Its hard to believe that one whole month has gone by now since we arrived in China. The time really does seem to fly. Kuitun truly feels like a home now. Marcus and I have met so many great people and made friends that feel like we've known them forever.

Even in just one month, we're both starting to get the hang of Chinese. They say it's a hard language...and sure, there are elements that make it tricky. Learning a few characters isn't too bad, but there are thousands to be at the very least recognised. That said, it is great fun being able to read bits and pieces already. Likewise, the infamous tones aren't anywhere near as hard to get your head round than people claim. A far as i'm concerned, the hardest thing about learning the language here in China, is that most words have no resemblance to european words.

Also, Just one month into China and the weather is beginning to change. Although it is a little warmer here in Kuitun, we experienced a change of 30 to 5 in a matter of days when we visited Urumqi (more on Urumqi later...wasn't my favourite trip in the world). We expected the sudden change, but traveling to a colder city on the day the weather began to change ended up being a shock. So that surely leads on nicely to our trip to Urumqi (wulumqi as the Chinese call it). We had to take a short trip to the capital of Xinjiang province with Kai in order to sort out our health check and some work permit paperwork. The health check was fine, despite the nightmare stories we all heard. That said, some volunteers this year didn't have a particularly nice time of it i believe. For me, it was a pretty standard check-up with the added bonus of getting to find out I'm actually healthier than I thought. The work permit caused a huge bit of stress though. There may have been a little bit of confusion over work permits and Visas. Kai assumed that because the work permit deadline had just been reached, the Visa had also expired. This wasn't the case, but we had a panic filled day where we thought we were living in China illegally from then on. A call to PT saved the day, as we found out for certain that our visas were in fact still valid. Extreme stress averted!

Hopefully our next trip somewhere will be more pleasant the Urumqi... And talking of the next trip, that next trip starts today! between the 1st and the 5th October, China celebrates national day, so we have got ourselves a lovely 4 day break in X'ian. This particular holiday is as busy as it gets other than spring festival, and we may have forgotten that when we were organising the trip. The hostels were all booked, so we've had to book at hotel instead. This means we're paying double what we should have, which is just a tad annoying. Also, in regards to the trains, it means we only have sleepers on the way there - hard seat on the way back. This would be fine, if the journey wasn't 35 hours long. To put into perspective, the longest train journey i've ever been on went from the south of Germany all the way to stockholm, crossing 2 and a half countries, and that was only 19 hours. China is big. That's all there is to say about the length of this trip. More on X'ian when I get back!

I could, and perhaps should write more, but for now I have to get ready to catch a train to X'ian tonight. So just to wrap up this post, one month on in China and everything keeps getting better. This is still the beginning of this year long adventure, and its so great to know there is so much more to still experience. X'ian tomorrow, the bitter xinjiang winter, spring festival and the Chinese new year, and of course all the surprises left in Kuitun. Every day is an adventure here.