I wasn't feeling very well due to a cold and sore throat, but I went to meet Echo at the bus station at about 11:30.She was late so I had to stand in the station being stared at by Chinese people for ages.She helped me buy my ticket for Qingdao for Monday and then I walked into town to do some shopping.I went to a place called 'Fondu' for my lunch.It was actually a kind of hotpot.They brought me a pan of boiling water with spices in it, and a plate of raw vegetables, noodles, tofu and egg.The idea was to drop bits of raw food into the boiling liquid and then when it was cooked scoop it out with chopsticks and eat it.The food was really nice and I found it amusing poaching the egg myself at the table!

As I was walking along the main road toward Lilly Coffee, someone suddenly yelled my name.I turned around and it was Binging cycling past on her bike.She stopped and asked what I was doing and looked through my bags.There is no sense of privacy or personal space with this girl!She said she was going to the bookshop so I went with her.She showed me there was a section of books with Chinese writing on the front but inside they were completely written in English.I bought myself a copy of "Wuthering Heights" as it is a book I have always intended to read and it may be useful for my long journey to Qingdao.When we had finished in the bookshop, Binging said she wanted to go and play by herself so I thanked her for helping me find the English books and she cycled off.

I carried on walking towards Lilly Coffee to meet Shush and not including my sit down for lunch I had been walking for over 4 hours from one side of town to the other.When Shush got there we had coffee and then he showed me the apartment where he lives with Dean.He said he had planned to show me around Liaocheng but I was tired from walking and feeling crap from my cold so we sat around the flat for the afternoon drinking beer instead.His Chinese friend Jack called and we arranged to all go for dinner.Jack came over with Lilly.I had met Jack before, he can speak a bit of English and hangs around with Dean and Shush to improve his English ready for an interview he has in a few months.I hadn't met Lilly before; she is a Chinese girl who works at the same school as Shush and she can speak English really well.We all went to an outdoor hotpot restaurant.The food was very similar to the hotpot I'd had for my lunch but I didn't mind because it was nice to sit outside in the chilly evening air eating boiling hot food.