I write this sitting in the Year 10 teachers' office at school, having spent the last 10 minutes listening to all the other teachers laughing about mine and Nicole's Chinese names and discussing whether we could understand them. Things have quietened down now and we are being serenaded by one guy who keeps wandering in and out singing really, REALLY loudly to himself. For some reason there are about 12 students in here too, not working or anything, just... sittin...

As of today, it is exactly 2 months since I and the other PT volunteers arrived in China. I realise 2 months doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's a marker to show us how much time has already passed and, I think for this reason, I've got very excited about it. Nicole and I marked the occasion with China-versary icecreams from MaccyD's and I also received a parcel from home, which made my day. I'm not exaggerating when I say I skipped home from school after the...

Nicole and I arrived back in Jiujiang the Thursday before last. Unfortunately we had to wait 5 hours between reaching our house and actually getting in, because I'm an idiot and had lost my keys somewhere in Xi'an and Winston, who had Nicole's keys, wasn't back from his own holiday travels yet. We had been standing on the street outside our locked gate, pulling my two rucksacks to pieces in search of the keys, for about 10 minutes before a little Chinese girl who...

Just getting to Xi'an turned out to be adventure enough as, despite arranging to meet at the school nearly two hours before our bus was due to leave, a sudden and inexplicable lack of taxis meant we very nearly didn't make it. I was in the first taxi which, due to the impossible gridlock around the stations, dropped us off in the middle of the road to scramble past cars and over the fence dividing the road (even harder when carrying a packed 60L rucksack, not tha...

In my last entry, I tried to give a rough overview of the whole week. This time, I'll try to fill in some of the blanks - starting with why I was late for our trip to the Provincial Museum on Tuesday. When we arrived in Lanzhou, we'd already made plans as a group to head to Xi'an immediately after the course ended, because Xi'an is home to the ancient Terracotta Army - and not that far from Lanzhou, in China-terms. By the time we reached Lanzhou, everyone apart f...