'It's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years!' - Abraham Lincoln

IM SO SORRY! Every time i have spare time to blog i am dragged out for a meal, or taken to a classroom to speak to students for just a few hours or (like last night) taken to a small art gallery where students were sitting having lessons. It's hard to write a small blog for the days i have not told you yet so apologies again, but i'll start now.

Thursday - So i started to teach the juniours. I came back bragging to Catherine about how amazing and fun they were. I sang ABC with them and went through numbers, it was pretty easy and they had so much enthusiasm! It was a long day of 4 lessons in a row and i really did want to go home and rest after it though! Luckily for me i arrived home to find my waiban hurrying to get changed and leave to go to a banquet with 'important people in Jiangxi'. We arrived at a pretty plush restaurant and were taking upstairs to the back rooms, where you have a private room where you have big banquets. We began to feel our celebrity status fall as only a few seem bothered to be with English people, and realised that these people were more important than we thought. The lunch was one the of the best we had been to, the lazy susan even moved on its on :O !!!! All kinds of food were served to us including snake and chicken soup and turtle :s I did try the soup and it didnt taste too bad, the turtle didnt appeal to me one bit! We were served red wine which was actually not too bad and we were forever being toasted to throughout the meal, not realising the lady filling my glass up as soon as it was empty. We then got up and made our way round the table, toasting about 20 people. All i can say is by the end i wobbled out a bit and was a bit giggly.. too much wine!

Later that day we had our first chinese lesson. Catherine is already pretty good so i sat there most of the time not answering any questions and only repeating words when i really had to (moody beth returned a little bit). Luckily we agreed by the end of the lesson that we should have seperate lessons so mine are now on Friday. I had my first one last week and it went really well! She was pleased with me and i can now successfully say hello, how are you and what is your name (with answers) WOOO!! We were then given a cooking lesson by our waibans in which we made around 150 dumplings (see my photos).. it was crazy! Took us ages to make and we had to cram them all into our freezer but they keep for 2 months and taste delicious!!

Friday - I had 3 more juniour lessons which i was looking forward to. My first two went well but i finally was stopped being watched in my final lesson of the week. Im sure the kids saw this as a perfect oppurtunity to play up to me! They were talking all the time (although it was a class of over 80) and imitating me. Yeah.. i wasnt having it, so i had one kid move seats which soon shut him up and the rest followed. It's needless to say that i am not looking forward to teaching them on Friday and one of the little b*****s even stole one of my photos -.- Once the lesson was over we were finally able to relax and enjoy our weekend to come!

Saturday + Sunday - It's difficult to say which we did on each day and it all merges but we did go and play some sports with the children (well....) we attempted to but then a huge storm started so we had to quickly dash into the lunch hall. Here the girls taught us to make hearts out of paper which was pretty awesome and they spoke good english, so were easy to talk to! We then decided that we better go home at some point so ran home (its about 50m away, not far!) in the rain. The rain was up to my ankles and in the short space of time i was soaked through when i got home. I have NEVER experienced rain like it and the thunder and lightnign was actually a little terrifying! We grabbed some towels to dry us off and realised the electricity was out, but as soon as the storm passed it was back.

Our best day was probably on the Sunday whe we finally got out bikes! I got the beautiful red bike you see in my picture. I love it SOOOOOO much and the school brought both me and Catherine one. It is so cute and i have my own red basket to put my things in <3 We also went to put more credit onto our phones and Catherine printed some pictures out (to be picked up today!) Later that day we were asked by our waiban to go and visit her senior 3 class (17 year olds) just to talk to them. They asked us lots of questions and gave us LOADS of presents. I got an amazing wooden fan, some sugary fruit, a paper rose, paper swans and lots more! We were then taken to two more and ended up talking for around 3 hours. it was great fun but even at 8pm it was extremely humid and i was .. welll .. a little sweaty!! We did have a proffessional camera man taking photos of us so got some good photos. Even the walk home from the classrooms met a challenge as children shouted after us wanting pictures and to give us more presents (we got a cute volunteer badge from a random boy). The children are unbelieveably friendly and welcoming to us, we are not even their teachers!!

Monday (TEACHERS DAY) - So in China there is this amazing day called 'Teachers day'. It pretty much explains itself, its a national day for teachers (although we still have to teach). In the morning i went to my first lesson and the kids made me turn round then shouted 'HAPPY TEACHERS DAY' at me and gave me a little card and a paper rose.. it was lovely! I was then called into a teachers day meeting with all the 'important people' again. I sat very quietly for the 30minutes as they spoke in Chinese. At the end a man pulled out around 4 red enveloped (we all know whats inside them). He handed them out to one lady who suffered from cancer, a man struggling with his family (i think), then one to me and Catherine.. just for being English! It was pretty awesome to get picked out of the many people there and when i later opened it it had 220RMB in it :D (around £22 which is a fair amount here) .. yes, i love teachers day! For the rest of the day i didnt recieve presents from my class but did get lots of happy teachers day messages from my students and other random children. I didn't quite beat Dan's total of 27 presents but did recieve 4 i think (haha) better then Pete and Henry who didnt get any. We were then invited to a senior 3 party where they went crazy at us! The kids were getting us to sign all of their books (we have no idea why) and taking loads of pictures of us. Making sure our glass of coke was always filled up and giving us fruit to eat. They went on to read poems to their teachers and then play games of sharades which we took part in and ruled at! We were also forced into karoke which they went made for! Not long after another class then came in and began fighting for us, tugging at our arms to come into their class as our class shouted at them to leave. They tried to persuade us saying 'they had lots of food' in which our class replied 'we have cake and gifts'. We stopped the fighting and agreed to stay with our class as they invited us first, so left a class of very disapointed students! Our waiban came in soon after saying we had to rush off for a teachers day banquet so we quickly left with a class of unhappy students (awh!) and gifts in our hands.

OMG I HAVE NEVER FELT MORE LIKE A CELEBRITY. The children were shouting at us as we left for us to write in their books quickly or to take photos. Our waiban was pulling at our arms to help us through the crowsds. When i got to the end Catherine had been stopped so my waiban went to grab her. I was then faced by a wall of students shouting 'HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE' , begging me to look and pose for a picture for them. I was quickly pulled away and rushed down the stairs to get away (i felt soo mean!). We then began to leave the school, hearing the shouting of the children in the background saying our names and got into the car for the banquet. The banquet was at this lovely restaurant and quite plush and me and Catherine were allowed to order all the food :D yayy!! We ordered something which had egg in it, some potatoes and familiar food that we knew we liked, avoiding the spicy food. The banquet was with some of the schools english teachers so we had great conversation and even had a laugh playing a drinking game at the end. Yeah pretty cool, playing drinking games with teacher.. THEY HAVE FUN TOO!! After the pretty tiring day we headed home, an early night was needed.. i had 14 more lessons to go!

<3