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!