Miss Wang had made us a Chinese breakfast of dumplings, cold noodles with pickled cucumber, nuts in sauce, plus some rice in water.It was all a bit yucky for morning food.She also made us egg and tomato which is a simple Chinese dish, that's more like it for breakfast!The Doorbell rang, and Teacher Shi, Teacher Neil and Suzanne were there, ready to take us back to New Concepts School

The teachers there were lovely and only two of them (Echo and Alina) spoke English.The others wanted to say "Hello" again and again just to hear us say it back.They taught us three rhymes and two games which are used for teaching English in China.I'm not sure I will use all of them, such as "I like coffee, I like tea, I like boys, boys like me".Surely this song is inappropriate in schools where we were told they are not allowed 'relationships' with each other (i.e. fellow students) until they are eighteen?

Suzanne took us on Bus 5 to some another area of apartments.We went to a food hut and walked right to the back where a man and a woman were cooking on what looked like a hotplate set on a barrel.I showed my vegetarian card again and was given a bread thing filled with tofu and lots of vegetables.It was one of the nicest things I have eaten since I left the UK.We were taken to an apartment nearby, not quite sure what to expect.Then to our relief there were two other teachers from our scheme, they have an apartment to themselves but other than that are in a similar position to us and have no idea where they will be working or when.

They had a computer with internet access so I was able to send a quick email from there to mum.I made a joke about not being entirely sure whether or not I'd been kidnapped but they were feeding us and telling us we are beautiful so I didn't really mind either way.

We went back on Bus 5 to New Concepts School but the shutters were down, so we had to wait a while for the teachers to come back and open up.When they arrived we went into the office again and it felt like any other staff room I've ever been in, aside from the Mandarin.The girls were showing off the shopping they had bought at lunchtime and sharing sweets and gum around.We went to a classroom and learnt seven more rhymes. We were also made to play a game to use when teaching new words.The kids crouch down in a circle and then jump up shouting the new word.As they jump up the teacher tries to hit them with a rolled up piece of paper so they are it.They are only allowed to stay crouched for up to ten seconds so its absolute chaos with everyone bouncing up and down shouting 'DOG' and then being whacked with a roll of paper.I will not be using that in my classroom!!!

We got Bus 5 back to apartment and by now I had realised Bus 5 is probably going to be quite vital so I sat at the front of the bus drawing a very amateur map.When I'm abroad usually I would just use shop and restaurant names as landmarks and would not need a map necessarily but with everything being in Chinese characters all the streets look the same and I had to resort to slightly more creative measures.As I was drawing lines and arrows and names of things "big park", "Lenovo building" the driver kept looking at me.I'm not sure if he thought I was assessing his driving in my notebook, or if I was just a lunatic but I don't care because now- as long as I can find a Bus 5- I can get home.

My phone SIM from Beijing seemed to have stopped working so I tried to explain to Teacher Wang I needed to top up phone.I seemed to be having trouble explaining as she didn't understand me, so I made a call and put the phone to her ear so she could hear the message in Chinese saying you need to add money.She understood but I didn't know my number so couldn't do it anyway.She seemed to think it was odd I didn't know my number… I tried explaining I haven't needed to call myself!

We went for dinner and she asked what we wanted.I said I didn't mind trying anything if it had no meat.She ordered us something that looked like crème caramel.I asked what it was and she said it was egg in water and vinegar (so it had crème caramel texture, but no flavour).I don't even normally like the texture of crème caramel but this was just disgusting.There was also some bread with egg cooked through it which I decided to eat instead and it was really nice, until my teeth scrunched on some eggshell.Then I just wasn't hungry anymore.