Dumplings, car crash, police check, stolen phone..your average weekend in China

So this seems to be a 2 week occurrence, when I finally get the time and patience to write this blog! Anyway although I have loved teaching the kids here, who are incredible to me. I have had some of the most memorable and great weekends travelling China on my own and visiting my friends near by!Natalie and Zoe, who teach at the school about 20km away from me are always so welcoming and offer me a bed to stay over! I think they could tell that I was nearly at breaking point when they met up with me in the first week so were quick to invite me over to their apartment to stay for the weekend! Their school is so great. It was nice to delve further into the mountains and go their school.
It's smaller than mine but everyone is so nice and friendly and the school is literally built on the side of a mountain (fun hill climbing anyone?!) We went to the market on the Saturday morning with some students and learnt how to say all the crazy Chinese names for vegetables and meat! We got some pork, onion, salt and pastry so the students could teach us the traditional way to make Chinese dumplings!! They were so easy, just mince meat in the pastry and wrapped in their parcel and then boiled for a few minuets and then BAM, delicious meal on the table! So great! As well as cooking we watched some movies and just had some English conversations which was so refreshing after my panic attack inducing week of NO English!... Although I am starting to slowly grasp Mandarin, which is so so so fun to learn!So after this weekend I got back to my school and planned my following weekend trip away to some more volunteers down in the south of China in a place called Simao or also known as Puer.
It's where the most famous tea in China is made. The journey was crazy long, around 6 hours on a smoke filled coach, and to top it all off, it was night time and I was on my own with my English only speaking mind! To say I was nervous is an understatement! I thought I would sit at the back of the bus for some extra room, but ended up sitting next to some old me who sat the whole journey smoking a bong. They literally took the whole 'cool kids sit at the back' to a new level. I actually think I may have got high just sitting there. It's funny how you can make friends alone, in the Chinese mountains, as long as there are some drug's being pumped into the air! Well 6 hours later, I stumbled off the bus after arriving at, what I hoped!, Simao. I finally managed to get to Puer Yi Zhong, the school where Becca and Odette teach. I dropped my bag off and went straight from their place to a local bar that the lads, Adam and Lawrence, had strangely called 'The Locker' ran by communist China loving locals. Shisha pipes, good booze and snooker... it felt like I was home!!So I spent most of the weekend meeting the guys in Simao for food and drinks. We also climbed 'Chashan' meaning 'Tea Mountain'. Although it was tough, we got the most incredible view of the city from high in the mountains. It was definitely a breath taking moment that really made me realise where I was and how far away from home I am...but at that moment, I couldn't imagine being anywhere else. It was so surreal, it felt like home, and thats exactly what China is to me now...home.
So after an amazing weekend down in the south, it was time to head back up north to my home town. Yuxi. The bus journey was even more exciting on the way back. I can tick off 'being on a bus that crashes' and 'being searched by the police' off my list to do in China, as that's exactly what happened on the way home. That was fun all alone, oh, and to top it all of, someone stole my phone on the bus! So an epic 8 1/2 hours later I finally arrived back at Yuxi and just dropped my bags and went to bed. It was the most draining, dangerous and interesting journey of my life!!So as you can see, I teach in the school, but I do so much more when I actually get to travel the mountains of China and meet everyone. Next week I will head down into the jungles of Xishuangbanna to celebrate the Dai people traditional 'Water Festival'. Basically a big excuse for huge street parties and get drenched in water. So I'll let you know how that goes! Check out my facebook page for some cool pictures of where I am! 

Yuxi, Home Sweet Home

So this update is long over-due but I have been so busy these past few weeks it's so hard to find the time to update this. Anyways, after my week long teaching course in Kunming I finally was picked up by a personal car to take me to the school I will be teaching at in China. My school is called ' Yuxi No.1 Middle School', its the top school in the area and possibly in my province, Yunnan. When I first arrived I was pretty overwhelmed at the size of the school, number of students (over 3500) and the most incredible mountains everywhere. Yuxi is a pretty urban area for countryside China, the place is pretty cool, lots of markets and things to see and the people are great. Although I am getting a little tired of people constantly staring at me and asking for photo's! I suppose that comes with being the only white person for about 100km (excluding some of my fellow volunteers).

So when I got into my appartment I was pretty shocked, the size was fine, I had to give it a pretty good clean, but the lack of internet and a working landline was a little too much to take. It broke me down being on my own in such a remote area. The first few days here were, in all honesty, hell. I have never felt so homesick and alone. It was one of the hardest thing's I have ever had to deal with, I know that when you read this you'll probably just think I was over reacting, but imagine having no one to talk to in your native language, not understanding anything anyone says and not being able to read basic road signs. It was so overwhelming it made me not want to leave the safety of my flat - or so I had convinced myself.

The students were incredible, on the second day there was a knock at the door with some students wanted to take me out to dinner, and although feeling pretty low I jumped at the chance to spend some time with people....and from that first meal I havn't had a single day where I have been alone. They have become such amazing friends of mine that show me so much of the culture and teach me the language. That's the experience that I wanted and why I came out here.

I also got the oppertunity to go to a traditional Chinese family reunion party at a local flat, which was fantastic. I finally got to see the 'real' China and they kindly showed me around the City, what Yuxi has to offer and gave me advise on how to deal with the homesickness. One of the women in the family has been on an exchange to England when she was my age so she gave me some great advice.

So after the first couple of days I finally got into teaching at the school. In the first lesson I may have taken advantage of the Chinese students not understanding my sarcasm and asked them to adress me only as King Lewis, which lasted a whole hour until I finally cracked! ha, I didn't realise how much har work goes into teaching one lesson, since being here I have so much more respect for my teachers wish I payed a bit more attention.

So there you have it, my first few days on my own in China, I will put some pictures up soon and update a post about the awesome weekend I had! Come back soon!

England-Hong Kong-Kunming

It's taken me this long to finally get onto blogspot in China, the filter system is pretty epic and really hard to get around! Anyway on to more important things....I MADE IT TO CHINA! I met all of the guys going with me on the morning of February 21st. All absolutly knacked but more than excited to get going on the trip. We first said our teary good byes to our parents at Heathrow airport and anxiously waited to board our flight to Hong Kong. This was my first long haul flight without my family, so you can imagine how nervous I was. But all in all the flight was a really smooth 12 hour journey. It took us nearly 6 hours to fly over China, which just puts everything into perspective and how huge this country is. When we finally landed in Hong Kong, we were all soooo sleepy we were practically walking zombies, but zombies with an apetite! Becca, Joe and I decided that since we were in China is was apropriate to order some crazy chinese food. So we found a place that served some noodles. How ever, they did not have anything that was really on the menu and simply pointed at what was available. So we had what they chose....BIG mistake. Upon collecting our food we found we had ordered some freak beef noodles with fish soup on the side. We ate it, as we thought we should try and get used to it! but wow did I regret it...I haven't been able to eat beef noodles since. So on top of the awful noodles, it turned out that out flight had been delayed by 2 hours, which meant we would be in the airport for 7 hours....fun!We finally got on a small plane and headed to mainland china to a place called Kunming in the province of Yunnan. The hotel was...acceptable! Here we spent the 8 days learning Chinese and exploring the city. We were also prepared on how to teach English to the Chinese students we would soon be heading to. It was an amazing week. We got to see so many things like the Golden Temple and even showed off our singing skills at the world famous KTV's!!

We also got some free time, so Becca, Zoe, Odette and I decided to spend the day heading down to the Chinese markets and then rent a boat at the water park located in the centre of the city...think Central Park, New York...but with lots of water and on a smaller scale.

Yes that really is real life chicks in China!

So it was an amazing week full of crazy food, experiences and an unbelievable amount of laughs. Its crazy how you can become such great friends with people you have only known for a week. But when you're placed in such a foreign environment you only have each other for support!It was an incredible week and I've now arrived at my school here in Yuxi, but I'll do a post on that in a few days...Chinese internet continues to slow my life down!