The weekend after the boys was back to teaching. Lessons were back to normal and within the week there was not really that much to report on. The damp in our living room has grown even worse and it still seems that not much is being done about it.. luckily our desk officier David is coming in a month so at worse we can talk to him about sorting it out. Got invited to a party one day, we were so tired this day so only went for an hour which involved a small banquet at a restaurant. I got forced glass after glass of beer down but did eat some amazing pork.. REAL MEAT. Within the week i also discovered the street food, i haven't eaten it a lot but have now eaten like a pork sandwich, fried dumplings and a meat nan bread thing .. delicious! The real news is the hike we did on the weekend. Our waibans planned to take us to the tallest mountain in Chongren to hike up and see the stone temple at the top. We left at half 8, jumped into a chinese guys and drove for an hour up to the mountain. When we arrived the other car were made to walk up half the mountain whilst our car was able to take the bumpy road up, and this road was worse than the bus journeys. We had to stop a few times to allow the car some time to calm itself. At one point i looked back at the boot to see it full open, a trail of bags left along the road. Yelling "stop" to the chinese drivers, it took them a while to realise what i was talking about. They suddenly stopped and we all rushed out to retrive the bags which had been flung along the road. Was quite funny but scary at the time when i thought of everything inside my bag.. money, phone, camera.. The views on the mountain were pretty outstanding though as you can see from my pictures and i had great fun climbing about, worrying one of my waibans to death. We packed some doughnuts for the journey and the other people also provided us with some snacks like little chocolate bars, couldnt complain. We then started our treck up the mountain as the car could not go any further. I struggled, moaned a lot and really was tired when i got to the top. It was no suprise that i was at the end of the pack, luckily my waiban Judy is a little tubby and unfit so she was even worse than me, i could use the excuse that i was just keeping with her. The steriotype of an 18 year old is that they should be fit and find it easy to climb the mountain, but i got showed up by my 50year old waiban who destroyed me in climbing up there first. When we arrived at the top we visited a stone temple, thousend of years old. It was mostly in ruins but housed a few people inside a part. Here we sat and enjoyed some of our food on a table in one of their kitchens, was weird, which also showed a shrine with gold God's surrounding it. We had a few pictures, and were lucky enough that a guy with a proffessional camera took a few picutres of us throughout the day which are good. Pointing to another mountain my waiban explained that we were now going to go up that one to another small stone temple. I honestly wasnt really in the mood despite the mountain only being an additional 10 minutes walk. I walked at the back of the pack, my gandolf stick helping me up. Every now and again my waiban would check that i hadn't ran of, asking where i was. Everytime with me replying that i was dead, she seemed to find it amusing anyway. At the top of this mountain was the ruins of a stone temple. I didn't find interest in this but a rock far off that was nearly hanging off the side of the mountain, the perfect place for me to climb to. I set off alone and had to jump/stretch over a scary looking gap between some rocks to get to my rock. It was pretty amazing sitting away from everyone, being able to take in the view, even if it was a few hundred metres drop below me. The Chinese people with us seemed to be fascinated at how i got there, shouting hello at me and getting pictures. It wasn't until Catherine came to join me that she noticed how dangerous it really was. Shouting at me to come back i laughed and hoped back over the gap to return to her. One waiban gave me a very stern look and moaned on about how dangerous it was whilst the other was sitting, telling me i had scared her so much that her heart was in her stomach. I felt a little bad as they both looked terrified but i had fun! We then did a much easier walk back and headed back home to go to a restaurant for dinner with everyone, all paid for by one guy, the boss of an oil company (might have to become best friends with him). At the restaurant i was once again pushed on to have beer but managed to get away with having 2 cans of coke and only 2 glasses of beer. Although, i had only drunk around 1 bottle of water the whole trip so had begun to feel very dehydrated and sporting a huge headache. I sat there, head in my hands trying to not seem rude and dramatic. I ate up some food and trie to drink as much water as i could. In the end i had enough and had to ask to be taken home .. only to be told 'you are lieing and you are making excuses to leave' by my waiban.. WHAT!! LIEING!! Welll for one i haven't been ill yet so it's not like i do it all the time, and why would i lie about this? I wasn't too polite and gave her a very ungrateful look and continued to moan until we were soon taken home. Little did we realise the guy who drove us home had had a few bottles of beer and our waiban laughed as she told us he was drunk... drunk!! Getting out the car he was laughing away and tried to hug Catherine but was actualy a good driver for a drunk. The poor guy wont remember this but he promised i could drive his car at some point which i am going to hold him to! Getting home it was straight in the shower and bed.. i was exhausted! Not at all wanting to get up at 7 the next day to start teaching. This week i have been teaching about different countries and continents in English which they find a little difficult so enjoy it more than my previous easy lessons. It's nice that we no longer have to follow the book and can teach what we want, therefore i am teaching about halloween next and week and i want to try and find a pumpkin to carve. I made an effort this week with curlying my hair and wearing makeup which paid off. In entering each class on Monday and Tuesday i was greeted with ' WOW, SO BEAUTIFUL'.. which is so nice and really does make your day. My best day was yesterday when i had a long day of 4 lessons and turned up to my last class to find a suprise. As i entered they all began to bang their desks to the 'we will rock you' tune and singing it to me. It was brilliant!! (Look at my videos to see it). They told me they learnt it themselves for me. It cheered me up so much and the whole lesson was full of banter. Pretending to throw grenades at me when i mentioned war, shouting 'fire in the hole' and me throwing chalk at them, it was so much fun!! As i left the class they all shouted 'we miss you and we love you' and contineud the we will rock you tune. When i pretended to throw a grenade at them i had a few kids chase after me and throw paper at me... Poor Catherine had me bragging to them for about an hour when i got home and i phoned Rob just to brag to him! Back to teaching again today and Juniours next week. I also forgot to add that we are joining up to Kung Fu classes starting Thursday. It is £20 a month for 2 lessons a week, hour and half each.. really good! I must also add that my teacher is a looker, very muscley, tattoos and can do crazy flips.. and only 21.. shame is he speaks no English.. hmmm Plans for the forthcoming weeks are to visit the boys soon and have a trip to Fuzhou, a bigger city with a mcdonalds, to sort out our visas. Catherines dad is also visiting us soon, bringing 2kg's of chocolate with him YAY!!! Also, we are heading to Jiujiang to visit a mountain with hot springs and stunning views as well as having a party for two of the girl volunteers in Jiangxi, Ella and Nicole's, birthday. We are also getting a visit from our desk officer David so he can see how we are getting along, a new foreigner YAY!. Updates will be coming soon on how things are going and any plans set in stone <3