I'm here!

---

I am here! I had a wonderful flight with Virgin Atlantic, hardly anyone on the plane so lots of leg room, although I don't think I will ever be able to get used to sleeping on a plane.

Had a nice 2 hour long car journey to Zhangjiagang from Shanghai thanks to Jane and her driver who met me at the airport. I was a bit worried that they would be late but they were there!

Then I got to my apartment and it is wonderful! Exactly how it looks in the pictures, and I even have a TV, however it is not possible to put this in my room due to the aerial cable being being very long and connected to another room and blah blah blah! I think I'm still a bit jet lagged, I feel very tired right now, but that could be because I was out very late last night.

I got a few hours sleep on the plane, and then a few hours when I got into my apartment, then I got shown around the school and the school is amazing! Then I went home and got some more sleep. Then I got woken up 5 hours into my sleep by one of my fellow teachers Adam ringing me and asking me if I wanted to join him, Chris and I think the other one's name was Simon for drinks and the local foreigners bar Malone's. I agreed and proceeded to have a fantastic night! There is a chinese girl called Lucy who served us and spent most of our time there with us, she spoke fairly decent English and she was the perfect opportunity for me to practice my Mandarin on, and I got on fairly well. The other teachers were quite impressed with my fairly basic Mandarin and one has even asked me to help him with it, which I shall do on Friday.

We spent a few hours in Malone's then moved on to another bar just down the road...Victoria's bar I think it was called, they didn't speak much English at all there but they seemed to love us and I learnt a very fun drinking game that involved having 5 dice each and blah blah blah! I'm so glad I did not drink alcohol during that game last night, I would have ended up incredibly intoxicated due to me being utter crap at it. So I just had a bit of coke every time I lost, and then had more coke when the bar maids raised their glasses for another GAMBEI, which is Chinese for Cheers! I have no idea why they insisted on doing that so often! We spent a few hours there aswell, Chris got incredibly drunk, Adam got quite drunk and started talking a lot and I was just....Reasonably awake and having a pretty cool time. At one point the barmaids got me and Adam on the dance floor and tried to get us to dance, and so Adam and I taught them the Macarena which they seemed to enjoy!

Then after that we went and spent ages waiting for some take away to be cooked, and then headed home where I proceeded to call home from Adam and Chris' apartment because for some reason the phone in my apartment does not like the code I enter for my phone card. I think I finally got to sleep at about 5am Chinese time, and then had to wake up 3 and a half hours later to come to the school to be shown around town by Jane. She showed me some place where I could find noodles as I hadn't had any breakfast and my god, I paid 6 Yuen for a big big big bowl of noodles, some strange herbal soup and a very nice cup of chinese tea...6 yuen being about 40p or something ridiculous like that! I am very happy! I can stuff my face for next to nothing!!!

Then Jane just showed me around Walking Street which is where all the shops are, and there are a lot of shops and all of them are very colorful and I will go and have a look around later on and probably pop back to Malone's to practice some more Mandarin!

So all in all, so far I've been having a pretty good time. I was quite shocked when I first got here, because then I did suddenly realise I am on the other side of the world. But to be honest, apart from the huge amounts of Chinese people, everything being written in Chinese and the distinct lack of White people, things aren't that different from home. It all looks the same and
it's all quite modern and very green. I felt a bit homesick when I first arrived, as I felt quite lonely, but that passed as soon as I got to the school and met the teachers. I think I'm going to have an awesome time here! I just have to wait and see what the work is like first.

I think it's time I went and got some more sleep...Or I might wander around the pretty garden that's near my house. I'll update this again soon and try to add some pictures. Bye bye!

---