The past two months since returning from our winter travels have been quite trying. I'm afraid to say that Matt and I have finally succumbed to cultural fatigue and have begun to feel frustrated by our Chinese life, more specifically our city Leiyang. The fact that there really is nothing to do here except teach or go to KTV bars really is a dull prospect once the novelty of being somewhere different has faded, which it well and truly has. Also, I hate to sound...

We're back safely from our travels in the south of China and what a month it was! A couple of days before we left Leiyang, we took the advice of our friend Jelly's family and booked flights between our destinations rather than relying on train services. This proved to be an excellent idea as the Spring Festival is the busiest time of year in China and using the trains for long journeys just leads to delays, frustration and disappointment. We left on 6th Januar...

Its christmas here in China and it has certainly been busy for us! A couple of weeks ago we organised an English christmas party for students to come to in which we played games, sang songs and ate chocolate money. It went well depsite it being sabotaged by this Chinese teacher whose english name is Sophia. She is a complete control freak and kept making impossible demands on Matt and and I and then really stressed herself out when we were trying to console her ...

I have now been in China for almost three months and it feels like such a long time! We are slowly becoming accustomed to the seemingly strange behaviour that we encounter and some of our Chinese friends are even proving to be very endearing. We were invited to ever generous Jelly's, also a new teacher, for dinner where depsite her parents not speaking a word of English, they made us feel so welcome and insisted that if we had any problems we could ask them for ...

We have just returned from a three day trip to Guilin in the South west of China, a seven-hour train journey away from Leiyang. It was incredible! Guilin is a city nestled on the beautiful Li river and is a very popular tourist destination in China due to its natural beauty. There are beautiful mountain peaks everywhere you look, Matt and I were awestruck by the majesty of them. On our first day we rented out bikes and orienteered ourselves to the outskirts of ...