Okay, so I figured I should probably spend a little bit of time writing a second part to my awful China blog. I'm hoping and praying that this will be like 'The Godfather Part II' or 'The Empire Strikes Back' and be far superior in every way to it's predecessor, however I can only hope. I must also warn people that I'm very excitable whilst writing this, as I've just eaten a KFC and am on a food high.

So, everyone keeps asking me to tell them about my hilarious Asian shenanigans. The truth is, I can honestly can never think of anything to tell people on the spot. This is because I find everything absolutely hilarious here, China is doing strange, strange things to me. I feel like my life is a bit like a sitcom! It's not even an exaggeration, I can brownie promise that I find 80% of my day to day life so funny that I'm nearly crying. Most of the time, being the socially awkward person I am, this tends to happen in really inappropriate places, like the classroom (one of my favourites being when I was doing a reading exercise with a group of kids, and I had to teach one of the girls that the correct pronunciation of the animal in the book was a 'fox', not the impressive 'f***' that she was shouting rather loudly across the classroom.) or the playground, when the kids have too much fun playing, and faceplant on the floor. On these occasions, I have to bury my face in my scarf and pretend that I'm really concerned, while I get a stomach ache from laughing so much. I know, I'm a terrible terrible person. At this point, I should point out that I've seen the children here, I'm talking 3 and 4 year olds hit their faces on the floor, get up and carry on playing. No crying or silliness from them, they just get on with it. It's almost frightening.

Getting around Beijing is fairly easy, and always funny. There's the subway, which is super cheap, the equivelent of 20p per trip. It's really easy, and hands down the best way to get around Beijing. The buses are okay, even cheaper than the subway, at just 10p a trip. The downside is that there's usually no seats, and you end up being packed in like sardines. The bigger downside is the people on the buses always spit on the floor, regardless of where your feet are.. Finally are the taxis, I've had good and bad experiences in taxis, but for the most part they're really convenient, especially living so far away. After trying to hail a cab for 15 minutes today, we finally managed to get one back to our school. The entire ride back, the taxi driver was farting. Not even a subtle fart, like a really loud one. We spent the 10 minute journey struggling with laughing and trying not to breathe in, while the taxi driver seemed to find it totally acceptable and normal.

Anyway, I've been at my school for nearly a month now, although it feels like I've been here forever. I remember eating with the other teachers one lunchtime, and getting completely freaked out when I realised that I was a fully fledged English teacher, at one of the top boarding schools in Beijing. It's a bit much to take in really, when in reality I still feel (and look) about 14. When we first arrived at the school, I think it's pretty safe to say we all hated it. While we're still in Beijing, our school is in the middle of nowhere. Apparently, up until a few years ago there was quite a lot in the surrounding area, until the Chinese government decided to bulldoze everything within a 5 mile radius. We have to get a bus 20 minutes to reach the closest shop, we're really isolated. Another thing that initially, and I guess still freaks us out is the prison-esque design of the school. There's locked gates everywhere, that we can only get through using key cards, and there's also guards at all the exits. So, not the best first impression! That was over three weeks ago though, and I have to admit that this place has grown on me a lot.

One of the creepier things about the school is that they play 'motivational' music quite often, around the campus. Really loud. I'm talking unnecessarily loud. Everything from Bryan Adams, to Usher. My favourite was when they played the Lily Allen classic 'f*** you' and all of the children - and more weirdly, teachers - were so unaware of how brilliantly inappropriate it was. There is also part of the school that looks like it was a setting for one of the scenes in 'Zombieland'. It's ridiculously creepy, and I'm pretty sure that if a zombie apocalypse does happen, we're pretty screwed. The food here is pretty standard, questionable meat and rice dishes. Although some days they do sweet and sour chicken, which is always a winner. I am a massive, massive fan of dumplings too. I'm pretty sure that I could eat them every day if it was socially acceptable.

I'm pretty happy that I'm teaching Kindergarten and not High School, as I appear to be a bit of a novelty with the students. I'm waved at constantly, and called 'beautiful teacher', which of course is a lovely compliment, but I can't help but feel it's a bit inappropriate as a member of staff. Who am I kidding, I'm a massive attention w**** so it's awesome. A girl came up to me last week, and said "Hello beautiful teacher, did you know that all of the students call you Lady Gaga?". Yes, it's happening. Yes it's hilarious, but it's also very very surreal. My friends don't really help the situation, humming the tune to 'bad romance' to encourage the kids. There's also a boy called 'Money' who is around eighteen, who asked me to pose for a picture with him because he thought I was very pretty. I found out yesterday that he used the photo in a sideshow to his year, for his class presidential election speech.

As for my class, and the actual teaching.. It's going surprisingly well. I have the most adorable kids, and I'm really surprised at how rewarding I'm finding it, and how awesome it is to play games every day. Of course, it's ridiculously tiring, I'm with the kids from 8.30-5.30 Monday to Friday, and have to do weekly and monthly lesson plans, as well as monthly reports on all of the students. So it's not all easy! There's a 3 year old in my class who is a demon child, and cries all of the time. The first day I met him, he kicked a chair at me. He also regularly spits at you when he's angry. However, the other day I was playing tag with him outside, and I think we made a breakthrough as he now gives me high fives when prompted. I also already have favourites in my class, I know it's probably wrong of me on a moral level but if you were here, you'd be the same. My favourite boys are brothers called David and Leo. They're very cheeky, and so naughty but ridiculously cute. I'm planning on buying a duffel bag and smuggling them home with me, where they can live until they reach an un-cute age of like 8, and then fly back to China. My favourite girl is called CoCo. She has the face, and attitude of a 40 year old Chinese woman, and never fails to make me laugh. She also has a huge obsession with my hair, and pulls it regularly.

I have Chinese assistants, who are all so helpful. They are equally obsessed with my hair, and were shocked when one day they realised it wasn't my natural colour, I felt like I'd deceived them somehow, and felt so bad. They were just worried about how I'd keep it blonde here, because they liked it so much. They're all really keen for me to teach them English too, and actively take part in my lessons with the kids. They're very basic because they're just Kindergarten, stuff like colours and the alphabet, but it's all crucial for them to learn, no matter what age.

I've been out most weekends since I've been here, the nightlife is pretty awesome. Everyone is just out for a good time, and the Chinese people are so friendly. Last weekend we went out for a teachers birthday, and obviously keeping to the trend, it was a hilarious night. We ended up at a Chinese club in Sanlitun, where I fell down the stairs (I know that most people reading this were waiting for this to come up, and I should say that no, the stairs weren't as steep as Bar Chic), drank copious amounts of straight vodka and questionable shots provided by happy Chinese men. This was also the night where a Chinese woman got so obsessed with being my friend, that when I went back to my own group of friends, tried to hit me. Apparently she wanted to be my best friend, and was so upset when she realised I had other friends, that she swung for me. This stuff is what I mean, so strange and so funny.

After the weekend in question, I became really run down and ill. I had to be accompanied by my head of department to a Chinese hospital. Here, you have to go to the hospital with any ailment, like there's no doctors or inbetween, just the hospital. It was a traumatic experience, with chest x-rays and blood tests, and having to cope with the mass amount of people in the hospital. I came away with a few boxes of antibiotics, some Chinese herbal medicine and a diagnosis of 'a cold', which they later changed to laryngitis. So for the past week, I've been sleeping lots and catching up on TV shows, when the internet decides to work. I went in to get some paperwork on Friday, and popped in to see my class. All 15 of them ran up to hug me and tell me how much they missed me. It was adorable, and I'm genuinely looking forward to going back to work tomorrow to see them, and do something productive.

So, I guess there's a brief outline of the past 3 weeks of my life. It's so hard to keep track of everything, because time moves so fast. In the best way though, it's all going at a good speed and I'm enjoying every minute of it. I'm going to finish with my top classroom moment of the last 3 weeks. It is the game of 'crazy monkey'. Basically, it's a flashcard game where the kids have to pick a card, and tell me the vocabulary. Only problem is, they might pick the 'crazy monkey' card. If they do, I have to chase them round the classroom. Cue lots of crazy children shouting in Chinglish (because they only know a few English words, it's mainly muddled Chinese..) jumping around, and lots and lots of facepalming. There were grazed knees, sore heads and at one point it looked like there was a game of 'bundle' going on, with all the kids lying on top of eachother. It was such carnage that I've vowed to only play it on special occasions because they went so crazy. It was like the scene, at the end of mean girls, you know "the girls have gone wild", where they're acting like monkeys. In other words, mental. I'm pretty sure everything in China is mental, and I love it.