nemily

Travelling - Stop 4 - Jinghong... read more

Travelling - 2nd Stop - Guiyang So, this train is our longest one yet - a full 24hrs. Andrew insisted on the top bunks (his favirote) this time and I discovered I violently dislike them! You can't see out the window at all! :( so when not sleeping I sat down by the windowreading - and also playing with some very sweet little chinese girls - must have been about 2 and 5yrs old, running up and down the carriage (them not me!) and drawing pictures on my e-reader. More than enough to keep me occupied! We arrived into Guiyang at 7pm and found the hotel, with the help of a very friendly taxi driver who would not believe we couldn't speak chinese, and carried on talking to us before failing to find our hotel and ... read more

November So, we’re just at the end of November now and the temperature has dropped! Around -2 to -5 during the day usually (I have bought a very warm down jacket) and we’ve even had a fair amount of snow, which was very pretty, though not enough to make snowmen or sledge (we could try the mountains behind us if it does snow a lot some time, though we’ll probably end up killing ourselves - they’re steep! but we might try…). I have all my new classes and most of them are great, though a lot bigger than before, (I had 9 in one class before and now I have about 29 in every class). Being the end of November , it’s also Thanksgiving time for all our American friends here so we joined in the ... read more

Travelling So, we have just had our first solo travelling experience in China. All went well, though bits felt very adventurous! Sarah, a friend from downstairs (in our stairwell) came with us and we headed out to Tianshui in eastern Gansu, about 3hrs on the train. Booking our tickets was the first trial as we don't know enough Chinese to sort out tickets and Chinese train stations are insane - v. busy and lots of pushing and shouting :s Andrew had the great idea of writing the details of the tickets we wanted out in Chinese characters from the phrase book and it worked perfectly! so we were feeling rather smug until we had to sprint for and then cram into the train, we ended up in the restaurant cart (for an extra fee) the whole ... read more

A few weeks off before term starts We spend the next few weeks of freedom before term starts exploring and sightseeing in Lanzhou, climbed 'White Pagoda hill' and drank Chinese tea looking out over Lanzhou, climbed a huge hill in 'Wu Quan park' and nearly suffocated getting up the stairs - apparently the high altitude affects my anaemia issues though hopefully I'll acclimatise soon, great views from the top though! and then took the chairlift back down (the wrong way round to do it but we couldn't find where it started to get it up the hill :( We went to the Gansu Province Museum which Andrew loved and I thought was moderately interesting, helped by the English language labelling. Mostly we improved a little of our Chinese and got better at ordering food in restaurants ... read more