Hello strangers!!

I know I've been fairly horrendous at blogging the last wee while (I was just re-reading my last blog, can't believe it was as long ago as 14 April- oops!!) and we've been to 2 different countries since my last one so there's a fair bit to catch up on!!

So, after my last post we had our very last night in India- we had some amazing chicken reshmi kebabs in an interesting little Muslim restaurant, then had a quick freshen up in the YWCA before catching a cab to the airport. We were both pretty quiet on the drive out there, and it was actually really sad to think we were leaving, but Mumbai at night is a pretty spectacular sight which was pretty fitting as our last proper view of India. I'd really like to go back to Mumbai, especially if I could stay in one of the swanky 5 star places like the Taj Presidential!!Anyway, we got to the airport at about 11pm, and after a bit of waiting we were the first people to check in for our Sri Lankan airways flight to Colombo. then MORE waiting as our flight wasn't til 3.25am, though we found a really cool 'slumber room' in departures which was full of reclining seats so we were able to get a little bit of sleep, though our flight got delayed by an hour and I was rudely awakened by some guy snoring loudly beside me and only ended up getting about half an hour of shut eye!When we did eventually get on the plane at about 4am, pretty much as soon as the plane was in the air we got given food!!Was really odd eating a full meal (including a lamb patty thing and some suspiciously mushroom-y looking frittata thing which I avoided) so early/late in the day, and I had to pretty much force what little I could eat down as I didn't want to be wasteful!Anyway, the flight wasn't too painful and we arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka's capital, about 2 and a half hours later.

Both of us could barely keep our eyes open on the drive to our hotel in a very retro looking cab and when we got to our surprisingly luxurious (well, luxurious to us!) hotel, the Colombo City we pretty much flopped onto our own little beds and KO-ed for a few hours in glorious air-conditioned comfort!! Our hotel was based directly opposite the World Trade Centre and so in a quite high security area because of the recent unrest, but in reality the only thing that indicated this was a few soldiers loitering about the street and signs up all round the hotel telling us not to take pictures of the WTC. luckily it had a post office in it too, and that afternoon we were FINALLY able to send our packages of indian bits and bobs home, making our massive backpacks quite a few kilos lighter!!Annoyingly though, we arrived on Thursday 15th, two days after Sri Lankan new years' eve and during a WEEK LONG public holiday (thanks for telling us STA Travel!!) so the city was pretty quiet, and though we ventured out to a shopping mall we'd found in the book to see if we could get some new clothes to replace our frazzled and over-handwashed old ones, pretty much all the shops were shut. We were able to go into a supermarket called Keell's, which was amazing in itself as we didn't even sniff a supermarket the whole time we were in India, and we stocked up on some luxuries- face wash and moisturizer for me, cotton buds and conditioner for Jade!!Oh how low we've sunk already...!We attempted to find somewhere to get some food that evening but everywhere was pretty quiet so we ended up having dinner in our hotel on our terrace, sharing a yummy dish of very spicy rice with little bits of meat and vegetables which was really tasty. We also managed to get fruit salad and ice cream on room service and ate in in front of a movie,amazing!!

On the 16th we got up early-ish and made our way to the train station to get to Rambukkana (about 2 hours away) as we decided on heading to the nearby Millenium Elephant Sanctuary for the day. So, we got our rickshaw to the station and got directed to a ticket booth with loads of people queuing up. With half an hour to our 10.30 bus we queued up and waited for the queue to move so we could get our tickets. 15 minutes later and nothing was happening!!We discovered that there wasn't actually anyone in the ticket booth even though there were about 50 people queued up to get tickets, and a knowledgeable looking man told us that the train was delayed anyway, possibly until at least 1pm but no one really knew and we should probably give up on the train!!excellent!! We trooped off the the bus station and after nearly getting on a bus going three hours in completely the wrong direction, we made it on to a bus and actually got two seats, things were looking up! 3 hours later, bus, rickshaw and lunch down, we headed into the elephant sanctuary, and as we did we both looked up and saw some pretty grey looking clouds and had a good laugh that it might rain (yeah right, right?!). We were just waiting to have a quick ride on one of the gorgeous asian elephants the centre looks after, standing under a little wood and tin shack when it did indeed start to rain. hard. really hard. and then the thunder and lightning started!!You think you've heard thunder before,but I've never been so close to any before, and the rain was absolutely crazy!!There were a few other people under the wee shelter with us, (including a poor woman who hadn't heard about the volcanic ash chaos until we told her, and she was due to fly home that night...!) but they were sensible enough to brave the rain before it got too bad, so it ended up being just the two of us huddled under this wee shack, freaking out over the lightning and thunder!!About 20mins later after a particularly loud clap that sounded like it was just about us and has us both grabbing on to each other, and having realised the shack was essentially made of leaves and metal, we legged it inside!!! We had to wait about an hour until the rain died down, then one of the really kind members of staff sorted us out a rickshaw (we were kind of in the middle of nowhere) and we were able to catch a train back to Colombo. Not the best day, but at least we got to see the elephants even for just a little bit!!Dinner in the hotel again and both of us had loooong hot showers to get over our traumatic experience!

For our final day in Colombo, we headed to the upmarket Odel Unlimited Department Store (which thankfully was actually open as it was a Saturday) and spent a couple of hours browsing the rails and finally (thank god!!) being able to stock up on some new, and not too 13-year-old girl-y, t-shirts!! Then we headed to the nearby National Museum for a quick visit but we were both pretty hot and bothered and not really in the mood for culture so we headed to a big park nearby, grabbed a cool drink and very spicy lunch packet (basically rice and curry in a boil in the bag bag) and got some shade under a big tree so we could watch the world go by. It was really nice to see lots of kids and families enjoying their bank holiday, even though it proved kind of an inconvenience for us!We spent the afternoon chilling out for the most part, but we did have a serious emergency at one point, well rather Jade did... an EYEBROW emergency!!!

I should probably explain that whilst we've been away, we haven't always had mirrors to hand, and when we have they aren't usually the best. And due to our lack of girly products and makeup, let's face it looking in the mirror a lot isn't something we've really wanted to do, nor have either of us spent much time focusing on the other's appearance. So, that fateful afternoon when Jade did take a glance in the hotel bathroom, she realised (and I soon did too) that her eyebrows, un-threaded since Udaipur, resembled two slightly gingery caterpillars.AAARGGHHH!!!With little time to lose, we legged it up the street, looking for any sign of a beauty parlour. There was a rather dodgy looking hairdressers with a sign saying 'saloon' in a side street near our hotel, but fearing for Jade's sanity, we decided to hail a rickshaw and pick the driver's brains for ideas. After much explaining and wild gesticulating, he finally understood that we wanted to go to a place for women that did 'make up', and off we went at break neck speed. a few minutes down the road he stopped, puzzled, and asked another guy whether he knew where any such places where. the guy (of course, and slightly to our bemusement/surpise) jumped into the rickshaw with us and proceeded to direct us further down the busy road. We stopped several times while he went to ask yet more people and looked at one salon, telling us it was too expensive and he understood that we were travelling and didn't look like we had much money!!Eventually we pulled up at a pretty swanky hotel and the driver and his companion ran in and upstairs to check the place out. Lo and behold we'd found the solution to our problem!!5 minutes later and Jade's eyebrows were fuzz-free and potential world-wide disaster had been averted. Phew!!!!

Anyway, we had a quick dinner of street food (roti bread with a fried egg inside and very spicy curry sauce on the side- pretty good, though quite eggy unsurprisingly), and caught another taxi back to the airport around 9pm, while we waited for our 1.20am Sri Lankan airways flight to Beijing, which we discovered actually made a stop in Bangkok, though this was actually apparent on our tickets!! Only half an hour late, we boarded the plane and settled in with excitement to check out the entertainment selection as we were going to be on board the plane for about 9 hours in total. Unfortunately, the rather dated entertainment system didn't allow us to watch films or tv shows on demand, and the comfort level of the seats left a lot to be desired, so both of us pretty grumpy, we settled in to sleep... What felt uncomfortable while awake turned into a medieval object of torture to sleep in, and after several hours tossing and turning I kind of gave up on sleep just in time for us to land in Bangkok. We were two of only a handful of people actually staying on the plane to Beijing, and basically got ignored for an hour while the plane was being cleaned which was kind of annoying, but soon we were on our way again thankfully, as at that point I just wanted to arrive and get out of the bloody seats!! We arrived in Beijing Capital Airport around 1.30pm local time (we are now 7 hours ahead of current UK time) and were met off the plane by Sue (a volunteer), Edna and Heidi (both Phillipino nurses) from Hope healing Home, our home for the next two weeks.

It's about a half an hour drive from the airport to the home, which is on the outskirts of Beijing in a small village called Bei Wu. China is SO different to India, it's much more 'western' but at the same time so different to anything we have at home, for a start everything is in chinese symbols and there is very little in the way of English going on (even on a lot of the road signs!), in the area where we are it is quite agricultural, with loads of greenhouse-y type things everywhere but the ground doesn't look particularly fertile. and the highways are big. bigger than anything we would probably have at home.We haven't seen too much except the nearby area so far (except when we got the driver to take into Beijing on Friday to try to sort out our visas for Vietnam, only to discover that the embassy was shut that day for no apparent reason, and they only told people about it on a tiny note pinned to the door!), but I'm really excited about getting on the road again and exploring China.

I'm not really going to go through a blow by blow of what I've been doing everyday since we arrived on the 18th as there's not too much to report, but we are having a really good time and enjoying having lots of spare time outside of our duties too!We are sharing a lovely room with en suite shower room and we have a big kitchen down the hall where we can make breakfast and have snacks, as well as watch DVDs on a big tv!The main aim of the home (which is run by Robin and Dr Joyce Hill) is to care for babies chosen from state orphanges who have curable/treatable conditions, and look after them until such time as the state is able to find them adoptive parents, usually from abroad. The Hills also run two other homes in Hennan province which is about 12 hours south of here by train in Hennan province, which as well as treating babies with curable health problems, looks after those babies that are unlikely to survive. The set up here is pretty simple: each baby has an Ayi (or nanny), with 2-3 children per Ayi, who looks after them on a daily basis and is their 'mum'. The babies also get medical attention on a daily basis, and the older kids have pre-school one hour every weekday. As volunteers with no medical skills, Jade and I are currently in charge of the pre-school which is great!!We have 4 older children between the ages of 3 and 5 on Monday and Wednesday-Friday, and on Thursdays two Venezuelan ladies volunteer at pre-school too. We have 2 smaller kids (they're both about 2 I think) on Tuesdays, though their Ayi comes with as they are both criers, though ok if you can distract them for a bit!We've had lots of fun so far helping the kids do colouring, play with puzzle and do some basic crafts- today for example we made some butterfly puppets from paper plates that can flap their wings, there was glitter and glue everywhere so I think everyone had a good time!!Tomorrow we're hoping to do some finger painting with the little ones, but apparently they're a bit afraid of getting dirty so there could be lots of crying haha!! Apart from pre-school, we mainly spend our days catching up with our books and spending lots of time playing with the babies, who are all absolutely adorable- although some of the smaller toddlers that we don't have for pre-school are a little afraid of new people, so we have to take it quite slow with them!It's sad to think that they are all so tiny (the oldest boy here, Ben, is 5) but have been through such a lot in their little lives, though it is an amazing thing that the Hills and everyone who works here are doing too.

We've been eating the chinese food that the Ayis eat for lunch and dinner everyday (though lunch is at 11 and dinner at 5 which is kind of crazy for us!), which is cool, as although it is simple food like noodles with beansprouts, rice and a little bit of meat, it's interesting to see what chinese people eat on a daily basis and not just 'restaurant food'. We also got taken for a cheeky Burger King for Sunday lunch by Robin yesterday which was great!!The nearby town of Bei Wu is about a 15 minute walk away and we headed in last week to get some supplies of fruit and noodles. The language barrier is quite difficult, as we obviously have very little chinese but everyone we've met so far has been really helpful and the woman at the shop even cut the skin off our pineapple for us to save us doing it which was great!!We're hoping to go to see the Great Wall and the Summer Palace on Thursday afternoon, and then we leave here on Sunday for a few days on our own in Beijing, until Tuesday 4th when we're going to get a train to Xi'an, the home of the terracotta warriors.

Anyway, I think that's enough for you all the be suffering through until the next time, so I'm going to go, but I will try and be better at keeping up to date, especially when we get back on the road again!!

Lots of love from Hope Healing Home, Beijing xxxx