Today I used a squat toilet for the first time since I got here, possibly for the first time in my life. I'm not sure if that, or teaching 180 eleven and twelve year olds, was the most challenging part of my day. I've been in China three weeks now and only have one week of my project left. I left the village last week having squeezed in the important final activities of climbing the mountain (I know, right! Not very Sophie) and feeding a panda (didn't quite ove...

My least favourite thing about China is the way people touch my hair without permission, all the time, especially on public transport. My most favourite thing about China is Susan, who I met out and about in Xi'An on Friday night and who said I am very, very beautiful and wonderful and can she see me again? (I've still refrained from giving my number out to any random Chinese people though, especially as I think she might have been the wingman for her fat, non-En...

The strangest and most brilliant thing happened to me today. The weather has brightened up considerably after days of rain and cold, so I decided to take a stroll around the zoo and find a nice, quiet spot to read my book and listen to some music. On my way, I met an old Chinese man who was very keen to shake my hand and talk to me excitedly in Mandarin, which was fine. Once I had settled down on a wall to peruse my trashy book, he kept coming back up to me to sh...

We have now reached Louguantai, the village where I will be teaching, but first a little bit about yesterday. We finsihed the weekend with some more tourism, this time braving the crammed local buses to see some of the city's best tourism spots. First, Ruth and I went to the Shaanxi Museum which featured some impressive-looking and very ancient artefacts, including a few members of the Terracotta Army, which hopefully I will be able to see in full at some point. ...

Exhausted from a day of extreme tourism! After an orientation meeting reminding us about i-to-i's aims of meaningful travel and reassuring us that our money does go somewhere (I love how even the company director anticipates that every volunteer is going to be sceptical about its economic efficiency) and another yummy Chinese lunch (already getting a bit bored of rice though), we had the bright idea of walking to the centre of Xi'An. We were advised to get the bu...