Happy Chinese New Year! We stayed in Shanghai for 5 nights from the 16th to the 21st and it was amazing. Although we were slightly disappointed by the Chinese New Year - Someone rightly said that there was probably more celebration in most of the western Capitals than in shanghai. However the Chinese were still out in numbers, especially the police force and at midnight fireworks went off around the city, there just wasn't one huge show over the bund. Nevert...

We arrived in Huangshan city a few days ago unfortunately with me being really quite ill. We made it from the train station to the hostel just before I passed out and I woke up four days later... not so ready to take on the challenge of climbing Huangshan. We did also briefly meet the new China volunteers who are here for 6 months (Aiden and Ben) who seemed pretty cool. Armed with banana chocolate sandwiches, water, and extremely heavy backpacks, we set out to c...

I won't lie, the reason we went to Nanjing was because we heard it had a pretty awesome nightlife. Much to our disappointment the main area was so full of clubs that they all seemed empty. However when we explored the city I think I fell in love.... It's actually really great and there was a lot more there than I thought. Despite the sometimes shocking anti Japanese propaganda the Nanjing Massacre memorial was very interesting, and I thought really worth a visit....

We arrived in Harbin safely, the 32 hour train journey actually turned out to be rather easy. I only had to stand for 10 minutes which was remarkable considering it is the season where traditionally a lot of the Chinese population travel to see family. We were actually told by some Chinese people that we spoke to that this year the train was really quiet although it was actually packed, luckily though, we still managed to find at least one spare seat through the ...

Time has literally flown by since I last blogged, back in November. Even Christmas and New Year seem to be in the distant past now even though it's only been one month. Thinking about it an awful lot has happened despite the fact I haven't been teaching that much, so I'll try not to get carried away. Since I last wrote I feel like there hasn't really been much to say about teaching, I guess by now it seems natural. The first two weeks of December were spent teac...