Just a quicky before we set off travelling!

Brad came on the last day of my parents visit eager to meet one of the blogging mums that leave many a message on his getjealous blog (/ukair) and Alan his partner joined us the following day! After seeing my family off at the station we chilled out and did nothing for a while. The following days were much the same hanging out in beer gardens playing poker occupied us mostly as Suse and I finished our last couple of days teaching.

We've now completely finished teaching now and it is sad to have finally finished but i am very glad at the same time. It was so worth while at times when we had fun playing games, laughed at jokes or me making fun of a cocky students or when they actually enjoyed learning something i was teaching! Of course it had its down points to mainly when 2 Class 11 boys set fire to something in their desk, Class 5 boys skived my class then brazenly walked right past me coming down the stairs after their lesson, a class 5 girl giggling all through my lessons even when i was telling her off, class 5 being generally dead inside, maybe just class 5 in general! When a class 3 students RUINED Simon says but they are actually very minor incidents (bar class 5) and many of my classes i look forward a lot to teaching, Class 4, Class 2 even the more boisterous ones like class 6,7, 8, and 9 can be great fun sometimes if energy sapping! Class 7 developed the strange habit of shouting (as a class), "hmmm cherry" after everything i said or whenever anyone won a competition! It was amusing!

This last week before we set off travelling we've spent doing our community report. This is a report that we must write for PT and has to be roughly 40-50 pages long (well actually doesn't have to be but ours are going to be!) Inbetween doing this which is VERY time consuming we had to go and have a photo shoot with a teacher from our school who wanted to take us to some scenic spots in tianshui and take photos. Rather dubious about the whole thing we excepted the offer and were surprise when we actually had a good time! The photographers and teacher were a great laugh and an english teacher called sam also came with us and brought his cousin. We went to a waterfall near Maiji mountain and it was soo nice seeing water again (our water has been out for 2 weeks i.e. comes on at midnight and goes off at 6am!) and see green stuff because tianshui and the rest of gansu is sooo dry! After climbing up to the pagoda on top and carving our names into it (they told us to!) we headed for lunch where we had a big plate of chicken and practiced drawing ourselves (my drawing of Suse was better than hers!). Then we headed to a lake about half and hour away and got a pedalo out for half and hour. It was hilarious as the photographers were all in another boat and whenever we passed them we felt like celebrities 'cause all 3 whipped out their cameras to get a shot of us! We shared a pedalo wi sam and his cousin and we all sang songs to one another!

After that we had to get back as Suse had arranged to meet some of her students who come from the country side to go and see their accomodation on the hill behind our school. We were late but they'd waited so we headed up the STEEP hill behind our house and saw 3 different rooms of three different students. Each room had a bed, desh, wardrobe and gas stove with cooking utensils. They all cook for themselves breakfast, lunch and dinner in between being in school for 9 and a half hours everyday and studying for an extra 3 or 4 hours on top of that...EVERY DAY!!!

That was sunday. On Tuesday afternoon we went to visit our neighbour Rong Mei's hometown. We got a bus which dropped us off about 1/2 an hour outside tianshui by some fields. We then followed an irrigation channel for half an hour before we reached her grandparents village called Wei nan. We went to her grandparents house and the neighbours cooked us dinner. Then Rong Mei's sis returned and we went for a walk up the nearby hill to the temple at the top, passing the railway line north and a cat stuck in a pit on the way up. Suse was just about to jump in and save the cat when it managed to scrabble out! Darkness fell quickly because of no street lamps and so we headed down a steep path home, stopping to glance at the primary school on the way. They get all their water from a couple of taps in the village and we saw people filling up at these on our way home. Suse and i went to bed quickly pretty knackered. The next morning we were feed some cold, slimey noodles for breakfast- not my favourite!- then we had to do a photo shoot with her grandparents and neighbours. Finally we started to head home and got back to tianshui at lunchtime. Really nice to see her hometown and village life outside tianshui.

Tomorrow we head off on our travels and i'll briefly outline where we are headed here!

Wudu-13th July- to visit Danni for the last time

Jiu Zhai Gou Lakes in N.Sichuan

Songpan in N.Sichuan- horse trek

Kunming- Yunnan province- around the 25th of July (maybe find a cinema and see Harry Potter 6!!!!!!!!!!! SOOOOO EXCITED!!!)

Lijiang-Yunnan

Tiger leaping gorge-Yunnan

After this we will make our way back to Tianshui getting back around the 8th of August. Then on the 14th of August we will head to Beijing with Braderly and on the 20th we fly back to London!

Enjoy and hopefully next update will be wudu!