So for anyone who heard about the recent earthquake in China fear not! We are okay, just a few cuts and bruises but we live to tell the tale; who needs a roof anyway? Only joking although we did take this opportunity to plan our earthquake evacuation procedure.

This week we encountered our very fist thunderstorm, which happened as we decided to go and shop for essentials for our flats. There we were walking in the pouring rain in our shorts and our shopping bags scared for our lives because we have never seen a thunderstorm like it. It literally sounded like world war three and the lightening lit up the whole sky. It was very pretty but we didn't know whether or not this was a standard storm or we if we were about to be victims of a natural disaster!

With all the intention of cleaning we bought lots of cleaning products. A week later and we still haven't scrubbed our flats oops. Coincidently our internet stopped working and we thought it may have been because of the storm. We rang Mr. Liu to see if he could fix the problem but he took the opportunity to ask us if we wanted to go drinking with him despite the fact we had to be at school for 7:30am the next morning for our first day of teaching.

On our first day of teaching we decided that we would sit in on each other's lesson. Niki teaches the juniors and has 12 45min lessons a week and Emily teaches the senior and has 15 45min lessons a week. We quickly realised that their level of English wasn't as good as what we expected it to be which can be quite challenging when you are teaching classes of around 60 students. Although we have been teaching the same lesson to each class you never know what the students are going to do or come out with. As Niki teaches the juniors 10-14 she has the cutest (but in some cases naughtiest) students. She's been given presents, drawings and asked for her autograph haha. Whilst Emily teaches 14-17 year olds they ask her for her number, facebook and if she has a boyfriend. When we show them pictures, their favourite phrase is 'so beautiful' which we have decided warrants an A. Teaching has made us appreciate our old teachers as just teaching for 45 minutes is very tiring. We also appreciate white boards as we have a constant battle with chalk on the blackboards, Niki seems to get it on her face a lot when she is teaching which keeps the students entertained. Although the students are generally very well behaved compared to schools in England when it comes to the English lessons they relax a lot more and become a lot louder which is a little hard when they don't understand you when you tell them to be quiet. Emily has already confiscated 2 phones. Martin the English teacher who taught there last year told us to pull and twist on their ears until their eyes water as a class control method but we don't think we will be using this method of control.

This was our first week without all the other English teachers with us and the place seemed a lot quieter. Having rice for breakfast and dinner everyday has been become a bit repetitive as well. We joke when we ask each other what do you fancy for dinner and we reply rice but deep down it is destroying our souls! We decided enough was enough and we were in desperate need of a McDonalds, after failing miserably at trying to communicate the word McDonalds to a few locals we asked a police officer who then pointed for us to get into his car and he drove us to the Mcdonalds! He must have seen the desperation in our faces!! He then wrote his email address on a piece of paper with the message 'friend?' above. We are acquiring a collection of numbers and names on pieces of paper and should probably start getting in touch with some of them and start making friends J.

So if you haven't already guessed, the food situation is starting to get us a bit down. Even just a slice of bread would be amazing so we were like two kids in a sweet shop when we stumbled across this bakery and bought a loaf of bread. Our faces must have been a picture when we bit into it and it tasted nothing like bread, we could have literally cried. We also got excited when we saw microwavable chips at the shop although niki nearly blew the house up when she put the foil packet in the microwave and surprise surprise they didn't even taste like chips L. With all this healthy eating (not by choice) we thought we should probably do some exercise as well, but our goal of 50 sits ups a day, we only managed to achieve once oops.

Except for the one day of thunderstorms everyday has been scorching hot so we thought we would take advantage of this and go to the park in our lunch break to do some sunbathing. In China whiteness is the way forward, everyone hides from the sun and walks around with umbrellas so that they don't catch a suntan. We received some funny looks when we got our flesh out and started sunbathing in the local park as we were determined to catch some rays. Although Niki couldn't lie on the grass for too long because she is literally like an insect magnet. Niki's blood is definitely a delicacy in China, mosquito's come from far and wide just to get a taste but the constant itching from bites is starting to piss her off, insect repellent is now her new perfume.

With our first week of teaching out of the way we were excited to go to Changsha to meet up with some of the MKT lot J We now live for the weekend!! We were given all the Chinese characters we needed to get to the next city to show taxi and coach drivers but leaving at rush hour time we were finding it difficult to flag down a taxi. Luckily some random strange men on the street offered to give us a lift after first refusing we carried on up the road with still no luck of finding a taxi. The lads who offered us a list then pulled up beside us and asked us again (at least we presumed that's what they were saying as they couldn't speak a word of English). We would never do this in England, however ALL Chinese people lead a crimeless honest life and love to help foreigners out; or so we like to think.

We arrived at the university where Nick and Amy will be teaching to find that it was fresher week for all the students. This made us all nostalgic of our time at uni, what we would give to go back to fresher's and relive the best three years of our lives!! After a little tour of their campus we went to go and get food, on the way to the restaurant one filthy student flemmed all over Emily's foot! It is perfectly normal to do this in China; flem on the floor that is. Upon arriving at the restaurant we were given a menu in Chinese symbols so we asked around the restaurant until we found someone who could speak a little but of English. We told him we trusted his opinion and order us something nice with chicken for the four of us. Most of it was great, although we were slightly put off when we discovered what looked like a human hand in the bowl, it was a chicken claw. It was nice to have a catch up with them and we had a chilled Friday night in.

Saturday morning we were greeted to cups of teas in bed J we then did a spot of sightseeing and went to visit the Walmart, Niki felt right at home. It has been so nice to drink cups of normal tea again and not just green tea. On the evening we planned to meet some of the guys at this pizza place and we were praying that the pizzas tasted like those from back home as nothing we had tried to date tasted like that from back home. The first bite was literally heaven and the pizzas were demolished, we could have cried it tasted so good!

This week we experienced our first culture clash with some of the MK teachers. Facebook is used in a different way in America and it is not common for them to have pictures of them partying or even holding an alcoholic drink uploaded to Facebook as opposed to England where we have many pictures rolling around drunk and falling out of nightclubs. We got one of the guys in trouble with his family back home when we uploaded our 200 pictures from orientation week. We felt really bad because we didn't think that these sociable photos would cause upset and I don't think he appreciated the banter that everyone was having about it. Sorry J we love you!!!

Changsha definitely has a lot more westerners in it compared to our city and we will definitely be visiting a lot.

Zai Jian for now

Em & Nik

XxxxxxxxxxxxxxxX