Friday 20th March

The end of the week was pretty quiet. On Saturday evening we planned to go out for a meal with Panda, Lisa and Kevin but in the end it was just me and Rich.

Well... it started nicely! We went to Jono's again, had some western food and some nice red wine then decided to go dancing. We had a change of scenery and went to Bar 77. It was OK but I decided to leave early. When I got back to campus I had a phone call from one of my students on Rich's phone, he was unconscious on the floor and an ambulance was on it's way...

So I was picked up by the ambulance and we went with three very nice students to the hospital near campus. They stabbed Rich with needles and put him on a drip. Luckily they let us go home about 1am so we weren't in there all night. The students who helped us were brilliant and Rich is taking them for dinner this week! I've also warned him if it happens again I'm leaving him on the side of the road, I think he's learnt his lesson.

Monday 23rd March

My week started off really busy! I had a full day on Monday because I had moved one of my classes, and it's hard work. It went OK though, I took it easy and 3 out of the 4 classes were great. One of my writing classes is getting lazy and annoying but I'll sort them out. In the evening I had a call from a teacher called Tessa, she asked me to be a judge at an English competition on Tuesday night. I couldn't think of an excuse so I agreed, I'm still not sure how Rich and Kev managed to get out of it!

Tuesday I had my early class then I sat outside and did some marking because it was lovely and sunny! Just before lunchtime when all the students would descend from the classrooms I grabbed some food then had a nap in the afternoon.

That evening I was picked up by Mrs. Hu and she drove me and some other teachers to the Old Campus for the speaking competition. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It was nice to talk to some other teachers, Tessa is lovely, and I also caught up with Deng and Albert who were two students we tutored last semester. The actual competition was pretty slow and it took alllllllll night, and I wasn't happy about doing a speech at the end, but I got paid 80RMB and I'm glad I went.

When I got back to the New Campus it was pretty late but I met Rich for some BBQ at the gate, I felt like relaxing a little bit.

For the rest of the week I was ill :( I managed to go to my classes but spent most of the rest of my time in bed. It wasn't very exciting.

We had organised a meal for Saturday night and luckily I was feeling better by then. Me, Rich, Kev, Deng and Albert met up along with another student we used to tutor called Crystal and a guy who keeps coming to our classes called John.

We worked out that evening that John is an electronics graduate and he was hoping to move to Australia. His uncle works at our university and had given him our timetable so he could come to our classes and learn some English so he can pass the exam to go.

First we went to a dumpling restaurant and it was very nice and good to catch up with the students since we hadn't seen them in a long time. Deng and Albert sneakily paid the bill, it's a very frustrating habit that people have here!

Afterwards we went to KTV and me and Rich made sure we were paying. Albert had to leave, but we were joined by lots of Deng's friends. The actual KTV was pretty rubbish, there wasn't very many English songs, but we had a good night and managed to get John pretty drunk, I blame Rich's bad influence!

Kevin left earlier than us and left his wallet in a taxi... lucky for him he shared with Crystal and she was still in the taxi and found it!

We left about midnight, said goodbye to Deng and me, Rich and John went to meet John's cousin for some food. I left my phone in the taxi and I wasn't as lucky as Kev. The food was yummy though, tofu, aubergine and they even made us some milk tea! :D

I awoke Sunday afternoon after our late night, I had no alarm clock because I'd lost my phone. Rich managed to contact Lisa for me and arranged to meet her at 5pm so I had a lazy afternoon. Rich spent two meals with Peter, he will never get rid of him, I will have no sympathy when he starts complaining!

He came with me to meet Lisa though and it was good to catch up with her because we hadn't seen her in ages. I spent all of my hard earned money on a new phone and we found out we will start Chinese lessons on Tuesday woo!

Afterwards I had some milk tea and Lisa had some noodles then had a quiet night in.

Monday 30th March

Today has been very uneventful. My classes went OK, I delivered Kevin's wallet back to him and did some organising. I'm looking forward to my short day tomorrow and my Chinese lessons!