I'm settling in now at Chuxiong Middle School. I have pretty much everything I need in my apartment/dorm at the school, and I can even flush toilet paper, rather than throw it in a bin. It's all a bit vague as to what I'll be doing for work here, but the boss reckons my most important job is to arouse the interest in English in the students! Everyone's been making me feel welcome, and are keen to practice English, so it should be a good 4 months. Yawo.

Well it turns out that the one school in Xinjiang that these guys have contact with aren't really that keen/don't have enough money to hire me. So I'm heading back to Yunnan province tomorrow arvo to start work in Chuxiong next week, have signed a contract for 4 months. Maybe it's better I don't head straight over to the 'New Frontier', Goldwyn here is at pains to convince me that everywhere I really wanna go (Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, etc) has 3rd world c...

Halo allemal. Quick summary so far. Number one highlight has to be having diorhea for about 3 days on two seperate occasions, and having a fresh breeze from the Yangtze coming up the toilet! I've stopped drinking the the tapwater altogether now. Nah but seriously being able to munch on fresh snow from branches rather than bring a drink bottle was pretty nifty. Going up over twice as high as I've ever been and seeing Asia being squeezed really tight by India in N...

This place is more just to put it on the map so you can make some more sense of where/when I've been. Well I spent a bit longer here than I'd hoped, but there's been the usual problems you could expect when travelling I spose, not being able to communicate effectively for example. But spending more time in Yunnan has meant getting to know people better and relaxing a bit more!

Well I spent a bit longer here than I'd hoped, but there's been the usual problems you could expect when travelling I spose, not being able to communicate effectively for example... I arrived in a foggy sunrise, and managed to get around the island on the bus network, to see the old fishing village, which suprisingly wasn't very touristy. Then I headed up to the big buddha on the cable car. This place was super touristy, but atleast you get some food with your t...