Nicole and I started the new year with a visit to Chongren to see Beth and Cat at their project. Unfortunately, pretty much everything possible went wrong on the way there. We'd finally got our passports back on the 31st, meaning we're finally able to travel by train again but we both overslept, waking too late to catch the only train of the day to Chongren. Then Nicole lost her purse and we missed our bus whilst we looked for it; then, in the taxi on our way to ...

Ever since we arrived in Jiujiang, people have been asking if we've visited Lushan yet and recommending that we do because, whilst Jiujiang itself is pretty insignificant in the scheme of things, Lushan, which is only about an hour away, is known throughout most of China. It has historically been a summer resort for China's rich and powerful and also played host to lots of famous poets, writers and philosophers and featured in several legends. We've been meaning ...

Christmas this year was always going to be very different from any other Christmas, but luckily I can say that it was still brilliant and that the absence of roast potatoes didn't impact too badly on the festivities. Nicole and I played host again, with the other 6 Jiangxi volunteers - plus Ned's friend Salome, who was visiting from France - staying from Saturday until Wednesday. Our house - as I've said before - is bloody enormous, so there was plenty of room fo...

It's less than a week until Christmas now, so I figured it was about time to write about all the pre-Christmas preparations and celebrations in Jiujiang so far. First up: Christmas decorations. We put up the bulk of these at the beginning of December, after an intense shopping session at Walmart. We'd just been paid for all the tutoring sessions we'd done with Rainy, so we basically spent all the money we'd earnt from that on tinsel, Christmas trees, baubles, fak...

Mine and Nicole's PT Desk Officer, David, arrived the Tuesday after the other Jiangxi volunteers had been to visit. We met him at school and went straight off to a meeting with the headteacher, vice principal, local party leader, Mrs Liu (my mentor teacher) plus Zoe and one of her colleagues from the Education Bureau. Most of it was in Chinese, but it was basically discussing how Nicole and I are doing, what the school have done to help us settle in and if there ...