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Hey everyone, sorry for not writing for a while, but I havent had internet access for a few weeks. Ok so i'm gonna do three blogs all in one go. To start, the journey.
So I left the UK from Gatwick airport on 18th August. Its a massive airport. The plane was run by Emirates and was very nice and luxurious inside. They provided us with free headsets and blankets, free meals and our own tv's so I managed to watch some good films - Jumper and some of the How I Met Your Mother series. That flight lasted 7 hours and we landed in Dubai about midnight. There, I met up with another teacher called Jo who was also going over to teach in Hunan Province. We got on another plane to Shanghai. Again I was very impressed with the quality of it. I mostly slept on this journey though. We landed in the afternoon in Shanghai and had to make our way across the city to the other airport to catch an internal flight to Changsha. It was surprisingly easy as I didnt know any Chinese. There was a bus straight there. We only touched the outskirts of the city so didnt see much, but there were still traffic jams lol.
On a side note. The drivers over here are crazy. The rules of the road are taken as suggestions rather than rules. It's so funny. They love their horns as well. Loads of people have mopeds and just randomly drive on the pavement. It's like organised chaos. It seems to work though as I've only seen one small crash in the whole two weeks I've been here and we've been out a lot. The buses are also very funny - it's very cheap (just 1 yuan anywhere in the city) but they are always very crowded and you have to stand up. They just wizz in and out of traffic and beep their horns so much.
Anyway, back to the story. The internal flight was very quick and only took an hour. We were met at the airport and taken back to our accomadation in another university (not the one i'm teaching in). The rooms were very nice (apart from things not working lol). We had tv, shower (oh there is no curtain in the bathroom so the people across from us could see in while taking a shower - I don't think the Chinese know what privacy is yet.) At least the toilet was western though. Toilets in China usually consist of just a whole in the ground and you take your own toilet paper in. I had a room mate for the two weeks named Martin - he is a cool guy and we made friends quickly.
The next morning, we all had to get up for about 11.30. I met Amy (the person who organised all this for us) and she took us out to lunch at a very nice restaurant and paid for our meal too (Thanks Amy). The weather was ultra hot - at least 37 degrees. It wasn't very nice and we all got very sweaty. Luckily there was air-conditioning in the restaurant and our rooms (and it got a bit colder after a few days there). I tried some new interesting foods - grass carp, banana fritters, spicy meat dishes and chinese seaweed.
After lunch we had to go to the Police station and register and then it was on to Walmart (yes they have Asda here) to get some food and an adapter. We got the bus back. It was a weird experience. lol.
Right, that is enough for my first blog. Will write another one soon about the last few weeks teaching. Stay tuned.
Matt.
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