When coming to China, there is general agreement that you shouldn't talk about politics or religion too much. Guess what i've found to be two of the favourite topics of conversation between Chinese friends and myself?

People just assume that I am christian because I live in the UK. As an agnostic, who spent some time studying religion, it can put me in a little bit of an odd situation. For example, who would have thought that I would meet the only Christian pastor in Kuitun? Or that the pastor just happened to be the uncle of one of mine and Marcus' best friends in Kuitun, the infamous Jasper?

Well, i'm now rather well aquainted with John the Kuitun pastor, having spent some time talking to him a few weeks back, and now bumping into him again today. Previously he had, like many before him, attempted to convert me to christianity. We had a good chat about the religion, which was something I definitely did not expect to be doing in China, and he finished by saying he hoped I had found God by next time I saw him.

I'm afraid I haven't found God (I refuse to call God 'him' for certain reasons), yet, John.

However, I am apparently going to get hold of a copy of the Bible which is written in both English and Chinese, which will be pretty cool.

Religion, as I said, was not a topic I expected to talk about in China, just like I didn't expect to be discussing politics regularly. One surprise is the number of people in China who know about the leading figures in UK politics. What is more interesting however is the surprise of some people to find out that parties like the UK communist and socialist parties aren't popular. My favourite comment on the topic was told to me by one of the volunteers in Gansu. One of the teachers in his office exclaimed in confusion, after finding out that the UK communist party was not very popular, "but the communist party is popular, communism is popular by it's nature" - a little paraphrasing went on there, but that's roughly the idea.

We have talked about politics with many people around Kuitun, but luckily, other than the occasional complaining of how awful all the leading parties are in the UK currently, we never talk about politics in a negative light. In fact, for many things, I have felt very impressed by what i've observed of the Chinese system.

I feel a little cautious of going into details on these topics, (there is much more I could write) but I felt it was something well worth talking about on the blog.

Now for the Project trust staff visit!

Tom and Ingrid from PT were here on saturday to check up on how we are doing over here in 中国. It was great to see some of the guys from Coll over here, with this time the staff being in the new place, and us two volunteers being the ones at home. There were one or two formalities during the day, but all in all it was a pretty informal meet-up.

As with any visit from someone important in China, a banquet was thrown in PT's honour. Yet again, there was no escape from the Baijiu. Tom and Ingrid escaped the horrors of China's favourite liqour, but us now being locals meant we didn't have any escape cards to play really.

As usual, the food was fantastic, but we were a little mean. Ingrid said to us before we went to choose the dishes "please don't choose any strange things". So naturally we ordered horse as one of the dishes! For those in the UK who got very worked up about the horse meat scandal, you can take solace in the fact that it is genuinely a very very nice meat. Even if that doesn't excuse the whole false advertising side of things.

The fun thing for me at this particular banquet, was that it was my first try at giving a toast in Chinese as well as English. Ingrid and Tom seemed rather impressed, but it was fairly simple Chinese I was using. Nevertheless, I guess it can be heralded as an achievement language learning-wise!

My school wasn't open, being a weekend, so we only had a chance to visit the high school. I hadn't realised quite how large the campus is at the high school, despite it being right next door to our flat. We spent a fair bit of time looking at some very special rocks the school owns. They were found by students on a geography trip, and have ancient khazakh paintings over them. That's a pretty cool find for a school trip.

Ingrid wanted to have a rest by the time we had finished dinner (at our favourite Uighur restuarant, the mayflower), but we took Tom over to meet Jasper. I'm sure he had an experience there. Tom was even lucky enough to meet Gina, the girl who was a volunteer with PT last year that stayed in the area, still teaching English. Her birthday celebrations happened to be on the same day as the PT visit. I wouldn't be surprised if that is one of the first times where PT have come on a visit, only to find that a volunteer from last year was still in the area!

Tom and Ingrid left this morning, and i'm ashamed to say I missed seeing them off, as my alarm on my phone failed to go off. I woke up 5 minutes after they were supposed to be leaving the hotel. So instead, I can only hope that they have a good journey on into Gansu and that they enjoy visiting the other volunteers over China!

So the next couple of days will most likely be focussed on the very special lesson I have been busy planning over the last couple of days. I will be celebrating 'international education week' this week at school and I'm really looking forward to seeing how it goes. I have a pretty exciting project linked into this week, which I hope to explain over the next couple of days, so keep reading!