Got up early and headed into Beijing to do some shopping. I am suddenly realising how little time I have left here and have to do all the things I have been saying I will do 'later'. Went to the silk market first where I got carried away with the bags. I bought one and then they suddenly produced loads more from the 'special' section - these were hidden away in suitcases rather than being on display. Anyway, I found another that I wanted and was about to do a...

Spent the morning researching flights home and then booked one with BA for 24th March - it was so much cheaper than the other BA flights that I'm wondering if I have missed something! Went for lunch with Hannah and then we went to get our nails done but I was really figetty and ruined them before I had even left the shop!!! Went to buy some blank CD's to save photos on to send home which later turned out not to work for some reason and then found a shop to get ...

Woke up this morning to find it had snowed overnight which made the students very excitable in lessons. One of the Chinese teachers came to see me just before lunch and asked me to swap with him in the afternoon - at least I thought that was what he said but I wasn't quite sure until I actually arrived and found the class didn't have a teacher. In one of my classes, I told the joke "What can you make but you can't see" and one of the students said &qu...

Had our Mandarin lesson at 8:30 this morning - this is such a difficult language to learn - with all the tones, even if I can remember the word no one understands it when I pronunce it! Miss Cao told me that I would probably be getting 2 weeks off as the students in Grade 2 have some important exams, but when I asked her when she didn't know. She said to ask Charlie, but when I did he didn't know either! My 3rd option was to ask Mrs Liang who is the head of Engli...

Had some fun lessons today - we did tongue twister races, and then matching up joke questions and punchlines - most of them really got into it. After the forst lesson, Mrs Wu commented on the fact there was much hilarity in my lesson - they could hear it all in the staff room. Spent most of the rest of the day researching a trip to India. I have suddenly got it in my head that I would like to go home via India to see the Taj Mahal and the Golden Temple, and Explo...