The others arrived back thursday morning from Inner Mongolia, we decided to have a lazy day. Friday though Matt, Scott and I went to Shaoshan, which is where Mao's house is. The journey took over 2 hours, but was defenitly worth it. The house itself isn't really what I expected, much bigger than a normal farm house is, and also it appeared that each son had his own room, didn't think that happened in China. Suppose out in the countryside they don't have the same problems with space.

We also went up to see the graves of Mao's parents, since we can't read chinese it looked just like the other graves, but I can say i've seen it. We then went in search of Mao's poems, which were featured in my guide book. They are on big black slabs, sunken into the side of a wall. We got directions from these two chinese people, who decided for some unknown reason to follow us there. There - being a good 40 minute walk up a mountain, was really beginning to wish we hadn't bothered when we eventually got there, to discover that we had to pay 118yuan to get into the park that took us to them, no thanks. We got the bus back down, don't know why we didn't think of that on the way up?

Very tiring day, with a lot of walking, headed back to Changsha to plan lessons. Teaching on a Saturday, my brain just wasn't in gear, and my lessons were not that great, they didn't seem to flow and the kids didn't seem interested. Last few lessons of the day I just played games, as that was all I and the kids seemed up for.

Sunday we went to Coco's house to make dumplings, this was loads of fun, and rather more difficult than I had anticipated. We were forever being told that we had to much fillings or not enough, and the folding process was quite fiddly. There were a few that we made that didn't make the grade, and weren't boiled, if they had been they would have split, and made a lovely soup lol.

Coco's husband preformed a tea ceremony for us, which was a lot of faffing around if you ask me, you pour water from one jug to another, and then the smallest cup in the world, but you can't drink the first cup, that needs to be poured out. As i said much faffing. After the lunch we stayed in town to meet Ashling (Ireland) and Suzette (Australian) who are two other english teachers placed in Changsha at a different school. We only found out about them because one of them was also on the Inner Mongolia trip. They seem nice, they're school doesn't seem as organised as ours though, which I didn't think I'd ever say as this school is far from being to the standard routine one would expect from the west.

Back in the flat now, trying my best to aviod the inevitable, doing my lesson plans.