Considering I am in fact in China to teach English, it seems like a good idea to actually write about my experiences of Chinese schools so far. I have been teaching for over a month now, and i'll be completely honest, i still find it unbelievably difficult. Let me tell you some highlights so far... Lets start with some little bits and pieces before any stories. My classes vary from around 40 to 55 students, and at first this seemed pretty intimidating. It turns ...

As our first holiday with a length longer than a day, we were naturally all very excited to get away for a bit. And what better city than X'ian, labeled by some as China's most cultural city. Made famous for the terracotta army, it's certain that they aren't the only thing to go to X'ian for. My first thought on X'ian on arrival was slight disappointment at how 'un-chinese' it felt to me. As a big city, even by Chinese standards, X'ian has been hit hard by the h...

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 th...

2 weeks into living in Kuitun, it's about time i wrote a little about it. Right now, the very short NW China autumn appears to be starting, meaning I have maybe a month of warm weather now before the dramatic change to snow and extreme negative degrees C temperatures. Kuitun, despite being in the middle of a desert, is a much greener city than I expected. the average street is lined with trees on both sides - which is great news as up until recently, the weathe...

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 lo...