The Chinese holidays work in a very strange way. This week was national week, and an official holiday ran from Wed Oct 1st - Fri Oct 3rd. To make it so people get a full seven days off work, most places moved Monday and Tuesday's working days to the Saturday and Sunday at the beginning of the week. For this reason, I had class bright and early at 8am on Saturday.

It was my lovely Chinese class so it wasn't too bad, and by 9:40am I had finished for the week! I then went to meet Lisa at the old campus because she offered to help us buy train tickets to Zhangjiajie for later in the week. When we tried to buy tickets there were no seats available so I paid a deposit and decided to pick up the tickets the following day in-case some seats became available.

I caught a lift back to campus, and spent the afternoon relaxing and booking the hostel for Zhangjiajie. Eventually as a group we decided to go for the cheapest hostel…

That evening me and Richard decided to explore the new night food area I had discovered by the gate! The food was good, the beer was cheap and we had a girl join us who wanted to be our friend, her name was Carrie. She took us to a few different restaurants and we tried BBQ, noodles and "sticky things" which is basically a big pot filled with hot water and chilli, and vegetables or meat on sticks, you take what you want, and pay for your sticks afterwards. She also helped us to try and take my new network cable back to the computer shop because it doesn't work, but when we got there and tested it, it worked fine! Grrrr it still doesn't work at home.

About 9pm I got a phone call from Peter asking me to let him into my apartment to drop off a microwave. I had explained to him repeatedly that I would be going out at 7pm, but I think he has selective understanding, and also didn't understand that I was planning to stay out much later, so I had to run back to my room so he could open the door because he said he would just wait for me. I made it back to Richard and Carrie in about half an hour, but Carrie had to leave very soon after I returned.

Richard and I had a bit more food and beer then decided to try to take a taxi into town and point to "club" in the phrasebook. It wasn't a very successful adventure, the taxi driver dropped us outside a building with loud music and we thought we might be in luck, but we went inside and were escorted to an empty room complete with microphone and comfy sofas… two person karaoke wasn't really what we had in mind!
We tried to ask some people outside the karaoke bar, and they pointed further down the road, but when we got there it was all quiet, so we gave up and got a taxi back home.

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The following morning, Sunday, I woke up surprisingly early and had a good clean of the apartment, ready for when my friend Mat arrived that evening, whilst I waited to hear about the tickets.

Eventually I had a call from Lisa and was told there was only standing tickets available, and I had to pick them up about 2pm. I had still heard nothing form Rich so went into town on my own. Whilst I was there I got a call from him and we decided to meet up at Better Life Mall to do some shopping. There was a delay on the tickets, but Rich got lost and distracted by KFC, so we actually arrived at Better Life at around 3:30pm at the same time...

Just as we were finishing in Better Life I had a message from Mat telling me he was in Changsha and had met Lisa! This confused me slightly, but it turns out Lisa was in Changsha that afternoon, and Mat was able to get a lift back with her!

Mat arrived about 6pm, much earlier than we thought he would. I showed him around the apartment then acquired a Richard and went on another expedition for night food! It was a good night, we had lots of delicious food (I have been here too long…) and some tasty beer, before heading back to my apartment to continue the merriment and watch "Just GO!" which is a very exciting Chinese TV programme. You don't need to understand the Chinese it's just full of stupid people trying to get around an assault course.

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On Monday morning I took Mat into Yiyang town, still no word from Rich! We just walked around the part of the town centre we knew, and took a trip into Better Life to see if there was anything we could use for our attempt at a curry that evening. We didn't find any curry ingredients, but we got stopped to have our photo taken and found something that looked suspiciously like baked beans! Mmmmm we went back to campus and had a good lunch of baked beans, sweet bread and plastic cheese slices, heaven :)

After lunch I figured it was only fair to play tennis with Mat, since it was pretty much the reason he decided to visit Yiyang, Richard joined us and we took turns playing or being the ball girl/boy. It was fun and afterwards we went for a milky tea at the nice tea place next to our apartments. On the way back we stocked up on veg for our curry from the market stalls, and then had a bit of a rest/shower before we started to cook.

Rich came down a bit later bearing pots n' pans, spices and rices. We had an attempt at Rogan Josh and it actually turned out ok! Ahhhh how we had missed curry…
After that, Rich and Mat broke out the Baiju (literally…) and then we took a taxi to a bar called "He and She" that Lisa had told us about.

It was great, soooo cheesy! We managed to order some drinks, although it was expensive and we weren't really sure what to do with the sprite and redbulls that kept appearing with our drinks… We had a lot of people trying to "ganbei" with us, which was fine because they usually provided the alcohol, although we did get a few lurkers who just stood next to the table smiling at us….

At about 11:30 we decided to have a bit of a dance and by 12:00 the dance floor was empty… I guess the Chinese don't really know how to party hard! We were the last ones out at about 12:20am, we were a bit slow to recognise the place was closing. I guess that is why we couldn't find any clubs the few days before, it must have been after closing time. We took at taxi back home and had some micro waved munchies and a little more to drink before getting some sleep.

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Tuesday we were up a little later. We decided to explore the city a little bit and the three of us stayed on the number 28 bus to find out where it went. We got to the bottom of the hill and found a lake with lot of boats, and a hill with a temple on it, it was very pretty :)

We walked around the lake a little bit then up some smaller streets and found a nice restaurant for lunch. We managed to order some pretty tasty food (it's always tasty!) and then walked back towards the lake. We got some candy floss and decided to have a go on the peddle-os, it was a very pleasant afternoon boating on the lake.

We took a bus back to another Better Life shop so Rich could buy a camera, and then we tried to catch a bus home but I managed to get us quite lost when we got on the bus going in the wrong direction. You live and learn I guess, but we got a taxi when we realise we had no idea where we were!

When we got back to the apartments we packed ready for our trip to Zhangjiajie the following morning, cooked some pasta bows with tomato sauce, and then got an early night.