So I know it has been ages since I have updated, but life has been pretty hectic the last couple of weeks! It's official though, I am on china and Alive and well..
The first 10 days in china were spent in Beijing, which was definitely one of the best experiences of my life.. The journey to china took around 16 hours and stepping off the plane after that long journey was sure to be the best feeling, or maybe not when you're greeted by muggy hot weather! The first night we arrived we went straight to a banquet, which was where I first tried chinese food, and it's fair to say it's a lot different to what you get in the uk...

The following days were spent being real tourists.. We went to all the major attractions, including the Great Wall, forbidden kingdom, temple of heaven, the pearl market, Tiananmen Square and 798 art district. The first day however, was one of my favourites. We decided to rent bicycles and go cycling around the city.. Now, for me (who's not good at cycling on a normal day) this was a terrifying experience. We learnt over the day that cars do not listen to any road signs, they just drive when they want to, bicycle lanes are in fact the width of a car lane, and no matter what do not hesitate. When crossing a road, do not hesitate, just go for it! Although it was scary it was one of the most amazing days and id advise anyone who goes to Beijing to see the city by bicycle! Tiananmen Square was also something else.. As we are a group of foreigners we became a tourist attraction in ourselves, and found ourselves in the middle of loads of people trying to get photos with us!

The second week was spent having language lessons in the morning and then more tourist things in the afternoon.. The one thing I didn't expect was the immense heat! Being from Scotland I am not used to extreme heat, so walking around in 30 degrees was something else!

A couple of the evenings we went to a bar called "4 corners" where we met some lovely people and also managed to get the whole place up and dancing when monsoon rain started and we couldn't leave! So that was an experience!

After our 10 days it was time to all say goodbye and catch trains to xinjiang, gansu and jiangxi! This was all going a little too well... Which we found out when we missed our train to xinjiang, meaning we had to wait for a plane ! This meant that 12 of us were left stranded in Beijing.. However it did give us one extra day.. Here we decided to order more bikes and go scope out the shopping centres.. And in china even this can be an experience as we found out when people dressed as chefs started dancing in the middle of the shopping centre..

All in all Beijing was amazing! It's so different to every other city I have been to,and I can't wait to go back!

That's all for now,
See ya!

(And yes we did manage to get the flight to xinjiang successfully!)