A month of fun and laughter in Baiyin

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Life in Baiyin is fantastic! Its been an amazing first month.

Just after my last blog Carole arrived, my new flatmate and school buddie. And she's awesome! Been invited out for dinner and lunches calmed down a little, although we still have been invited to some delicious meals both at people's houses and restaurants. Karakoe has become a weekly part of our lifes, Ben and Myself were invited along with Ben's landlord and friends to KTV for an evening of singing and eating, we enjoyed it so much we took Carole and Bob there a few nights later. They have a choice of English songs and for where we are it is a pretty good selection, and it makes a great night out rather than just sitting and talking to eachother. With there only been four of us in the town that spend so much time together we spend enough time talking rubbish so karakoe is a nice change.

School is going great and lessons are fun, the kids are lovely and keep bringing you gifts so different kinds from origami to food. I did a karakoe lesson for my senior classes which was great fun, now its been decided at the end of every lesson we will all sing a song or two. Unfortunately I can't do it for my Juniors as there are no computers in the classrooms.

Ben had been talking and talking about wanting a dog since we arrived, I thought he had realised it probably wasnt the best idea. All until I recieved a text saying someone wanted to meet me, arriving at Bens to find a little dog named Mo. He's adorably cute, for the first two days Carole and myself ended up looking after him, then we sent him back home!

Jane organised a trip for us all to go on to the Yellow River, it was stunning! there is no other way to describe it! We left at 9 in the morning in two pre-arranged taxi's, the 5 of us and one of the teachers from school number 10. The drive took around an hour and a half through the mountains which was a beautiful start to our day.

After collecting our tickets we drove down to the river and boarded our pig skin raft! (The drive between collecting our tickets and the river was by far the best part of the drive). You could actually tell it was pig skin as it was still in the origional shape of the pig. We floated down the river for arond 15minutes until we came to where our adventure would begin. At first we got completely crowded by Chinese tourists wanting their photo taken with us and just photos of us in general pulling and pushing us everywhere. When we finally pulled ourselves away from them and that really did take some doing we headed up to where we could take a donkey cart. Garrat wanted to do the horse riding instead so Ben did that along with him, the rest of us jumped on the back of a donkey cart for the 30minute trip up through the famous mountains. The Chinese believe all of the zodiac signs are found in the mountians, we saw a few, one clearly looked like a gorrila's head and one of the walls looked like it had many 'pictures' of animals in it. Once we got as far as we could with the donkey and horse's we got harrassed again but took a kart upto the highest point of the mountain we could. Then it was just a short walk up some steps for the most amazing view over the top of the mountains! A couple were having their pre-wedding photos taken and we spent a few minutes up there admiring everything. Then it was time to head back down, on the way down I drove Bens quad bike followed by the horse riding. The horse riding was the perfect way to go back down, you see things that you don't see in the back on a donkey cart, and as it was a perfect sunny day it made it all the better. There were no other foreigners there apart from us, it felt very rural and unknown, a hidden beauty.

Once we arrived at the bottom we got collected in the cars and taken to a restaurant for lunch. The restaurant was dead quiet and probably doesn't even get guests everyday, we had to wait over an hour for the meal and ended up having a very late lunch (about 4o'clock) but it was delicious, we had eight different dishes and all of them were really good. Then it was time to head back to Baiyin, Ben and myself had been invited out for dinner at his landlords home. We were going to be eating HotPot which is delicious but probably not the best idea after having such a late lunch. However we were going to have to eat and we were going to have to eat a lot! In the end it turned out fine and the meal was delicious again of course. A perfect day in China!

At the beginning of October we have 9days off school for National Day so Ben and Myself have planned a trip on to the Silk Road, we are only doing the part in China, but I'm o so excited!! Its going to be fantastic, amazing, stunning and more.

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