Sorry we have been neglecting the blog recently but we have been super busy!! Things have been so hectic since we last blogged but we are loving every minute of it! It's going to be hard to remember everything that we've been up to; we really should have kept a note as we went along.
So our job at the night club is going well, it's a good way to meet new people in China and make more contacts. We say we aren't going to get drunk but this always never happens as we have to down our drinks with so many people. By the time the night is over someone is suggesting to go for food (which is a common way of carrying on the party in China, in England we go for a kebab and munch it in the taxi on the way home, but in China they like to go and eat around a big round table…but when they ask us we suggest to go to McDonalds.
Speaking of McDonalds it has become our second home recently, and with Thailand fast approaching we thought we better join the Gym, we took our friend Johnson with us as he often likes to build his body (in his words) and he offered to take us to a steakhouse after which was Amazing!! When you tell them how you like your steak cooked you don't say 'rare, well done' you give a percentage. We thought best to go for a high percentage as knowing China we'd be afraid the steak was going to come out still mooing. The steak was beautiful and it was nice to eat with a knife and fork and funny to see a Chinese person struggle to eat with a knife and fork as it is normally us struggling to eat with chopsticks.
The expat bar in Changsha had its 4th year anniversary which had free pizza and beer so of course we got there early and sat right by the door to keep an eye on when the pizza arrived. The night was such a blur and probably the most drunk we've been in China. Once all the free booze and pizza had ran out it was off to a club where we like to get a bit creative with the translation app on the Iphone asking Chinese people all sorts to our amusement. The club was about to close when ourselves and Richard (one of the MKT lads) spotted these cool square metre queen of hearts hanging from the ceiling…okay they don't sound so cool now (and it wasn't cool when we had to carry them on the bus and coach back to Xiangtan) but when we were plastered it seemed like a good idea to steal one each, little did we know that the manager of the club would be so protective of these pieces of cardboard and would chase us around derelict buildings where the builders were helping us hide behind counters. At one point they caught Richard but he managed to escape haha..hmm maybe it's one of those 'you have to be there moments' but we were so drunk these random Chinese guys went looking for bottled water to buy us before we got in the taxi..Chinese people are so nice : )


We were told this week that the school was taking part in a sports competition so our lessons Wednesday to Friday had been cancelled so we thought we'd make the most of this opportunity and visit a new place in china. We chose to visit the national forest park in Zhangjiajie which the scenery at the mountain top is famous for being the inspiration behind the avaratar film. Us being so lazy we decided only to look into going last minute and accommodation was booked up for the Wednesday night so we decided to go bright and early Thursday morning instead. On Wednesday we took the opportunity to make our Halloween outfits for the Halloween party the following Saturday. Halloween isn't really celebrated in China, many of the nightclubs host nights for it but the kids don't dress up and trick or treat and they don't have any fancy dress shops which we found out after searching through many markets. So as we had to go DIY we decided to go as spiders so we spent Wednesday night stuffing our tights with toilet roll and stitching them to make our legs! A lord of the rings and high school musical film later and the outfits were complete!

So Thursday morning we were up and ready for our 5 hour bus journey to Zhangjiajie. After finding our hostel relatively easily we were ready to explore so of course we found the local McDonalds (what, this is our holiday). If you ever want to meet westerners there's no better place to find them than Mcdonalds and we found this to be very true when Blair, one of the MK Teachers walks in. We didn't realise that this was where Blair lived and we thought how strange to bumped into someone we know in China .. very small world. So after a catch up over various mcflurries we agreed to meet up later on in a club with some of his friends to experience Zhangjiajie nightlife. With not much to explore in the city centre we decided to head to the cinema. Using our expired student discount we thought we were going to watch Taken 2 but it turned out to be the new Bourne film.. we were just happy it wasn't a Chinese film. We then met back up with Blair and his foreign friends in a local bar but as we were up early we headed home at about 1 and had an earlyish night.
Soo after our mcdonalds breakfast which set us up for the day we set off to the national forest park. We become quite the explorers with our map and rain macs, we had the route all set out and after walking for about 2 hours we discovered we had travelled about a millimetre in distance on our A3 sized map. The park was beautiful and surprisingly not too busy, we took an elevator attached to the side of a cliff up above the clouds to get the prime spot of the park and the views were breath taking. Nik drank water from a spring in the park which is said to give you long life and free you of diseases.... much to her disappointed she still has a cold. We then travelled even further up the winding cliffs by minibus which is best to close your eyes whilst travelling otherwise you will have a heart attack from the amount of near misses from oncoming cars and the side of the cliff, this led us to the cable car which would bring back down. After walking for around 10 hours we thought it was only fair that we treated ourselves to a McDonalds for dinner.

The next day we got the coach to ZhuZhou for the Halloween party our MKT friends Lindsey and Shaz were hosting..It was on a 'beach'!!! They really did put on a good party and went to a lot of effort with the decorations and location. There was also a 'death punch' which we took advantage of. We soon moved onto a club and this night too has to be up there with the most drunk we have been in China. The next morning we always find ourselves cringing and laughing at the stupid/funny things we did the previous night, which no one else would probably find funny at the time but we find hilarious…we won't bore you with those moments but we do become a tag team comedy act at times, although more like the chuckle brothers than Ant and Dec! One guy at the party worked for ZhuZhou TV station Niki exchanged numbers with him and then on the Sunday got a call asking if we would take part in a modelling show and if we could meet with the chief executive of the channel in Zhuzhou.

After classes on Tuesday we were picked up from the school and travelled to ZhuZhou an hour away for a dinner and a meal with the TV exec of the channel. We went to this tea house where we drank this 'speacial tea' he told us it cost £1000 per Kg of this stuff, it was okay but we still would have preferred a PG Tips. We discussed the modelling show we would be taking part in and the terms and price we would be paid, he also offered us part time work at the TV company with other opportunities such as travelling for a travel programme. The deal was done and we would be modelling on the show on Sunday so long as it didn't rain.

The next day was Halloween!!! On a night out a few weeks back we got asked by the owner of a bar in Changsha did we want to work on Halloween, dressing up and scaring the customers so after Nick and Zac negotiated terms we were in business. We live an hour away but we managed to get a lift of David .. one of the guys we have met at the club who said he was heading to Changsha at the same time. So we were picked up from our school and we made our way to the club .. we got there first, Em was given a zombie bride outfit and Nik a pirate outfit.. After having our scary make up done, we were set to scare some of the customers along with Nick (a convict with a chainsaw), Zac ( a fellow pirate) and Amy ( A nurse/ Chinese opera singer lol )
Although it was our job to scare people it was hard not to laugh but we soon got into it .. at 12oclock they turned off all electricity in the club to try and scare customers. after 4 hours we were finished .. we had the option to stay with free alcohol and party all night .. but Amy who had come down with the same bug that Nick had .. wanted to make a quick exit home and we were all up early for lessons in the morning .. so we got paid and called it a night.
We managed to blag us a lift back to Xiangtan with David again who stopped off for a KFC breakfast , just because he knew we would like it!.. knowing that we had the model show on the Sunday it was very hard to say we weren't hungry! Thursday morning we were very tired as the last few late nights crept up on us but we work in the Club on Thursdays and soon got back into the party spirit after a power nap.

As we were asked to speak Chinese on the Tv show we asked our Chinese teacher if we could focus on a few introductory sentences on our Friday lesson…Apart from this lesson and English corner that finished at 9pm this evening gave us time to chill out compared to the other hectic nights.

Saturday we got to have a lie in, our friend Johnson who helped us join the gym wanted to treat us to a gym bag so he took us to this shopping mall that resembled the Trafford Centre a little bit. After being good with our food for a couple of days we couldn't turn down the offer of McDonalds before we went to the Nike and Addidas shop to buy our Gym bags. We also got flasks and he wanted to buy us hand protection gloves too but we had told him not to as we probably wouldn't use it. It was such a kind thing for him to do, Chinese people are soo kind! We then went for a meal where he introduced us to his banker friend who gave us his business card and his friend who had a real estate business who offered us a job if we ever needed one. After dinner we went back to his family home for Tea. He lives in a gated community with a massive 8 bedroom house with his wife and his wife's brother, mother and father. Feeling a little tipsy from the red wine at the meal we said that we had to leave as we were up early the next morning.

Sunday was the day of the TV show so we got picked up from our school at 7.15 and drove an hour to where the TV show was being filmed. We met up with Shaz and Lydnsey who are 2 MK teachers also doing the show and we got changed into our outfits. Normally we wouldn't want to do anything like this without fake tan or make up but we didn't think we'd see the day when we were asking the Chinese girls if we could lend some of their make up to make us look paler lol. So embracing the paleness we started to prepare for the show. We each had to sit in a car with 2 other Chinese models and wait, Nicole was the first of the foreigners up (much to her delight) .. we were driven in the car to the front of the stage where all three got out ready to walk the runway. You had to walk with the two other models onto the stage and then one by one walk twice down the runway and on the second time stop and introduce yourself onto the microphone. Having to speak Chinese I think was the scariest part as the same word said in a different tone could mean something completely different and knowing our luck we'd probably end up swearing to them. After introducing yourself you then had to walk off and get changed into the next outfits which for all of us was underwear! In the cold we then had to walk back onto the stage and walk again down the catwalk and then wait with the other two models and hear feedback of the judges, answer questions and see if we were through to the next round. Luckily we had a translator Rocky to help explain what was being said ... despite what we answered i'm pretty sure he helped us out a lot and answered the questions himself in Chinese. Nik then finished and sat in the crowd to take photos of Emily, Shaz and Lydnesey. We were all through to the next round .. and when we got home Nik even got a call to say sponsors had been interested in us representing the brand outside of the competition, so we will speak prices with them next week. All in all were having an amazing time and taking every opportunity that comes our way.

Lots of love

Nik & Em

Xxxxxxxx