Happy New Year!

Chinese New Year kicks ass! It’s exactly how you’d imagine it and more! I got in at 5am buzzing. Even today, after everything that went on last night, fireworks are still lighting up the sky! I had no idea when it even turned 12am. Fireworks were non stop all night. I took some pictures and a video in order to try to do it some justice, but it doesn’t. The deafening noises and variety of fireworks can’t be caught on camera.

Forget safety too. They are set off all around you, bits of shells from the rockets hit you and smoke surrounds you. I could barely breathe with all the smoke! Often, when walking down the road you have to walk around fire crackers being set off right there in the middle of the pathway. There’s no other way to avoid it other than stay as many metres away as you can and run past during the breaks in fire. The Chinese would just stand right by them and dance around them, set them off right by cars and electrical wires.

Truly amazing. I want to come back every year for that one night. Unforgettable. I just don’t know how else to describe it.

I’ll fill you in on the past couple of days too. Time is very precious out here at the moment. My lessons for my Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) course have started. We work from 8.45am-5pm, with breaks for lunch and to stretch our legs. My first lesson was straight in there with Phonetics and Phonology. It was supposed to be about classroom management but my teacher (Neil) is a real intellectual and went straight for the complicated stuff. I’ve actually just finished the homework he set us too.

The food here...yeah. It’s not like home at all, not that i expected it to be, but it’s very different. None of your prawn crackers and spring rolls and the like. But they do have some gorgeous food out here. Just today I had this beef noodles dish, gorgeous. I washed it down with a lovely cu of hot citrus tea. I can say with about 70% assurance that I have not eaten dog. I can say with 0% assurance that I have not eaten snake. It was chewy.

I am learning the odd phrase in Chinese but it’s difficult to remember it all when so much else is going on. Next week I start Mandarin lessons though so that should help me focus on learning it.

The girl on my flight out here, Heather, has been struggling a great deal with homesickness, culture shock and the food. She’s decided she wants to go home so I’ll be saying bye to her shortly, as soon as she can get a flight. She’ll have lost her money which she paid for the entire thing but she’s made up her mind to go because she can’t see herself being happy if she stays any longer. It’s a shame. A real shame. We’d been getting on quite well so I’ll miss her being around.

(A note that only my mum will care about...) Hi Mummy! I did my first lot of washing today. I’ve discovered the art of guessing what the Chinese writing says and going for it. Clothes in, powder in on top (shaken out from my bag of ariel powder because I have no way to measure it out), comfort in the strange leaky drawer, shut lid and hope for the best. It went very well; everything is still the same size as before. It’s now all hanging out to dry in my conservatory/balcony area. I did a black wash and a colour wash. Oh and on an aside note – all the public toilets are those hole in the ground toilets, squatting is the new sitting, so I’m told. The strange thing is though, they all flush! Why not just stick a seat over the hole?? At least the toilet in my apartment is a normal one. Oh and it’s a toilet paper in the bin rather than flushed down the toilet situation too. – Maybe I should’ve emailed this instead...whatever.

Today I went to a Festival Fair for the New Year. It was absolutely packed. Everyone was squished up against each other despite how massive the place was! Insane and nakkering! But good fun! Everyone’s taken it easy today because we’ve all been getting up early everyday and then staying out till 4am Saturday night and 5am Sunday night. We’re all having early nights tonight because we have our second day of lessons tomorrow. I don’t think we’ll go out that late again until Thursday for my birthday. We plan to go to either Mix or Vix – two local clubs that night. I look forward to it. Everyone’s really up for celebrating it with me, which I find very sweet.

Last night we ended up in a bar on the main bar street where a band were playing. They were a very talented bunch to be fair. Although their range of music was hilarious. Bon Jovi, Bob Marley, Greenday, Rianna, Evenessence. The main singer was a Chinese guy with dreadlocks! But yeah, a great night out.

I will end this now because I have no doubts that you’re probably bored to tears. I must mention though that my roommate Nawwal is, it must be said, the best roommate ever! And! She had a special treat today when a guy she thinks is very pleasant looking, emptied out her washing machine full of underwear so he could use it! We think he stole her yellow socks as a souvenir though. :S

Love to you all xxx