Ni hao Xintai!

Me and Zoe have been in Xintai for 3 days now and are having a great time!

On Saturday we got picked up from the hotel by a lovely guy called King, who is the manager of our school. He told us a lot more about our placement and it's great to finally find out some more information. I will be teaching in both a private language school and a normal state school here in China, which means I will get to teach mixed age groups with both small and large classes - apparently some classes have up to 100 people in them, argh! HELP!

Our apartment is lovely and exceeds all expectations. We have a large living room with a television and DVD player, a kitchen with all the mod-cons (microwave, kettle, rice steamer), and our bedrooms are very girly and brightly decorated with flowery bedsheets, :) Best of all we each have our own computer with webcam and microphone so we can Skype home whenever we want. Me and Zoe were looking forward to buying bikes as they only cost about 20 pounds, but the school has provided us with a bike each too! Score! Hopefully I won't get run over by a car, as the drivers here are bloody mental.

On Sunday I got woken up at half 6 in the morning thinking that war had broken out in Xintai. It was Lantern Festival, which marks the end of the Chinese New Year. Very loud fireworks were going off all day. King took us to the supermarket in the morning which was really fun - even the most mundane activities are exciting in a foreign country. The supermarket was full of people, and the shelves were lined with mysterious and questionable looking foodstuffs. Me and Zoe played it safe and bought lots of fruit and vegetables. King says he will show us how to cook some traditional Chinese meals though! Yum yum!

I had my first traumatic experience on Sunday evening. Me and Zoe returned to our flat to find that we could not open the front door. After trying desperately for a few minutes, Zoe snapped the key in the lock! NOOOOOO!!! Our only telephone, and King's phone number, was inside the flat. s***. And we can't speak any Chinese to ask for help. Double s***. Luckily Zoe had her trusty phrasebook with her, so armed with this essential tool we valiantly ventured outside to look for a telephone. After wildly gesticulating to some confused looking Chinese people, we found ourselves inside the local shop borrowing some random girl's mobile phone. We had to ring Solaro - the guy who runs the whole teaching programme - as his was the only phone number we had. Thankfully he managed to get into contact with King and we were back inside our warm flat, drinking tea and laughing about our dramatic escapade, within an hour. It could have been a lot worse I suppose!

Yesterday we got taken to see the park. It had been snowing the night before so it looked very beautiful and tranquil. I can imagine me and Zoe spending a lot of time reading books and renting boats on the lake there in summer! In the evening we went out by ourselves and walked around the streets - Lantern Festival was still being celebrated so there were hundreds of people about, and brightly coloured lanterns in the shapes of tigers, pandas and penguins filled the streets. We bought some balloons as we were in a particularly childish mood - I got a Hello Kitty balloon and Zoe got a parrot! This seemed to attract even more attention to ourselves however - out of 2 million people that live here, there are apparently only 10 westerners. People stop in their tracks and point and stare at us whilst we walk down the street - takes a lot of getting used to!

King wants us to get settled into the city first, so we won't start teaching until next week now. I'm chillaxing to the max at the mo, and still feel like I'm just on holiday! No complaints here!

xxx