So even on my first blog (on this blogsite at the very least), I'm way behind on writing about everything. I was hoping to get Worpress working again, from China, but it hasn't happened yet. Because of that, i'm writing about my time Beijing about a week after we all left Beijing. Never mind..

I'll start with the flight to China. From heathrow, it is a 13 hour flight to HongKong followed by another 3 1/2 hours to Beijing on an internal flight. It was my first long-haul flight since I was 7, so I really didn't know what I was in for. It wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for how tricky it is to fall asleep on a plane. I was hoping to get to see a fair few views from the window, but the majority of the flight was at night. In the end, all I got to see was Xinjiang, the region that i am now living in. When you have never seen a desert, seeing one from the air is pretty incredible. A never ending expanse of sand, as far as the eye can see, is an odd sight for someone used to the UK.

Hong Kong looks pretty amazing from the sky too. I really wished that we had had maybe a day or two to explore the city, but all we spent in Hong Kong was an hour, rushing between one plane to the next. When we were flying into Hong Kong, what is most striking is just how huge the sky scrapers are. When a building looks taller than the mountains behind it, you know its big.

Arriving in Beijing, we were met by our representative in China, Mike. Mike was a volunteer with Project Trust before he went on to study Chinese at university, and now he lives in Beijing. Among other things, he helps PT by being a port of call for volunteers in the country. With no reprieve from the excessive travelling, we took a coach to the hostel we were staying in for the next few days (which although not exactly luxury, was a pretty cool hostel). As soon as we had dropped off our bags, it was off for our first meal in China.

You may hear things in the west of the crazy things that people eat in China. From what i have experiences so far, it's only partly true. In most cases, people eat pork, beef, chicken and duck. It seems to be only certain areas of the country that eat everything under the sun. The oddest things I have had so far have both been in Xinjiang - Beijing seems pretty safe on the crazy food side of things. Most of the food tastes amazing here - your local chinese takeaway will not do it justice at all. I have had a few things, like smelly tofu (a strange grey version that, as the name suggests, smells) and some strange egg, that have been painfully bad, but in general it's all great.

I could write about all the things we did in Beijing in great detail, but because i'm so behind on the blog writing, I think I may just have to compact it down a little. I'll start with the great wall.

The great wall does truly deserve to be considered a wonder of the world. We only saw a short section of the mighty structure that stretches over the majority of the country, but the scale is undeniable. As you climb up to the wall, the air is filled with the cricket-like wail from the insects that live in the trees. What makes it so strange is that their noise grows louder, then disappates, and the thousands of these creatures do it in almost perfect unison. Once you reach the wall itself after a reasonably steep trek up the mountains it is built on, the views are stunning. The most striking part of the view is the way the wall weaves its way over the top of the mountains, eventually disappearing onto the horizon. For those who didn't fancy the idea of walking back down, there was a most unexpected way to travel down. A taboggan. So I can say quite happily that i have tabogganed down the great wall of China.

We also visited the famous Tiananmen square. Despite it's history and the hype, i'm afraid it was a little disappointing. It was essentially a large, empty space, with some very impressive and important buildings round the edge of it. Of course, the size of the square was impressive, but it just felt like a tourist trap.

After the first few days, we began a basic language course hosted at No50 Beijing middle School. During the course, we stayed at host families (the families of students from the school). Each day was made up of a morning of lessons, followed by an afternoon of sightseeing.

Sights included the Forbidden City, The Temple of Heaven, The pearl Market and 798 art district. The forbidden City is an incredible sight, but unfortunately a lot of the detail that could have been there is gone, as much of what was in the city was apparently taken by the nationalists when they fled to Taiwan. The city is then, essentially the amazing traditional buildings, with nothing inside them. Like many things in Beijing, it's the scale of the place that makes it so special. China doesn't seem to do anything by half measures.

The Temple of Heaven was likewise a wonderful example of great Chinese Architecture, but little to see outside the buildings themselves. In the UK if you visit a heritage sight, you would expect to have information about everything, and hundreds of little interesting bits and pieces. Here in China, it's not quite the same.

Now, a little about staying with host families. Firstly, the hospitality shown by any family to take in a stranger is amazing. I still can't get over the kindness given to me, when I had so little to give back. Outside of the amazing kindness that was shown just to be allowed into someones home for a few days, it was a great experience. All of the volunteers got to experience what it would be like to live a Beijing lifestyle. That said, it sounded like we all had very different experiences. Living in a Beijing flat is very different from living in a house in the UK. Space is at a premium, so there was one bedroom, one small kitchen, a wetroom style bathroom and a living room that doubled up as a second bedroom. I rather liked it like that too. It had everything that was needed and was comfortable. You certainly don't need lots of space for a home to be comfortable.

I would have liked to also write about the epic train journey from Beijing to Xinjiang...if it had happened. There was a little screw-up as Mike got his dates mixed up and we missed our train to Xinjiang. As it's hard to get tickets there quickly, we ended up having to fly instead. It may have cut down our travel time by 36 hours, but us Xinjiang volunteers (there are 6 of us dotted around Xinjiang), will have to wait to experience the crazy long-haul trains of China. I think most of the volunteers were happy about it.

Hopefully in the next blog I will get back up to speed to current times, and talk a little bit about what it's like here in Kuitun!