.. Two of the boys who live in Gansu came soaking wet to meet us in KFC, without caring i jumped on them, recieving a few stares from the Chinese people dining in KFC. It was nice to see Pete and Henry, both me and Catherine talk to them a lot on skype and finally knowing we were slowly reuniting with everyone i was just a tad excited. We all then headed off to quickly (well we hoped quickly) to book mine, Catherines, Dan and Robs tickets home from Xi'an to Nanchang, as you can only book tickets 7 days before we were turned away, but determined to book them in a few days to save us trouble. We then gathered our suitcases and jumped into some taxis to take us to the university, where we were told someone would meet us and show us our rooms for the night (we were staying in a seperate hostel for one night).

We arrived at the university, lost. Noone was there to meet us and standing in the rain, none of us knew what to do. Luckily we pestered some students to help us, who, when we told them the name of the building we had to be at, sent us to our hostel. The hostel was the best yet. The sleeping area consisted of 3 bedrooms, each with two singles bed in, and a lovely, hot working shower and a, well not so nice, squat toilet (which i have now mastered and really got used to using, nice). Of course, i grabbed Catherine and we headed to one room, pleased by our comfy room and to find a nice squishy bed, not a wooden matress that we are used to! The few of us that were there headed of to grab some food, tired and hungry me and Dan escaped the others and went to get KFC, digging into a good tasting chicken burger and chips. The others soon came to join, having just went for noodles and had some chips for desert. Going back to the hostel we soon met up with everyone and excitement ran through the hostel as we all met up with those we missed most. I was on the verge of weeing seeing Hannah and Alice again, two girls me and Catherine are very close to but they live the furthest away in Xinjiang and we shared a room with them back in Scotland on our training course. All hungry again we headed to a nice restaurant, ordering dumplings and other chinese food to share between us on the lazy susan. It wasn't until a phone call that we realised we had left poor Pete behind. How could we not realise our Irish friend was missing.. Feeling very guilty, me and Henry went to meet Pete at where the bus drops you of to find a slightly tipsy boy wearing the hostels sandals as his partner, Henry, had locked their room door and had the keys. Luckily Pete saw the funny side of us leaving him behind, mixed with him being a bit tipsy and we took him, and two other boys we left behind to the restaurant to finish of the food. As a reuinion for seeing everyone and the fact that most of us hadn't seen English alcohol in a while, we headed to a local bar where we set up camp and got the drinks in. (This is where my family becomes really proud to know me and my friends pat me on the back..) Me, Catherine, Alice and Hannah brought a bottle of vodka for us and some sprite and sat down on a table having a catch up, finishing of most of the bottle before rejoining a rowdy and drunken group of volunteers. After buying another bottle to share and playing silly drinking games with everyone, one of the boys was forced to take me home. The night continued with me puking up in the toilet, Catherine holding back my hair and rubbing my back whilst recieving drunken verbal abuse of me (Catherine i would like to send another further public apology and a thank you for looking after me). By the time i was fit to sleep one of the boys stayed in the room whilst Catherine ran to safety to ensure i didnt jump of the balcony or something..

I woke up feeling pretty good actually, better than i deserved to be. I got up, earliest of all people, jumped in the shower to wash my hair and returned to get ready for the day. Yep.. seeing the sight of breakfast set me off. I could barely sit down and had to return to my bed whilst everyone had breakfast. Hearing that we were leaving in 5 minutes made me rush to pack my suitcase and grab a window seat on the bus with a bottle of water for safety. We soon arrived at the university, where our language course for the week would take place, and placed into a meeting room. Here we sat through talks from the university where i tried my best not to fall asleep, be sick or just collapse on the table. Luckily we were given regular breaks where i managed to escape to the large balcony to get fresh air and moan to everyone about my hangover. Noone cared much and just contiuned to call me 'barfy beth'. Oh i forgot to mention.. i decided it would be a good idea whilst i was being sick to headbut the metal bin.. yeah it wasnt. I woke up with a rather sore head and as the week progressed i developed a bump and a bruise, adopting a new nickname, rhino beth.. hmm. The school did give us a present of a beautiful chinese tea set each, the only problem being that it was yet another large piece of baggage to lug onto the train journeys, it was a question whether it would make it home in one piece. We then welcome in around 30 chinese children and they were soon introduced as our host families for the week. The children then went to hold up posters with all our names on and we were let loose to find our child. I searched around the room, unable to find my name until one person pointed out that there was a poster with 'Maisie' on, despite noone being called Maisie of all us volunteer... this must be me. I ran over to find a poster saying 'Maisie, i need you' (AWHHHHH!!!). Her English name was Vicky and she was the nicest girl ever, shrieking when she met me, hugging me and insisting she loved me already. Her English was amazing and having a conversation with her was easy! It was fun to meet everyone else's hosts, especially Dan's kid called 'Alion' (we just said Alien) who was possibly the 2nd coolest Chinese kid i have met (2nd to Vicky of course). We then headed of to our Chinese hosts families for some lunch, meeting back at the school later for a trip to the water mill museum.

Hopping into her dads car he was very friendly, spoke little English but had obviously learnt the basics for my arrival such as 'Hello' and 'Nice to meet you'. They lived in an apartment block, a ten minute drive from the school which was lovely and houses a huge 50" TV. Her mum was enthusiastic as anything, spoke no English, but shrieking as she saw me, hugging me and just running around with a huge smile on her face. For dinner i was served with various chinese food but suprised to find bbq chicken wings on the table. I think it was all i ate that first meal, they were so delicious and i had really missed meat (i get so little back home in Chongren). The funniest moment was still when her mum held up a banana and shouted 'BALALA' at me.. i couldn't help laughing and it turned into our weekly joke between her family and other volunteers shouting balala at each other. I was suprised to find out that i would be sharing a double bed with Vicky for the week, but didn't moan as it seemed we had kicked her parents out of their room and they were sleeping on the sofa and in Vicky's single bed in her room. We did get our own quilt each so it really wasnt too bad, especially after a long day i just fell straight to sleep. The rest of the week involved 6am wake ups and chinese lessons. I would love to say i learnt loads but the teachers taught us so quickly that i struggled to keep up so ended up just making notes from the chinese book we were given on a topic of my choice. Every afternoon we did go for visits around Lanzhou including an opera house, the yellow river and various museums. One day we were taken to a mountain in which a zoo was situated on. Possibly the saddest zoo i have ever seen, it housed all kinds of animals such as leopards, giraffes and even pandas!!! But all were in cages WAY to small for them and they actually looked sad. We left the zoo early and headed to grab some ice cream to cheer us up before having to leave. We were also taken to a talent show by our students which was great fun. Loads of kids stood on stage, some dancing and some singing, performing some English songs too which we sang along to. It was great when two of our volunteers got to go up and sing too, creating a huge roar from the crowd. Another night the children also took some of us out for a hot pot. Here in China this involves a hot pot in the middle and you choose what meats you would like to cook in it. This was great fun although the children had to always get the meat out the pot for me as my poor and slow chinese skills meant that by the time i got the meat my hand was burning from the steam and i had to drop the meat to save my hand from burning.

One day we decided it would be a good idea to start sorting out our train tickets home as we could now book them from Xi'an to Nanchang. We all asked our hosts family to help us out but all said that we had to book them in Xi'an (which we knew wasn't true). When one of our families finally understood all tickets had been sold out. Panick set in! We needed to get home to teach and knew how difficult it was to get hotels during the holidays! We decided to start arranging other ways to get home, looking at very expensive flight tickets and the possibility of a VERY LONG bus journey. It wasn't until a few hours before we were going to book a flight that Robs kid managed to arrange 4 tickets home, at the perfect time and with beds. We could not believe our luck, all we had to do was pick them up from our hostel in Xi'an. It's needless to say he got a huge hug from me.

My week in my hosts family house was lovely and they bought me presents such as a scarf, princess earrings (they are very blingy), a small blanket and their grandad even painted me a huge scroll with chinese character on. Vicky and her family even took me out to the opening of their uncles very swanky club at the end of the week. Here i was served champagne on the tap (delcious champagne at that) but my body was still not quite ready for alcohol so i kept to the huge arrangement of fruit that we were served. Nothing was as good as our caligraphy lesson though in which we were all given a chinese name (mine being chen li, meaning spring beauty :D) and we all got to practise writing our names in Chinese with officially ink and brushes. Mine now takes pride of place in my bedroom and one in the living room of our house. The final day we were taken shopping by our hosts where i went to buy a present for the family and Vicky. They all seemed to love it and i was treated to a pizza hut by Vicky and her Mum after letting slip that i loved it. They had never been before and both didnt seem to enjoy it as much as me and struggled with knife and fork but were still refusing any money of me to pay and even got me a HUGE bags worth of food to take on the train journey including chocolate bar and cotton buds for when i cry :s haha! We decided to put our own twist on things when saying goodbye to our kids. We organised a Scottish dance in their playground at their lunch hour where we taught them the moves we learnt in Scotland. Despite finding it sometimes difficult they loved it! We got some great photos with the kids and even made a pyramid with them, hoisting the kids at the top as we struggled (well the boys did) to hold all the weight. Saying goodbye to the family was very sad though but made worse when the 6 of us getting on the same train to Xi'an were taken by our hosts who waited for us and suddenly started to all cry. All of the girls began to break down in tears, sad to say goodbye to us. There was nothing we could do to stop them and when we left to go through they were really breaking down... It was really sad to say goodbye and they treated me so well! I did get their phone number but after Rob loosing my phone i now don't have it so i intend to ask one of my friends to ask for Vicky's number from their host. Despite the sad goodbyes we had much bigger problems ahead of us .. a 9 hour train journey standing up.. and rumour had it that there was not enough room to sit down at all! Oh god help us...