We got onto the train and found seats all in our carriage, result. We all jumped into some seats, relieved that we would be getting seats for the 9 hour train journey and it must just be a first come first serve basis. Oh, then we noticed the seat numbers on the wall and when confused looking chinese people came up to us with their tickets we quickly moved and stood in the aisle. As the train set of we managed to steal a empty seat and when Catherine sat on the floor two ladies budged up to make room for her. Of the 6 of us, we managed to get 1 1/2 seats but the boys were SUCH gentleman the whole trip, always making sure us girls had a seat and were doing ok. A huge thankyou to the boys for that (Rob, Dan and Nold). Rumour had it from other volunteers that you could go into the dining cart and pay for seats. Catherine and I attempted to go and persuade the lady, or just buy food and sit there the whole time.. this didnt work. She angrily just spoke to us in Chinese and when we did not move, refused to look or speak at us .. tantrum! To begin with, i sat moaning that 'i can't do it, i can't sit here for 9 hours'. Honestly, after around 3 hours had passed i had begun to get used to it and we were now pro's at stealing people seats when they went to the toilet. The journey wasn't brilliant and i was so happy when we finally arrived in Xi'an after much confusion throughout our whole carriage if Xi'an was the next stop and whether the confused English people should get of here..

Arriving in Xi'an we already loved it, busy, but we could already see some westerns and temples in the background. We queued for the taxi's and when it was our turn to jump in the next one we were stuck. Every taxi had someone in already or refused to drive us with our massage suitcases (i presume that was the reason why). I managed to squeeze into the taxis with three of the boys, and after some difficulties with directions, found our hostel. IT WAS PRETTY AMAZING!! The hostel stood with two dragon statues outside and inside was decorated in a traditional chinese style. The hostel had two courtyards in the centre of it, where at one i lived on the top. You went up two staircases, through a beautiful small courtyard with deckchairs and up to a balcony sort of area. Here were 4 rooms including ours with 2 bunk beds and 2 single beds in each. Being first to arrive i reserved the bottom bunk and settled in, messing up the room with all my stuff. We had a shower and toilet to share between the four room but i prefered the rather nice western loo on the bottom floor. Turning up 20minutes later was the rest of us including Catherine who looked a little sour. It turns up they were charged around 60Yuan for their drive compared to our 10yuan journey.. we couldnt help but laugh at them.. but no time... IT WAS MCDONALDS TIME.

Passing in the taxi we had seen a McDonalds sign so headed straight for finding it. We exited our hostel on a large green which held the entrance to the city wall (a wall surrounding the main area of the city in Xi'an, measuring 14km in all, it has some historical reference...) with a beautiful lit up temple of the top of it. Walking through the town we saw subway, dunkin doughnuts, pizza hut and baskins and robs ice cream. We loved it! We kept walking up and saw the McDonalds sign, searched and searched but no sign of McDonalds.. We managed to grab a chinese guy who took us in the direction of McDonalds, nowhere near the sign itself. As soon as me and Catherine saw it we ran, it was a race between us and the other 4 volunteers to see who could get in first. We arrived and a double cheeseburger, chips and coke was on order. Its not exaggeration that we all sat in silence, taking in every mouthful of our so missed McDonalds, the boys even treated them to 2nds and 3rd and i grabbed a McFlurry, a very nice one at that! Slowly more and more volunteers arrived and ordered their McDonalds. We then decided to all meet up in the hostal bar, grabbed a table and ordered in our English drinks, mallabo and coke for me and Catherine, Catherine getting around 10 straws in her drinks, she obviously has missed them a lot.. All tired after our journeys we headed to bed, ready for our rooms to grab some zzz's.

Rising up at 9am the next day, finally showering and dolling ourself up for the day ahead. We got up early to collect our train tickets from the man who got them for us .. THE BEST MAN ON EARTH AT THAT MOMENT .. then we all headed out to explore the shops and visit the muslim mosque, not before our subway brunch. We arrived at the muslim markets, a busy place filled with indoor alleyways of shops selling all kinds of goods. We explored round, loosing everyone at least once. I got lost with one girl for an hour, neither of us having a phone on us so we just walked about, looking for somewhere we recognised and a way out! It was pot luck us bumping into the others and we grabbed onto them, one boy giving me his phone incase i got lost again and we all headed for the mosque. It was beautiful, filled with old and traditional chinese buildings (see my pictures) and a peaceful place. When we left we found Catherine and Dan (previously lost) and visited the drum tower. This was a tower/temple that holds different kinds of drums, previously used to signal the beginning of night and day. The place was lovely and the views from the top outstanding, although we still gathered a crowd of people snapping photos of us and wanting to shout hello at us.. despite there being a range of westerners they could hassle. Of course after that very stressful day we treated ourself to ANOTHER McDonalds and headed back to the hostel to grab supplies. Next stop, City wall. We budged our way through the crowds to get in, entering into a huge square inside the wall. Here we watched as Chinese people dressed as warriors danced around, pretending to beat drums and act tough. Unfortunately we giggled more than anything at their silly dances and some of their faces who did not look impressed with their job. Just as the show finished we got an oppurtunity to have pictures with the warriors/dancers. of course a silly face with one was needed (see pictures). We then walked up the steps, in search of the bikes you can rent to cycle around the wall. A huge queue awaited us and 40yuan to cycle, expensive for us. Nonetheless we joined the queue and parted with our money for our bikes... boy was it worth it. We weaved around the people and set of to cycle the 14km, despite having a 100minute time limit on our bikes. We raced, took photos and messed about on our bikes. It was great fun and finishing after 90minutes and first was a good achievement (only finished first as everyone's bikes kept breaking but mine). It was great fun and we got some really good photos of us all to make everyone back at the hostel jealous. By this time it was dark so we headed back, ready for food in our bellys. It turned out that the hostel served some amazing western food, i ordered in a spag bowl and tucked right into it! God pasta and proper meat.. yes.. i have missed you. Everyone ordered pizza, chilli, pasta and smoothies.. it was a good day for us all to say the least. We did attempt to search for a bar to settle in for the night and drink but ended up on the green outside the city wall with our bottles of beer and bijou.. turns out my stomach still wasnt happy with me or the sight of alcohol so i settled with nothing and after a good night back at the hostel chatting it was another sleepy night. We did manage to get chatting to two german guys who were in the room next to us, laughing away on our balcony and having the odd shh from other sleepers ..oops

Our plan for the following day was to get up early and head down to the bus station to grab a bus to see the terracotta warriors for the day. Us girls fancied a lay in so agreed to go later and let the boys have the morning to themselves. I awoke at 10am from a phone call from one of the boys, Nold. 'Don't come down, the bus queue is about a 3 hour wait and we had to hire a private van to take us which we reckon will be really expensive'. Uhoh, we didnt fancy either of them so planned to shop for the day and head to the terracotta warriors the next day, even earlier than the boys to ensure we got on the first bus. We had a great day with the girls, shopping around, buying myself a tintin tshirt, chinese dressing gown and angry bird chopsticks .. i bargained them all right down too, my dad was dead proud of me, getting my dressing gown from 180 to 45yuan :D We headed back in the afternoon, grabbed some cheesy and bacon chips from the hostels restaurants and waited for the boys. 30 minutes befor the boys arrived my body decided to have a meltdown, probably from the excitement from Western food, so i went back to bed to rest, the boys visiting me after to make sure i was ok (THEY ARE GENTLEMAN) !!! We decided to stay in for the night, taking over the pool table area downstairs and just relaxing. Being killed at pool by Rob wasnt too fun but i managed to just sit and rub my belly whilst the others played. Us girls decided to head to bed at 12 (an early night for us) as none of us felt 100%. Little did we know in the morning that all the others headed to a club, offered free drinks and had an amazing time .. UNFAIR.. although my stomach really did just need a sleep, anyway we had an early start tomorrow for the terracotta warriors.

We decided to take the same minibus as the boys did, paying 70yuan each for the journey there and back, not too bad seeing as it meant no queuing and being stuffed onto a bus. We picked up some very late friends and headed out in the blazing heat to see the warriors, stopping at a pottery place to have silly pictures with the terracotta headless statues; where i could not stop laughing at how funny we all looked. When we arrived at the terracotta army we stopped for a delicious lunch, even had sweet and sour chicken which was UNREAL! The terracotta army was VERY busy, although getting half price student discount cheered us all up a lot. We took the long walk to reach the buildings, stopping of and queueing for around 20minutes just for the a squat toilet. The terracotta warriors itself were amazing, we entered a large pit of hundreds of warriors, many still in perfect condition. We elbowed and shoved our ways through the crowd to get to the front to get some good pictures. Being tall really does help in these situations though. We visited the other pits and grabbed expensive ice cream to help us survive the boiling heat. We had little time to look around because of some of the girls having to get an earlier train back. The bus man was ready and waiting for us and we all pilled back into the bus, reading to go back to the hostel and see the boys open armed and waiting for us.. no they had gone shopping, and worse than our girls, had been out for the whole day doing it. When they returned, struggling in with all their bags, attacking our dinner table with them we had the next few minutes asking what on earth they brought. Turns out nearly all of them brought fake 'beats' headphones, but they were amazingly good quality and looked and sounded brilliant! Other buys included t-shirts, chess sets and osoma bin laden playing cards :/ The 9 of hearts was a picture of the twin towers.. LIKE WHAT! We ordered some smoothies in and then headed on our way to the train station to take our 20hour journey back to Nanchang. Getting a taxi you would think to be easy.. no .. every taxi we saw drove past us, was filled up or, once again, refused to take us. In the end we HAD to get a tuctuc, squeezing on with all our luggage and heading off to the train station. When we arrived we were taken to a VIP section, well, they called it that but it was a tiny room with just enough plastic chairs for everyone and it was BOILING! Cat and Dan went of to find the others to say goodbye but returned only with a McFlurry, oh, and it had melted... NOT GOOD! It was late when we got on the train though so we jumped straight into bed, all sleeping pretty well after our busy week in Xi'an. Waking up, we read, did the usual to occupy us on the train journey then the conductor came over to tell us Nanchang was the next stop.. what a nice suprise, thinking we had 5 hours left we were a bit shocked and had to ask a fair few chinese people if this was right but, indeedy, it was!

We had already booked our hotel, so we jumped in the first taxi, compared to Xi'an this was very easy to find and get, and headed off. When we arrived at the hotel she was shocked that 4 of us were sharing a room with 2 single beds, saying we needed bigger. 'No we are poor so we share'. The room was ok and we all slept quite well despite sharing, falling asleep watching a film on one of the laptops. It was nice finally being able to sprawl my clothes everywhere, in a hostel its essential you lock up all your belongings to ensure no stealing occurs from randomers sharing your room. We ventured out to yet another mcdonalds, having my beautiful double cheeseburger and ended the night going to the supermarket next to our hotel. It was pretty huge and the chinese equivalant of costco. We found microwave popcorn, vodka, french stick, cheese and pasta AHHH. with the little money i had i managed to scrape some popcorn (and a sneaky vodka for when we go to the boys) and when we arrived at the hotel, demanded the lady put it in the microwave for me.. IT WAS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SOOOOOOOOOO GOOD..

The next morning i woke to realise i hadn't seen my phone in a while .. hmm .. i consulted Rob, on whom i gave it to the night before to put in his pocket. Of course Rob did his usual, refusing i gave it to him. When he soon realised he did take it we had no clue where it had gone.. lost... luckily its a cheap nokia, i was just upset that it had a fair amount of credit on it and all my contacts! We headed back to the train station though, booking our train back to Chongren, which was much easier than we thought, putting us in a cheery start to the day as we headed for our McDonalds breakfast (we had to as we had not said goodbye to it, it would be rude not to of course). Got my traditional hash brown and sausage and egg mcmuffin... oops and a coke, for breakfast :D On the train back we had seats this time but all sat with each other and lazed about for the next 4 hours. My train journey was made even better by a creepy middle aged man staring at me the whole time.. even when we all looked at him he continued to be fixed on me. Never been so relieved for someone not to get of the same stop as us! Towards the end of the journey i did get called beautiful though and was requested to have a picture with a ladies son, well a few for that, and then keep up with a very poor english and boring conversation with the family. Rob helped me out but Cat and Dan sniggered and put their headphones in, trying their best to not get pulled into the conversation. When we arrived in Chongren we were greated by our waiban or sorted out a car to lug all of our suitcase back to our home. Luckily she did not insist on taken us anywhere so we managed to get away with having dinner at the school then watching 'elf' with the boys at ours. Ok, so it isnt christmas but its one of the only films i have and i god damn love it. I cycled the boys down to their hotel as we had a very moody Catherine on our hands then headed to bed. The next day i went to collect the boys with Catherine and we wandered around the town until .. WE FOUND POKEMON CARDA

WE HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR THESE THE WHOLE TIME WE HAVE BEEN HERE AND HAVE FINALLY FOUND THEM!!! i didnt get any good ones except for starme, but much to my disgust, Dan had to get the good cards .. -.- The boys headed home that afternoon and me and Cat went to get me a new phone and a pleasant trip to doctors. This involved Cat going for an x-ray, only to discover her finger is fine, just looks funny (wait, Catherine didnt i tell you that...) From then on we chilled at home, getting very bored but planning our lessons ready for Mondays teaching. It was the best present ever when we recieved a phone call saying we had monday and tuesday off as our student have exams.. yeah i did a dance around the house!!!

I will update you soon about my week on teaching so far and any other exciting events that happen as time goes by. Now my fingers are on fire from all my blogging and i've had enough :) haha! Although Dan cheered my day up yesterday revealing that i got 'blog of the day' on offexploring :D eeeeee!!! I was sooooo happy!!! So thanks for all for reading my blog and please keep reading :)

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