Continuing my blog from last time whilst Catherine sleeps, its been a long and hot day (around 30' here) and we both need the rest for our 6am start tomorrow for tai chi

We said our goodbye's outside our hostal and i trotted along with my really light (sense the sarcasm) bag and jumped onto the coach. The day started well with me falling off my chair whilst sleeping on the coach, followed by a few laughs on my behalf and me jumping out of my skin when Dan woke me up. The trains station was big and we all began to head to our seperate departure lounges. Ours was crammed, the only space we could find was on the floor in which we got a fair few stares, could of been because of our ridiculous luggage. Alicia (our Beijing mum we should say) found us and took us to VIP for a 50p (very expensive in beijing.....) where we had much more room to sit and got to board the train 10minutes earlier than everyone else, yet it was still a fight. We ate another traditional chinese meals of McDonalds nuggets before pushing and squeezing our way onto our train. The train was snug but actually lovely. Each carriage held around 60 people and we stayed in triple bunk beds in which i got the joy of top bunk thanks to catherine (wasnt actually that bad!) I slept for quite a lot of the train journey as well as annoying all my Jiangxi crew and a very angry conductor who looked disgusted to find that me and Dan had no shoes on ... (a warning, its rude to not wear shoes in pubic in china, we learnt the hard way).

When we arrived in Jiangxi we were greated by our very friendly hosts who insisted on carrying our bags and talking as much English as they could to us, but didnt think to warn us about a health check we had to have. You name it, weeing in a pot, blood tests, sticky weird things on my boobs.... god knows what they were testing for but to say the least it was very thorough (results through next week :/ ) We were then taken to breakfast, soup and noodles, a weird breakfast, im used to toast or a bacon sandwich... but it still tasted pretty good and well needed! From then on i fell asleep in the car and the 2 hours seemed to pass quickly

I was then awoken by loud bangs and i thought we were being shot! Turned out the school welcomed us with fire crackers and everyone turned up to great us from the school and take us to a baquet. Here we were offered beer (hmm my favourite..) but strangely they toasted us VERY VERY VERY often in which we had to do shots of it... shots of beer .. .. . . . I HATED IT! but managed to get away with not having another bottle unlike Catherine who tried her best to drink it. There was so much food and we were really spoilt. Our apartment is beyond anything we wished for. Double bed each and an ensutie each with our own washing machine, shower room and A WESTERN TOILET :D (those in England won't understand how much this means to us China volunteers). In addition we have our own desk and study room each and a lovely kitchen with everything we could ask for. A living room too with a lush corner sofa and flat screen TV .. better than my house at home! We were unsure on the wifi situation but as soon as we asked we got it there and then and anything else we wanted like adaptors. We really are being spoilt!!

We then had to give a short speech to some students about why we were here and let them question us about England (which they were very adiment to do and were very shy). But even worse.. we were filmed for the local tv station and pictures taken of us for the newspaper.. now that is being a celeb!! One downful is having to sing twinkle twinkle in front of everyone, the chinese really do love to hear us sing! We then had dinner with the vice principles family who spoke very good english and were very friendly and then put ourselves straight to bed.

The next day we went shopping to get some essentials for our house and registered at our local police station and bank. It was not worth the effort and the people spent ages trying to know what to do with us, it was the first time Chongren, Jiangxi has ever had westerners stay here.. we have been getting some very funny looks because of this and even people snapping photos of us in the street as well as shouting 'hello' at us. Its actually quite nice feeling famous and everyone is just super friendly. Earlier today we went to the market to get fruit and before we knew it we had attracted a crowd of around 30 women, staring at us and laughing at our attempted chinese, unreal!! Today we have went to our head of English's classes to speak to her older students and allow them to question us. They were much more friendlier, wanting to hug us, kiss us and wanting us to sing ('You are my sunshine' and 'hey jude' has never sounded soo badly!). We even got asked our number several times but only just recieved our sim cards but gave our email to one boy. We were then invited to play table tennis and badminton tomorrow in the playground with some children which we are really excited for! The children were soso friendly and were so nervous speaking to us it was cute but we tried to make them feel like we are not aliens or scary tall women as some child called us haha! Now me and Catherine are in need of some rest so we are enjoying just chilling at home this afternoon and looking forward to skyping our China friends later as well as attempting to cook some dinner.

Tomorrow we are doing tai chi in the moring (6am GAAHHHH) and table tennis later. I will attempt to blog tomorrow with luck. Apologise if the blog is boring but i have written way too much today so no time to be creative, lets hope for an interesting one next time <3