After neglecting this blog for a while (an understatement) I have decided to update it to chronicle the rest of my year as I have some time on my hands. Currenly I am in Singapore, having a luxury weekend eating lots of western food and indulging in some retail therapy! Little brother Zack is messing about in front of me! Not for long however as on Tuesday I shall be back at work before going to Hong Kong next weekend. Only 5 more days of teaching left before we ...

The most exciting thing that has happened recently was that we had two weeks off for a little bit of traveling. In China every May there is a Labour Day holiday, which usually happens on the 1st of May. We were told by the school around Christmas that we would have at least a week off so we decided that we would spend it in Chengdu, Sichuan. Our friends in another part of China had already been there in February because they had more time off during the New Year ...

We arrived in Qingdao that evening at about 11 and found 3 taxis to take us to the hostel. We got in ours assuming that the meter was on as we knew it would be about 30 each. Half way through the journey we realised that the meter had actually been turned off. We questioned the driver and he told us that our friends had already agreed on a price of 150 which was outrageous as it should cost between 90 and 120. We argued with him for a bit and then tried to ring t...

On the way to Shanghai we had decided to all meet up at our friends Ella and Nicole's massive house in Jiujiang, a couple of hours north of Chongren. When we arrived we were met by our friends from Gansu, bang in the middle of China, who had been traveling for about 4 weeks longer than we had. We had a lovely welcome from them when we arrived as we had not seen them in person since October! We sat down that night over drinks and chatted about all the stuff we had...

Spring Festival traveling, what we had been waiting for since our October travels to Xi'an. Spring Festival or Chinese New Year is the biggest festival in China, almost akin to Christmas in England. Weeks before decorations of red and gold start appearing in shops and people put up red calligraphy banners. Spring Festival usually lasts about 2 to 3 weeks sometime at the end of January to the beginning of February depending on the Chinese lunar calendar. At this t...