Sooo this week has been a bit of a whirlwind, so much has happened and it will be hard to remember absolutely everything so we'll write the first half of the week now and post the rest tomorrow, but we'll start back at our eventful journey from Hong Kong to Changsha.

So we got up at 4:30 to set off on our journey having pre booked no trains and hoping to wing it the whole way. Got to the subway at 5 to realise it didn't open until 6…. we knew this journey wasn't going to go as smoothly as hoped and make our arrival time before 12 noon. 2 tubes later we crossed the border to China, stepping foot through boarder control you can notice the massive difference straight away! Having no idea where we were going, no one speaks a word of English and all the signs are in Chinese Characters. The queues are like nothing you've ever seen before, but it's not surprising seeming as they have a population of 1.6 billion. We'd read that it is just normal to push into queues so we mastered the art. As Emily had been researching how we got to and from different destinations, Nik volunteered herself to go and purchase the high speed train tickets whilst Emily sat with the backpacks. Niki came back with only a ticket for herself costing double the price we thought it would cost to the end of the railway line instead of just to our stop. (In Nikis defence she did ask for 2 tickets and at that price she thought the woman understood and she thought the name of the line was our stop as Emily said to get the Wuhan line). Emily then had to go get her ticket and by the time she had queued the tickets had become more expensive because there were limited seats. We got to the train to realise that Em's ticket was first class so Niki managed to sneak on first class too. When a man said that Nik was in his seat, we asked the woman who was in charge of these 9 first class seats if we could share. She then pressed a button on the chair and it turned into a bed. The woman even bought round extra refreshments for Niki. We spooned the whole journey and practiced some Chinese with the locals on the train.

After getting mobbed at the train station and getting into a dodgy taxi thinking we were about to be taken somewhere to be sold we arrived at our hostel. 6 hours later than intended and having travelled for 12 hours in the heat with backpacks that are literally the bane of our lives we went straight to this nice restaurant in the clothes we had been travelling in for a welcome meal with all the other teachers. Everyone got on like a house on fire and it wasn't long before we were downing our drinks and exploring the nightlife of Changsha in celebration of Jay's birthday (One of the two funny American lads' from Kansas). After pre drinks at the hostel we went to Soho; one of the clubbing chains, to find we were being pulled in every direction and the locals loved pouring their drinks down our necks. Literally China play some of the best remixes we've ever heard!!!! Even the few Chinese songs they played were hilarious to dance and sing to. As if we didn't think that the night had been eventful enough, a piece off a chandelier fell onto a glass table which shattered into pieces all over Amy's feet. Realising that the little cut was actually squirting out shed loads of blood and thinking at the time that is was one of us who broke the table we made a quick exit. A few people took Amy to the hospital, where the doctors said the cut was so deep you could see the bone, and the rest of us went on to the next club.

With a bunch of jet lagged and hung-over teachers, Chris and Sam (the organisers) thought it would be fun to climb a mountain in immense China heat. Although we thought we were going to pass out a few times it was a good bonding experience. Having climbed this mountain and sweating in places that we didn't know existed we got back on the coach and headed to Xiangtan, our home for the next 10 months. We were lucky enough to be having the orientation week at our school so as soon as we stepped foot off the coach we were greeted by Mr Liu, our contact person at the school with the keys to our apartments. We dropped our things off and went straight out for a meal with him in our sweaty mountain climbing clothes. I don't think anything could have prepared us for this night we were about to have. We were greeted by a table of very happy Chinese people, none of whom spoke a word of English and the alcohol started to flow. It's tradition at meals that you don't drink by yourself so every time you take a drink you do so with someone else and clink glasses with them. Emily confused the Chinese word for cheers with bottoms up from the beginning so every time we took a drink with them (which was every 30 seconds) we were expected to down our drinks. It is also tradition that you should never have an empty plate or glass so there was a guy filling up our drink and saying 'I'm sorry' every time our glasses were empty for longer than 5 seconds. You can imagine that we got quite drunk. The Chinese people found it quite amusing at our lack of chopstick skills but we are getting better every day! Food in Xiangtan is renowned for its spice and the things they find normal to eat is very obscene to us. We had our first taste of rat and rabbit not to mention a full fish staring at us in our food bowl. Chinese people are the loudest messiest eaters in the world (they make Nik look tame) and find it appropriate to spit bones out anywhere they wish. After the meal we all went to Mr Liu's karaoke bar, if the traffic system wasn't scary enough as it already was, we were drove there by his friend who had just consumed a full bottle of red wine. It makes matters worse that they don't like you to wear a seatbelt as it shows lack of trust (no wonder there's 600 traffic accident deaths a day), but this was one rule we ignored and made sure our seatbelts were tightly fastened. Chinese people take karaoke VERY seriously and when each person gets up to sing everyone else has the choice to hand them roses depending on how well they do. Despite being completely tone death we did receive a lot of roses when we sang our rendition of westlife, Britney, Oasis and Beyonce, though I think it was down to the fact we were foreign.

We will blog the rest of our week tomorrow but having an amazing time so far :)

Zaijian

Em & Nik xxxx