Ok so I have a lot of blog to catch up. This will just be to quickly connect Zhangjiajie to now, so I can get on with it as normal.

We were without the internet for a few days after we returned from Zhangjiajie, which was annoying. Apparently the whole campus was down, but after about 3 days we found out that it had only lasted a day and they'd just forgotten to switch us back on…

At the beginning of that week I did some exploring when I did not have classes and found the river and a walking street of shops. Later in the week I caught the flu and ended up having to cancel Thursday and Friday's classes whilst I lay in bed bored and ill. I was feeling better towards the weekend but I had a quiet one and didn't do much other than rest and finish my marking.

The following week was busy. I had lots of classes to catch up that I had missed and I had 3-4 lessons almost every day (4 lessons is a full day). My students were very kind that week though. My freshman class I had in period 4 on Monday took me for some noodles for tea. On Tuesday my tutor group took me for lunch at a restaurant because it was our last morning and I was also invited out for the weekend by two classes, but I had to decline one invitation because they were both on Sunday.

On Saturday me and Richard went into town. I posted some postcards, and Rich had some KFC, then we caught a bus to where I thought the lake might be. It was a good guess (the big Olympic style statue gave it away) and we walked as far around it as we could. There was no footpath and eventually we got cut off. Next to the lake there was some people playing traditional Chinese instruments in a band which I found quite interesting and stopped to watch for a while. We tried to find the "Olympic Park" sports stadium but we didn't really know where to go so gave up and went home.

In the evening we went to the opening ceremony for English Corner. It was interesting…. The entertainment was provided by a dance school and they were not really very coordinated. There was also games and singing, and I got bullied into dancing on stage! After the show we sat and talked with students for an hour or so and when we were left we were given a gift (I got a bear necklace and some pot pouri -sp?).

On Sunday I woke up early and met my students at 8:30am! They had organised a bus to take us to a Botanical Garden and had stocked up on veg and meat from the stalls near my apartments. We arrived and walked to the "picnic" area where we washed and chopped the food then went to sit at our tables. All the tables had a hole for a BBQ in the middle and we fried and roasted lots of food, Chinese style, until none of us could move!

Afterwards we went on a very slow walk around the park. I saw some of my other students who had invited me out, and I got ambushed by about 20 random people who wanted to take photos with me! I watched some of my students fly down the dodgiest zip line I've ever seen, and then watched them stagger off a fair ride nearly crying. We left the park about 3pm, everyone was asleep on the bus on the way home.

This week has been busy still because I've still been trying to catch up classes. Two of them got cancelled just before, so I'm still going to be busy next week too! I've been drinking lots of milky tea from the tea shop by my apartment, I'm learning lots of new words the people who run the teashop are ace :) I have also been teaching random classes the Macarena because they all want to learn Latin dancing, it's very funny.

On Wednesday I got asked to go to KTV (karaoke) with my Chinese class for a group birthday (Vicky, Rachel and Helen). It was a lot of fun, they made me sing a song which was only fair. I really like that class, even if they did cover me in birthday cake!

This week I also received my first parcel yay, thank you mum and dad! Peter had opened it because he "made a big mistake and didn't see your name on the package even though it is at the top and bigger than the address." I also had to wait for him to deliver it because he wouldn't leave it for me to pick it up myself, let's just say I wasn't too pleased. However, I finally got my stash of deodorant, coffee and curry powder, plus a gift of a translator!

On Friday I went with Rich to see if anyone had turned up to his organised football match. A few of his students had, but none of mine, so I left him to play and went back to my apartment to wait for Peter, my sink was leaking. Peter turned up just as I was about to go out and I think invited himself to the meal.

Me and Richard had been invited to a meal with Tessa who organised the tutoring we did, as a thank you because the competition was over. It was a good meal, I was sat next to an American teacher called Joe who was telling me lots of things about Yiyang including the temple where I can get nice vegetarian meals and a famous man who saved a lot of people in WWII. Afterwards I was driven home by Mr. Hu, he'd been drinking baijiu with Richard all night… luckily I made it back safely. Rich, in his baijiu-induced wisdom, thought it would be a good idea to go out with Peter.

Today I've not done much. I had a lie in, and I've done some washing. It's almost time to go and get inoculated against Hepititus B.