the doors the next morning.

I went upstairs to bed and I could hear shouting whilst I was brushing my teeth, I looked out of the window and saw Martin and Andy standing beneath me, and Jon attempting to climb out of the first floor window. I took a few pictures, laughed at them a bit until I saw a Chinese guy turn up, ducked out of the window and went to sleep.

To fill in the gap for the rest of the night, the Chinese guy who turned up was a student who had a key for the front door of the building. He let Jon, Richard and Sam G out of the front door, and the five of them were escorted around bars in Changsha in a taxi by the Chinese student (who is either called Dereck or David).

THURS 21 AUG 2008

So Thursday morning arrived not much more than 4 hours after I went to bed. Me and Elisha dragged ourselves up and to our first class. Needless to say we could not wake any of the five intrepid explorers. Richard did turn up about half an hour late looking a little worse for wear.

The first class was good and we had an introduction to the class from our lecturer Jon. We finished a little early and we followed Michael to the front gates after he told us Amy wanted to meet us in a cafe. When we arrived, Amy wasn't there and we managed to order everyone a drink, and a few bits of food, and pay for it, all by ourselves! I had a very tasty bowl of tofu noodles and a glass of fresh lemon juice.
Eventually Amy turned up with the other 4 guys who hadn't made it to class. Apparantly she was very dissapointed with them. Later that evening we had a group meeting which layed down some ground rules which included not going out of the university campus without guidance from Amy, and no alcohol. No suprises there!

The afternoon class went well, and it's much shorter than the morning. Classes run from 8:30am-12:00pm and 2:30pm-4:00pm. Jonathon was looking a little worse for wear but he was convinced it was something he'd eaten...

After class we went back to our rooms and ordered some more food from the cafe we went to at lunch time. I opted for noodles, again, this time with beef. Whilst we waited for it to arrive I had a bit of a relax. I slowly read through our assigned chapters for the course and just about managed to stay awake.
We found out what Michael does when he's ignoring the rest of us. It turns out he likes to sit in his room and lift his suitcase.

Once the food arrived, me and Matt E gatecrashed Martin and Matt J's room. They pulled out the table and we had an evening of fine dining. Afterwards, me, both Matts, Elisha and Richard walked to the supermarket on the edge of campus to try and find some home comforts. After two days we were fed up of noodles and were craving sandwiches. There is a small shopping complex and supermarket at the edge of campus, and it was so alive in the evening with lots of shiney lights, and a crowd of people standing in a square watching the olympics on a big screen. We didn't have time to explore much thought because we had to be back at the apartments before 10pm, and just went to the supermarket. It was much bigger than it looked and again, very cheap. I bought some fancy flowery chopsticks, packet of oreos, two big bottles of water, loaf of bread, 4 pack of yoghurts (realised the lack of calcium in my diet), large packet of crisps, small jar of jam (for sandwiches, I was too cheapskate for cheese), packet of little biscuit circle things and a teaspoon for 52RMB. About a fiver.

Walking back I'm sure gets longer, but it was cooler in the dark than in the sunshine, and someone was playing some chinese music on what sounded like a penny whistle type thing which made a very pretty soundtrack for part of our walk home. I'm also not sure you can see stars in many other cities with a population of about 6 million people.

When we got back to the apartments it was nearly 10pm. I showered and me and Elisha had a bit of a chat about places in China before going to sleep.

FRI 22 AUG 2008

Ok so now I've finally caught up on today!

Me and Elisha both woke up late and crawled out of bed, made it to class just about on time. It is slightly cooler today, I walked out into the bathroom away from the aircon and didn't immediately melt! I was so tired, I'm going to take a nap in a minute. We learnt a bit more TESOL stuff until we had a power cut about 11:30am. Since the fans in the classroom stopped working, and it was boiling even with them on, we finished slightly early. We went back to the apartment and I had a yoghurt and a jam sandwich, it was so good to have a break from noodles! Yes I know I'm rubbish and have only lasted 2 days.

Anyway I now have an hour left before class, so time to get a bit of rest.

So far this trip has been amazing. The city is more developed than I thought it would be, and more modern. It's less polluted and crowded than I thought it would be too. I can't read anything, there's lots of shiney lights, people keep staring when we walk somewhere, there's random men sleeping under trees, and others sitting around in the dark talking by cigarette light, holes in the pavement with no signs around them, boards on the floor with nails sticking out, glorious sunshine, although after walking for 2 minutes you start melting even at night, and olympics on every tv you see. And 15p cans of beer. I can definitley get used to it!

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The last day has been pretty good! Doesn't look like I'll have time to sleep again this lunch time but I have managed to get a bit of time on the internet which was good :)
I didn't get chance to sleep yesterday by the time I was finished, I just went back to class a little bit earlier to get on the internet for a few minutes.

After class me and Elisha decided to go shopping, I went to drop my books off and ran into Matt J who decided to come with us.
We made it to the shops and just wandered around them, Elisha bought some shoes and I bought a couple of presents then we found Jenny and Tony. We did a bit more shopping. It turns out the clothes in China don't come in sizes bigger than small, and to some disbeleif and amusement, the shopkeeper wouldn't even let us try on some clothes!
The five of us then decided to go and get some food and went to the restaurant we went to on the first day. Just as we were sitting down we spotted Amy and Matt E so we joined together and had some coffees before ordering something to eat.

It was a good suprise evening and we spent a long time sitting around and chatting, and Amy needed some cheering up because it had clearly been a few very stressful days.
After the walk back, we found some of the guys playing football outside of the apartments so we hung around t watch them and Matt and Tony joined in.

That night ended up a late one again, since me an Elisha still had to finish our reading for class the next day.

SAT 23 AUG 2008

We woke up late the next morning and had to rush to get ready. Class went ok, we had to plan and give a short lesson. Our lesson didn't go very smoothly because we spent most of the preparation time arguing about what to do, but I guess that's what happens when you put three girls in a group!

After class me and Elisha went to try and research our teaching strategy for our lesson plan assignment. We had to base it on some Community Teaching method but it looked fairly impractical for what we would use it for. We decided to not plan a lesson straight away and check with teacher Jon. After that Elisha, Amy and some others walked to the front gate to get some food, and I spent a bit of time catching up on the internet and then went back for a jam sandwich :)

I managed to get a bit of a nap before I had to go back to class. Ended up a bit late after a combination of getting up too slow then following Andy and Sam G on their "shortcut".
Towards the end of the class we were given time to work on our lesson plan and me and Elisha went to ask teacher Jon about our method. It turned out he didn't think it was that practical either and we changed our method to Communicative Language Teaching. We decided to plan a lesson about directions and got the basics down when we got back to the apartment. At about 6pm I went to join everyone else on a trip to play football, Elisha was tired and decided not to come.

We walked out the back entrance of the uni and caught a taxi to another part of the city. We walked for a little bit until we arrived at an absolutely huge stadium! Then we walked around the side and booked onto a small pitch outside. Most of the boys had a 5v5 game, me, Amy, Jenny, Anna and Matt J decided to sit out. Even though I changed my shoes no-one asked me to play! But since I can't really play, and it looked a bit rough and slimey I'm glad I didn't end up playing!

After a few injuries (Jon hurt his shoulder and Matt E got a football in his *ahem*) and lots of pictures the time on the pitch ran out and the final score was a draw.
All the horrible slimey men then decided it's but a good idea to give me a group hug
:( euuggghhh.

We then went to another Cafe Milo restaurant (the same chain as the one we went to on the first day) and had some food before heading back to the apartments.

SUN 24 AUG 2008

Sunday I woke up and got to lesson early. We all had our first example lessons to give and even though we had to d it in pairs it was still pretty scary. They all went quite well though and I think it helped everyone's confidence.
Also During class, Teacher Jon showed us a comic strip that he had blanked out the speech bubbles and it had been filled in by his english class. It turns out they had a sense of humour since calvin and hobb were mentioning phrases such as "they have set us up the bomb", "you have no time to survive, make your time" and "all your base are belong to us" :D

We walked to the gate and went to KFC for dinner, my very first ever KFC was a beijing style wrap thing which turned out to basically be a duck pancake with chicken instead.
When we got back to the apartments I just tidied and had a bit of a chill out before afternoon class.

That evening Amy planned a walk along the river, but first she took us for some typical Hunanese restaurant which was really cool. Tried some of the more unusual food such as bullfrog, ducks neck and peanut stem. I avoided the shimp and squid covered in chilli though! We also learnt how to participate in chinese toasts, Gan bei!!

Afterwards we just crossed the road and walked down the river it was a really nice relaxing walk in the dark.

When we returned to the apartment, some of us stopped in David's room and had a few more beers. Some people got into the swing of gan bei, and Amy started to suffer slightly because she wouldn't refuse a toast... It was a good night though and after a little bit of boxing, we called it an early night about 2am.

MON 25 AUG 2008

Monday morning went fairly smoothly, although Amy was looking a little worse for wear.

At dinner time me Matt and Matt went to the supermarket at the university gate to buy some food supplies. Some other people went to the restaurant that had opened up next to the apartments but we were craving breaded products.
When we got back to the apartments we had a mini picnic on the seats in the lobby since Elisha was sleeping and I didn't want to wake her up.

In class that afternoon we were given the outline for our lessons with the chinese students. Me and Richard were paired together, we had to do our own lesson but they were both on the same subject, comparatives and superlatives.

After class I was really tired so we decided to delay our run through until later that evening, I went back to the apartment to sleep, and ordered some take away noodles, with the intention of waking up when they arrived, planning my lesson when eating them, then having a run through of our classes with Richard about 8pm.

Well 6pm came and Jonny knocked on my door asking if I wanted to go out for some food. He told me we'd probably be back about 8pm, and I felt like going out, so I decided to save my noodles and be sociable.

We met teacher Jon at the restaurant, and ordered some food and beer. As we started to finish the food teacher Jon decided to teach us a chinese drinking game he had learnt. From there we proceded through every drinking game we could think of, including card games since a deck appeared from know one. Jonny turned out to be the worst person to ever play fuzzy duck :)

When we were ready to leave the restaurant, me, Amy and Sam G walked back to the apartment, everyone else decided to stay out drinking. I think I had the intention of going back and finishing planning my class, but I got in at 2am and realised I was too drunk to do anything and just decided to go to bed. Apparantly though that wasn't before I went up to Matt J and Martin's room and started singing at them. Deary me.

Everyone who went out wasn't any better by the sound of it, althought everyone looked better the next morning.

TUES 26 AUG 2008

The next morning I woke up at 7:30am when my alarm went off :( I was sick, had a shower, then finished planning my lesson. I was in the classroom by 8am making my props and really not feeling well.
The Chinese students arrived about 9am and people started their lessons, luckily I wasn't first. I missed a lot of the early lessons, and after some time it became apparant that me and Richard would not have time for a our lessons that morning. Which suit me fine!

By the time class finished I was feeling a lot better, and hungry. Ruth had arrived and was waiting at the apartments so we went out for lunch to the little cafe where we bought water from next to the apartments. Amy ordered us a feast that we really couldn't finish eating!
After our food we went back and Martin supplied us all with fresh coffee from his new cafetiere, and we watched an episode of the league of gentlemen, I'm not sure what David made of it...

We had class a bit later that afternoon due to events the previous night, and we finished about 5:30pm. That gave me enough time to have about an hours sleep before getting up and ready to got to kareoke!!

The kareoke was in teacher Jon's hotel and it was awesome. Everyone sang and had a good night. The music videos for the songs were completely random and usually involved half naked girls with cheesy 80s hair! The beer kept flowing and people kept singing, Amy and Anna did the Titantic theme far too well :)

We had to leave the kareoke at 12mnt and everyone wanted to go out, so we piled into taxis and headed downtown. When we made it there we all got a bit split up and the night didn't really recover it just carried on being a bit stressed. We found Amy and juggled between two clubs until we ended up in a very busy R&B club. There was some podium dancing, particularly by Jenny, before we decided to round people up and call it a night.

This was easier said than done. Me, ruth, Matt J and David decided to get out of the way and David took us to MacDonalds for some good drunken munchies before we headed back to the apartments.

When we got back, Amy and some others were waiting up it turned out some guys didn't want to come home so they were waiting up. I decided to get out of the way and go to bed.