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I'm a little bit behind on my blog, so I'll try to catch up pretty quickly.
Thursday was fairly long and tiring. I was up early to plan lessons, then I had a double lesson in the afternoon, one with a new class. Neither lesson went too badly, but I was pretty tired when I was finished. I stopped at the canteen on the way back to my apartment, and then had a chat to nanny and my mum before finishing my lesson plan and getting to bed.
I had another double lesson Friday morning, which also went quite smoothly. My second class had bought me a tea pot and some little cups for teachers day which was really nice :) Might have to buy some tea now!
After class I went to the canteen and met one of my students called Darcy so I stayed to eat with her. I then went back to my apartment to get ready for our taxi to Changsha at 3pm.
I was doing ok for time until Lisa rang up about 2:15pm and asked if I was ready! I really wasn't, so I ran around as quickly as I could and me and Richard were ready to go not long after half past. We got int he taxi and waited in town until two other people joined us and we hit the road for Changsha.
When we arrived at the hotel we rang Amy and she helped us check in. We ditched out bags in our very fancy room, complete with western toilet and shower, before going to Amy's office where we met another teacher called Gareth and his american friend, and Jenny and Tony also arrived as well.
We went back to the hotel and waited for everyone else to arrive, had an expensive beer and got to know the new people. We collected Sam, Aggy, their chinese friend Rosemary, Tom, Chris and Mark and then went for a pretty good meal in the restaurant just across the road. Matt E caught us up after some adventures leaving his phone and wallet in his taxi, which he miraculously managed to get back!
After we had eaten we followed Gareth and his friend Matt into the city centre. We met up with Jonny, Matt J, Elisha and Andy and went down a little street with some very strange bars. After we tried and failed at sitting in the hippy house, we went up to another part of the bar which was quite big, had a stage and a dance floor, and was empty except for us. We ended up spending the night there though because it had beer and everyone had a lot of catching up to do. Martin and Ruth finally joined us much later, they had been stuck behind a crash on the main road from their city and their 5 hour slog to Changsha had been dragged out even longer.
We got back to the hotel about 3am and managed to buy some drink from the shop opposite the hotel, and some potato from a street vendor just outside... crazy country where everything is still open! The potato was about the only apetising thing being sold from the street vendor, the rest of the trolly was just various parts of duck all chopped up.
The next morning we weren't up too late. Matt went with Amy to get his phone and wallet back, and me and Rich had an extortionate coffee whilst we waited for Tom, Chris and Mark. We then went into town and the 7 of us went to pizza hut whooohoooo! It had been far too long since I'd had pizza :)
We had a wander around the shops that afternoon, I bought some jeans and Sam arrived and joined us. We haad a relaxing afternoon exploring the city centre before settling down to watch the Liverpool/Man Utd game in a little pub.
After the game we tried to move around the bars in the street we were in, but they were all very small so we ended up heading back to the main bar road. We met some girls Matt E knew and they took us to a bar called Coco which wasn't too bad and there was enough room to sit and catch up with everyone.
At 12, me, Matt E, Matt J, Tom, Chris, Mark, Sam, Jenny and Tony went to do some kareoke. We had the room booked til 6am so we were ready for the long haul!
It was a lot of fun, Elisha, Ruth and Richard all joined us at some point too, and the beer wasn't too expensive.
We left about 5am and had a detour to McDonalds before going back to the hotel.
We didn't wake up too early on Sunday morning. Mark, Tom, Chris and Sam all went home that afternoon, but once they had checked out of the hotel we went into town with them for lunch (Subway!!) and had a walk around the shops and around town. Eventually about 4pm we ran out of things to do. The Xiantan boys went home and Rich went to have a rest. Me and Matt tried to kill some time in the city centre until everyone else from Matt and Jonny's arrived in town (Matt J, Jonny, Ruth, Elisha, Martin and Andy).
Eventually everyone turned up but the whole night was a bit of a mess because no-one could decide what to do. In the end, after another trip to Subway, most people went to get a massage, and then went to an (apparntly pretty rubbish) house party. Me and the Matts went back to the hotel to pick up the TESOL certificates (waste of time) and drop off my new shoes. We went to the chinese restaurant by the hotel for some food, then went for a walk into town. After an un-successful quest to get me some phone credit, we went to a little cafe/wine bar I had spotted by the football bar the day before. It was quite expensive, but really nice so we just sat around and talked until the place emptied and we decided we had better get moving.
We said goodbye to Matt J and me and t'other Matt went back to the hotel to catch a relatively early night.
This morning we were up quite early to get ready to leave. Once we were packed me and Rich had to wait until 12noon to catch our Taxi back to Yiyang so Matt E went home and us two went for a McDonalds breakfast. I have eaten so much western junk food this weekend I'm quite glad to get back to my "Rice and Stuff" tonight!
We went back to check out of the hotel and there was some confusion as we were waiting for our taxi. The hotel asked us to come back inside for something, but we never quite worked out what they wanted so in the end they gave up. Our taxi arrived and there was only me and Richard in it, it cost 100RMB between us, which is prety good considering it's about an hours drive :)
When we got back to Yiyang we went to have a rest. I couldn't sleep so I went out onto campus to try and get some phone credit. I managed to get it sorted and bought a few other bits and peices. Once I was back at my flat I had a quick tidy up and then three of my students turned up with mooncake for me because of the mid-autumn festival! Which I thought was very kind :) I had a variety to choose from, some of them are nicer than others and I'm not too keen on the egg yolks in the middle of some of them!
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