Hello we are sitting in Guangzhou airport and thought we better blog as we have been neglecting it recently. We plan to blog after we have visited each place in Thailand and Lao and it will kill time while were travelling.

We have spent Boxing Day in an airport and nothing is ever too straight forward with us, there was a time when we thought we were going to get the sack from our school. Our Chinese point of contact Mr. Lui told us that lessons would finish at our school on the 23rd December. We thought great just in time to get to Thailand for New Year's Eve and celebrate at the full moon party. Knowing that Mr. Lui does not have a clue half of the time about anything that goes on at the school and this crazy lunar calendar they go by which determines the dates of holidays we continuously asked Mr. Lui what dates we had off for 2 weeks before we booked our flights. About one month later Mr. Lui rang us to tell us to go to his office because he had something important to tell us about the sprint festival break. We were hoping that he was going to tell us that we had more time off than we previously thought but deep down knowing our luck we knew it was most likely going to be the case that we had booked our flights during teaching time. He told us the new dates which turned out we missed three weeks of teaching. We decided that no matter what we were still going because we had spent so much money on flights and accommodation and was no going to lose out over mistakes that weren't our fault. All we had to do was tell Mr. Lui we had already booked our flights to Thailand......

I don't think he believed us when we told him that we were going no matter the consequence, we almost tried to forget that there was an issue, probably because he didn't want the school to think it was his fault. After telling him it was time he starting confronting the situation and tell the school so the students would have a teacher covering us. We basically said we need to put our heads together and think of a plan that is going to get us and him out of the s***.

After telling Lany, the Chinese liaison of the organisation we booked with that we were missing three weeks of teaching to go traveling we got a very angry phone call telling us that if we went then she would go to the authorities and blacklist out of the country. At this point we were pretty annoyed ourselves, we were due to leave in 9 days, Liz and Eve had already booked our flights to meet us out in Thailand so we told Lany we were ready to face the consequences. We decided that if we did lose our jobs or get kicked out the country we would see it as a new adventure. L

luckily Mr. Lui does us want us to come back to the school in February probably because he knows the whole situation is his fault so together him and Lany decided that we wouldn't be paid for January salary and that money would go to two teachers covering our lessons while we are away

Even though we are down a month's pay, it is still less than we would have lost if we'd have had to change and will be worth it to spend new year's eve in Thailand and see the girls.

Booking our tickets wasn't straightforward either although this experience was a little funny.We asked our Chinese friend if he would book our tickets for us so we met with Harley and Johnson who first took us for lunch. they were going to pay for the flights on their card and we were going to give them the money back in cash. After looking on the internet we decided it would be best to go to the airport to book the tickets, so there we were on our hour and half journey to Changsha spontaneously where we will be going to "play" too as Chinese people like to call any form of hanging out with Chinese friends. Although we weren't able to book our flights the journey wasn't wasted because we then went to a bar and got really drunk and started playing dares. Although Johnson English isn't the greatest Harley speaks in an American accent and as well as thinking he is a walking Wikipedia he also has a lot of opinions. So when we told him that we thought all Chinese boys were innocent he took this opportunity to tell us loads of embarrassing things and let's just say Chinese lads aren't as innocent as we thought. We also wanted to know if the rumor about Chinese penis size was true. He never actually defended himself on that one so it must be true.

In preparation for Thailand we have mainly been trying to save up and hit the gym, not that its helped much. So except from working at the club twice a week, after Halloween our next night out was for Richards's birthday! After not seeing any foreigners for over 5 weeks it was definitely good to get back to Changsha to Nick and Amy spare apartment and see the gang.

Pre drinks were at Richards so along with a cake and card we turned up to meet everyone. However we weren't the only ones with the idea to bring a cake, one of Richards friends had baked him a chocolate cake which looked like the cake of Matilda and it was unbelievably good. We've literally never tasted anything so good in our lives and have told Richard that we need to visit him again when she makes another.

This year MTK has decided to throw a Christmas party for its foreign teachers so after Lany asked for our help we took it upon ourselves to organize the whole thing. Most importantly we need a Christmas dinner so together the three of us went to meet with a chef to shoe and explain how to make a Christmas dinner. After sampling the foods we managed to sort out turkey, roast potatoes, mash potatoes [pigs in blankets and steak (not so traditional but we went complaining) ready for the meal on the 22nd.

Lany also booked a function room so after the meal was finished we our way upstairs to carry on the celebration. We had made a quiz for everyone so after organizing the groups into mixtures of English, American and Chinese we started the quiz which consisted of

- Name the song round
- Picture round
- Navitity round
- Christmas round
- TV round
- China round
- Current news round

After the quiz finished we had asked the teachers to prepare some performances. First up was Jay and Melanie with the 12 days of Christmas but with a Chinese twist. Next was Nick and Amy singing fairytale of New york. One of our chine friends then beat boxed and last was one of our students that we have been private tutoring singing good girls gone bad. Sam finished off the performances with a medley of songs as well as a song he wrote himself which was done in a Bo Burnam comedy style, which was really funny and summed up our time as a foreigner in china. It had cost Lany 10,000 RMB (1,000) to organize the party and that didn't include the cost of hotel rooms that she paid for so that people travelling from other cities and towns had somewhere to stay. We asked all the teachers to buy Lany a Christmas present as a way of saying thank you.

We asked if we could invite some friends to the party after the meal as it was a big hall. We invited a few Chinese friends who we had worked with or we met at our club and told them that they could bring friends too. We also invited our closest Chinese friends Avril, Sophie, Johnson and Harley who we had bought gifts for; throughout our time in China that have helped us out so much with problems we have had and just been so kind.

We bought our closest friends Christmas presents and they also came to the part with gifts for us as well. You can imagine how bad we felt when we gave Johnson a 6 pack of socks and he gave us each a bottle of wine, some chocolate and 1000RMB each (about a hundred pounds) but hopefully he will think it's the thought that counts.

By the time the party had finished at 11pm we moved onto a club it was nice to be our Chinese friends all together all together we partied until the club closed at 2am by this point we were soooo drunk but had been invited to KTV this was our best KTV experience ever, the room was massive and we all sang until we had no voices left. We were just laughing hysterically in the airport at a flashback of the pair of us reenacting the famous scene from titanic it wouldn't surprise us if many people were looking at us thinking we were annoying drunken attention seekers., We got home for 7am and we knew we were going to have hangovers from hell the next day!

The following day was our last day of teaching and last day in Xiangtan for over 5 weeks, Nik had been sent a parcel from her family and a parcel from her friends Jenna which she had been having trouble getting to Xiangtan but literally an hour before we were due to leave the school both parcels arrived filled with Christmas presents and clothes for Thailand. Literally couldn't have been more last minute but she was thrilled to have it all on Christmas eve.

We then set off from school and made our way to Changsha to Nick and Amy's where we were spending Christmas day. Along with Sam and Richard we sat with beer, wine chocolate and music and stayed up chatting until the early hours. Christmas in China was never going to compare to Christmas with your family in England but we had a good a day as we could We all got up and opened presents from each other, ate bacon and egg butties and a nice cup of tea. We then went to get a German all you can eat and drink restaurant along with a few others teachers and over indulged in as much food and beer as we could, Not quite a traditional Christmas dinner but it was nice nonetheless.

With Nick and Amy having early lessons on Boxing Day and us having an early flight we went home Skyped our families and then got to bed.

Were now delayed over an hour on our way to Bangkok having already been in the airport for 7 hours so apologies for many mistakes in the blog but should be boarding soon ready for the Thailand adventures to begin. Can't wait to see Liz and Eve and the other MKT teachers that will be flying out in January when their holidays start

See you all there

Nik and Em

Xxxx