Sooo we're very settled in China now we've been going out and exploring our city of Xiangtan a bit more. We took the bus and stumbled across a really nice park, though as soon as we got there Nik really needed a wee. Opting to not just squat in the street like some of the locals do, we practised our Chinese on an elderly couple and asked them where the nearest toilet was. After walking for 10 minutes in the opposite direction to the way they were going we were wondering whether we had asked them the right thing but soon enough you could smell the stench of the toilet. After waiting for us they then start speaking to us in Chinese getting louder and louder as all we say is "Ting Bu Dong" which is Chinese for I don't understand. The more time we spent with this Chinese couple the more we realised that we had just found Nikis long lost parents, so they had a nice family photo next to the lake. It's nice to just meet random people and sit with them, even if they can't speak English, they are all so welcoming. We sat with a group of Chinese people and had some tea with them but we quickly realised that they were tramps of the park.

We also have another adopted family, but they don't know it. The local cafe that we always go to for food has a mom, a brother and a gran. We actually call them this and make up scenarios and say it to them but they don't understand a word we are saying. This is the place where we go to get our omelette, it took about 5 mins to explain to them we wanted an omelette through drawing pictures of cracked eggs and milk, praying they come out with an omelette and they did so we took a picture of it and show them when we want one. They love us and we love them J

Teaching has been alot easier this week the more settled we have become. It was teachers day on Monday and we were greeted with flowers and the primary school that we now work at on a Monday for extra money. The kids are soooo cute!! Niki also got given a drawing and a little box thing as a gift too. This week nik decided to give her class English names so each class has various English names from her friends from home. She's going to try and take pictures of the students so they can see what they look like lol. Some of the students told her that they already had an English name and it's hard not to laugh when they tell you their name is Turkey, Banna, Rabbit, Simple or Micheal Jordan lol. In general classes have been alot better this week compared to last week, Emily has Wifi in her building where she teaches so she sets the children something to do and sits on Facebook or skypes people to show them the class. One kid sang her a love song infront of the whole class.

We have not seen a single foreign person in our city yet so we arranged to meet up with a girl and 2 lads that we met at orientation week that live about 15 minutes away. It was Anglea birthday so her and her Chinese boyfriend arranged to go for meal and then onto an English corner. This is where Chinese students gather to speak to foreign people to practise their English. Every Chinese person you meet is so friendly and wants your number so we took a few peoples numbers and are planning on meeting up with them to practise our Chinese. From there we got a taxi to Changsha (our Weekend city) and met up with Nick and Amy at their apartment. This weekend the rest of the MK teachers were meeting up in Changsha for a night out so Sam and Dan were also staying at Nick and amy's and arrived after us, so we all stayed up to the early hours catching up and swapping stories about life in China.

On facebook there is a group for all the foreign people living in Changsha or surrounding cities which we joined to meet new people and ask other people for advice about certain things. On Tuesday they posted in the group to say they wanted foreign models for an underwear catwalk show for the weekend and to send their measurement in. We were told they wanted us and on Saturday we were meeting with them and the rest of the models at 4pm ready for the evening catwalk show.

We arrived at this really nice hotel where the stage was being set up. We're not going to lie we were getting really excited. We all picked our outfits from a range of bikinis, bra's and corsets. We then had a rehersal and then were taken to have our hair and makeup done. For the actual show we all lined up and had two violinists playing as we walked on. For the second half we went out to a beat boxed to songs such as "i'm bringing sexy back'. The whole experience was so surreal, this never would have happened if we were in England but we were lapping up every minute, it was literally so much fun. They told us the show was happening again tomorrow, Niki got asked to do the show again but told Emily she was too fat, only joking. One of the women said she was too tall although that doesn't make sense, but everything seems to be back to front in China. After the show we got to keep the outfits (well we didn't know this for sure but put them in our bags anyway) we definitely grabbed the best outfits.

After Saturdays show we met up with the other MK teachers and took a few of the other models with us. After pizza we went to hooligans which was very busy with westerners and then went to a club. A club layout in china is block podiums to dance on with loads of tall tables that people stand around. Westerners don't have to worry about buying a single drink, we both just go up to a table and pour our own drinks using the pitchers on their table because they love that you go over. It was so fun playing drinking games with the Chinese in the clubs. Loads of the MK teachers got absolutely wasted to the point they couldn't walk, it was so good to see them all.

We've only been here 3 weeks and so much has happened already, we can't wait to see what next week has in store for us. We hope that you are having as much fun reading about our experiences that we are making them J

Zai jien

Nik and Em

xxxxxx