The first amazing week of many in Baiyin

---

Wow, what an amazing first week in Baiyin, so much has happened! The people so friendly and welcoming it feels impossible to repay them. We are constanly been invited for meals, sometimes 3 a day and we have to apologise and posepone one of them. As we are the only westerners in the city and they never see tourists (although it is a great place to live there really isn't anything for tourists to come here for) it's special for them to be friends with the few westerners in town. So for the moment at least everyone wants to speak with us and invite us into their homes or to restaurants, they give us some really special gifts, put us on the head tables at large dinner parties and refuse to let us pay for anything point blank. The other teachers at school think we are tired because we have to teach 18 45 minutes lessons a week, thats just over 13hours of work a week! and I only have to plan two lessons per week! Its the easiest most well paid job ever, but all the eating is so tiring! And they just put more and more food into your bowl and the food just keeps coming and coming even after you possibly could not eat one more thing they are still bringing food out of the kitchen.

Luckily I'm a girl with two guys because Ben and Bob get so much pressure on them to drink and smoke and I don't even get offered most of the time : ) But its kind of amusing watching them get more and more drunk and suffering the next day : ) Today we got invited to a wedding for lunch, it wasn't a traditional Chinese wedding, much more of a western wedding in the best hotel in town. It was nice but very quick, there was the ceremony while we were all seated at our tables and as soon as the ceremony was over people ate and then left. Unlike most (actually all) weddings I've been to in Asia they were an older couple and were happy, laughing and joking as they married. The food was amazing, so much food.

School is going really well, I teach 12 Junior 1 classes and 6 Senior 1 per week each of upto 80 students. This week has been great, the students are quite good at English and the lessons were always good fun if not sometimes a little noisy! But the students are amazing and for most of them it is the first time they have actually had a native English speaker to interact with. I constantly get asked if I have a boyfriend or am married, they then try to marry me off to their brother/ cousin/ friend / anyone they know that is single and within 10years of me. Some of the students like to touch my arms because they have hair on them and theirs don't and others just want to everything about me including my opinion on how beautiful they are (after they have said I'm beautiful and my eyes are pure! lol), what I think about Japan, America and China. Really I get asked some very strange questions which at first were sometimes surprising but now I have my answers ready. The teachers are great and it was teachers day friday so I had thursday afternoon and all day friday off so I still haven't actually worked a full week, we also get a week off at the end of the month. They have a lot of holidays in China!

On teachers day I casually went for a walk through the park in my day off clothes and got a phone call asking if I had eaten lunch, I said I hadn't so got asked to meet them at the school as the teachers were going out for a teachers day lunch, when we arrived at the restaurant there were 200 teachers all in suits and formally dressed ready to have a delicious Chinese banquet! But now I'm getting used to been invited out for dinner NOW, not in half an hour or an expected invitation but now. So I've decided I'm just going to eat fruit when I'm hungry so I'm always ready.

Chinese have a thing with karaoke and Ben's landload but him a system into his appartment but saturday we were invited to his landload's home for dinner (the most delicious food ever!) and obviously after dinner it was karaoke. This mostly involved Ben and Myself (completely sober) sat in their living room with microphones singing most of the night. It was awesome!

I'm so happy that I ended up in Baiyin, its a fantastic place to live and you find yourself constantly smiling. I'm really looking forward to the year ahead, its so exciting! But now's so unbelieveable too! : )

---