3rd year in a nutshell

So a year ago I was freaking out big time about leaving for a year, and despite the fact I had possibly the worst start to it all, I still managed to make this year the best of my life. My year abroad is done, thank you Malaga and Shanghai, both of you were incredible.

People keep asking which I preferred, first or second semester, but it's so difficult to pick as the life I had in each was completely different...

Malaga had our beautiful friendship group, we travelled and bonded so much. Friends became best friends instantly and stuck by me. Our apartment and that incredible freedom and lifestyle. Giovanni, his Russian girlfriend and Lukas the dog. Uni was useless but the beach was great, the weather was always great and we ran through fountains fully clothed. Robert boyds and Ektor played a huge part, likewise did Sala Pizza, Malapizza and Tapas. Sala wenge, Sala white and Sala gold. Brian and the pub crawl! Soggy microwaved pizzas from Mercadona Merca-do-naaaaa. I fell in love with Mojitos in Plaza de la Merced, eating seafood and drinking Cava and Fanta Limon. The chino over the road and fresh baguettes for 50c, making salami and cheese sandwiches. El palo and the beach, how we all became a family. The girls made Malaga Malaga, and the lazy Spanish lifestyle fitted me perfectly.

Shanghai was so big and scary. But a great place to live. We lived so differently, we worked hard in the week and partied hard at the weekends (and the evenings). We drank free champagne in the tallest bar in the world, and walked along the bund like it was home. We shopped at the fake market as locals and bought too many things for a dirt cheap price. If only luggage wasn't a restriction I would have brought so much more back! Dorms were boring and the beds were ridiculous, but the food and cost of everything was perfect. Chinese food is ridiculously cheap, from 65p for a meal in the canteen to only £10 for a really nice meal out. Had a huge international friend group and class, and a lovely boyfriend who took me on lovely dates. Didn't even miss home as much as I'd predicted, it definitely felt like I should have stayed soo much longer!

So, I can't choose between the two!

America, Canada, Ireland, Wales, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Sweden, Holland, Belgium, Poland, China, Australia , Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Russia, Morocco, India. New Zealand. South Africa. A collection of nationalities I met along the way, I feel so lucky to have friends in all corners of the world that I may travel to one day. Will always be a big fan of international love!

       Adios!    再见!    Bye!

The end

I feel once again very neglectful towards my blog, not updating it since Beijing was rather silly on my part as now I'm home in the UK and realised just how much I didn't write about over the last month and a half in Shanghai. How to summarise that? I guess as you would assume, a lot of nights out, cheap food and hangovers in classes. But otherwise it went something like this...

Had a kidney infection, that sucked, couldn't move and had to pay £250 for the pleasure of 7 tablets and a lovely chat with a doctor who was probably the most dedicated doctor. Emails aand phone calls and offers to open the surgery out of hours if I was in pain. Probably worth the £250 but I did miss the NHS at this point. I've now claimed this back though, thank god for insurance! 3rd claim of the year... They must hate me.

A day trip to Suzhou, a great group of people and a lot of scenery. Went with Hutong school people, mostly Lucas friends and then Charlee and I. We bought hats on a boat because we got ripped off. However twathat club didn't last long. We wandered round gardens and then got temporarily stranded when there wasn't enough tickets on the last train home. 

Mum visited! I made her try Chinese food and she actually enjoyed it! Biggest success. We did every sight there was to see in Shanghai except the pearl tower which I'm sad I never did. So much walking and so many pictures. Buut I had to do it once so made sense with mum! She had a great week, so did I. Highlight was seeing shanghai from 100 storeys high, lowlight possibly seeing mum start dancing to moves like jagger, by herself in the champagne bar of the 94th floor, the highest bar in the world I must add. I wanted the floor to just swallow me up. Overall a great week with Mumma in China.

Charlees birthday. Pretty crazy! Massages in the day and then our final Pubcrawl at night. Rather rather messy, everyone was such a happy drunk and it was so nice to see how many people came.

Lucas last week! The best brunch ever, ate so much I was sick but never been soo amazed by such a large choice of such incredible food. Last crazy night with the lianhua boys at Muse, so sad but always such fun. 

Revision revision revision. C ban exams were 10x worse than B ban and had the weekend after Luca left to cram for them. Absolutely crazy, downloaded a flash card system which made me learn a lot, but still much harder than the first set of exams. Sad face.

FREEDOM. Final champagne ladies night straight after exams, followed by too much drinking and eating with friends, and tooooo much shopping at the fake market again. Whoops at how much money I spent.

Packing up, incredibly sad seeing my room go from so homely to so bare. Luckily we could pay to stay a few more days. I was pretty much the last there, so I spent my final evening packing up, watching the Wimbledon final and enjoying my last Pork buns. 

And that's it. Highlights of the last 7 weeks crammed short and sweet for one final summary blog post.

Over and out! For potentially one last time...

BEIJING

The weekend before last we headed up to Beijing for a few days, our main intention was to see David Guetta performing at the Great Wall Music Festival, but we actually did more than just get wasted, and was a pretty incredible weekend...

We started off the weekend with drinks in the SWFC, Shanghai's tallest builder, aka 'The Bottle Opener', it was a Wednesday which meant free flow champagne for ladies for no cost, so couldn't really go wrong. We continued the night by heading to M1NT and luckily both Sarah and Luca got free flow wristbands, and we were on a promotors table, alcohol alcohol alcohol.

Thursday, after a number of chicken mcnuggets for breakfast we got on our 5 hour high speed train journey to Beijing and slept off the hangovers we had from the previous evening. Once we arrived and checked into the really weird hotel, with numerous stickers and a see-through shower wall door (luckily I could trust Charlee to not watch me shower) we went to grab some food with Sarah and Emma's Beijing friends. We also met up with a few girls from our uni who are studying there too, and basically began drinking, and stayed there until were the last out before heading to a club.

On Friday, we succeeded with a relatively early start for a day of being tourists. Luckily, I wasn't the only one who hadn't been to Beijing before, as both Steph and Titch, who are Sarah's friends from home hadn't been either, which meant we did a looong day of seeing sights. We went from the Temple of Heaven to Tiananmen Square, to a viewpoint over Beihei Lake where we could overlook the Forbidden City. It was all pretty pictoresque but very tiring walking around gardens and temples all morning, so we stopped for lunch, which pretty much took us all into a food coma, even though we only managed to eat 1/4 of the dumplings we ordered. That's when we attempted our good deed for the day; mission find a tramp. Unfortunately the only guy we found had no arms, and we thought it highly innapropriate to give him a bowl of dumplings and chopsticks to eat them, so we settled on leaving them next to a bin, in case the usual tramps go looking for leftovers in the trash. We climbed to the top of a viewpoint over Beihei and could see a view overlooking the forbidden city, which was pretty spectacular. However it was slightly ruined for me by the mammoth bees flying around. I'm not a fan of small bees, let alone ones this big, some of my photos even make them look like birds, so its not a surprise I was running round screaming whilst getting funny looks from the Chinese tourists.. On saturday evening we had dinner at a Korean Restaurant, and I headed home after because I felt sleep rather than alcohol would be more benefical to me before festival day!

FESTIVAL DAY! The morning started by grabbing food, buying alcohol and meeting Sarah's friends at their flat. There was literally swarms of people trying to get on the bus, it was crazy, the closer you got to the front the more squashed you became, but I got on first out of our group and managed to get 5 others with me so wasn't soo bad! We took a load of photos in the car park when we eventually arrived, bought chinese hats and finished our drinks which we werent allowed to take in. We got in and went to the toilet and it was the most vile experience of my life, I have NEVER smelt anything so bad than that big, open pit from hundreds of people before me. We all kept getting split up and I kept bumping into random people who had also travelled from Shanghai. We queued forever for hotdogs and pad £5 for them, yet when we got there there was no sausages so we just got buns and ketchup instead, not a happy moment, so instead our dinner was a pot of mini donuts. Oh so healthy. I managed to smash my chinese phone at the festival thanks to it slipping out of my hand whilst on someones shoulders, but YOLO, it was a rubbish phone anyway and I can still use it. Could have been worse, could have been my iPhone. Phewww.

Guettas performace was prettttty damn good, I got split from the others for a while because I was like an excited little child wanting to get near the front. By the end, we were all absolutely exhausted so it emptied and everyone went back on the coaches which were a mission to find and get on, this resulted with me crouching on the floor in seats of the coach with a bag on my back and hat on my head to try smuggle people on the last bus. Worked though, so can't really complain. The night ended very healthily with a McDonalds, except my stomach was not a fan of the overdose of mini donuts, chicken nuggets and alcohol, so when I got back to the hotel let's just say I wasn't feeling too special.

We got up sunday and headed to a cafe to say bye to everyone we'd met at the weekend, we then got taxis to the train station for our train trip home. This also meant more chicken nuggets. I have chicken nugget problems, and its something I learnt during this trip. The train back wasn't so bad, I studied, slept, and the usual things you do to pass time on a long distance journey. By the time we all got back we were shattered. Managed to head to Helen's for one drink with Steph, but then came straight home and slept a goood 10 hours in preparation to begin another week of boring class.

The weekend was insane and I am soo pleased we went earlier for a day of sightseeing to say I'd done it. The only thing I would do differently is to actually climb and touch the great wall, just to say I've done it, but despite this, I have no complaints. This weekend is on par with one of the best ever.

Happy days.

The final countdown

I know it sounds crazy, and 2 months still seems like such a long time, but there is now officially a countdown until home time. When you think about it it is just so surreal that after such an insane year abroad, with both ups and downs, I now have an end date to it all. I've been here for 3 months now, and have 2 to go, so looking at it like that it's not so bad, but it has flown by far too quickly.

I have just booked my final flight of the year abroad, and I shall be home on the 9th July. And to be quite honest, although I miss so much about England, my family and friends, home comforts, food, my car and my job, I just don't want to leave Shanghai just yet. Don't get me wrong, its not the kind of place I want to live forever, but 5 months just isn't quite enough to do everything I want to do here.

Confirming the flight reservation took me 10 times longer than it should have because I just kept deliberating whether I should stay or what my reasons would be for staying, but realistically I'm going to have no money and noone to travel with, so going home is my only option. I double checked with so many people asking when they were leaving to make sure I was leaving at the right time, and asked really stupid questions like is the layover in KL long enough. I mean, I have travelled before with so many connecting flights that I know it is, I was just being ridiculous. And to be honest, the last time I was in KL was a 7 hour layover and that sucked, so 2hr50m works fine this time.

I do also have window seats for both of my flights home, so every cloud has a silver lining I guess.

2 months, 2 days to go.

Gaaahhh.

Hello Summer

I realised I haven't shown my face on here for a few weeks now, and madre is getting sad she can't have updates. So, instead of sitting outside on this lovely day I am here, about to write everything for you. To be honest though, it was quite a pleasure to get back to my room and get my jeans off me, so I am currently sat with my double doors open and the breeze coming in. Probably shouldn't be complaining, because in 6 months time I will do anything to be back here. The heat is great, however one thing I am so excited for is when Mumma heads over here with all the shorts, skirts and summer dresses I stupidly left at home. Silly Lily. Once that day arrives I will probably be complaining even more about the heat, can't really win. Tianqi hen hao. I think I am going to have some weird sort of pollution tan to bring back to England in July though, but still, a tan is a tan. We've been having lunches outside cafes whilst studying and overall it has been a pretty good few weeks.

If you excuse the exams that we had last week, we have still been having a great time. Managed to actually dedicate some of my time to revision too last week, was challenged to 600 characters and battle through it! We got our results back in 3 days, which is pretty crazy if you consider how long it normally takes at home. Good news is that I passed all of my exams. For once I did best in my oral exam, getting 80%, then got 74% in writing and 68% in reading, so although its not great for Chinese people I am pretty chuffed with myself, considering I should have been revising a lot more than I did...

I kind of feel that studying and learning characters here now is coming so much faster, the speed of writing characters, the ability to use sense and guess a characters meaning, and to be able to read a lot more it is ALL improving. We moved up a class level this week as we passed our exams, and it already seems like such a big step, and extra class a week and 5 textbooks instead of one. Joy. Can't wait for this semester!

So, around revision time and bumming in the sun I have been trying to figure out what we have actually been up to? We had 3 days off this week as classes were moved to the weekend because of the public holiday, so as you would assume we drunk a lot of alcohol and went out every night!

Last week, it is worthy of a mention that for the first time we headed up to the top of the JinMao tower, you have to pay for the privelege of drinking on the top floor but the view is pretty cool. It's the second tallest building in Shanghai and planning on going up to the top of the tallest one when the Mother is visiting at the end of the month. We followed the Jinmao tower with a ladies night where all drinks are free for girls, yet still managed to get some international perverts to send a bottle of Champagne to the table, and then drinks from the boys too who didn't like having their toes trodden on. So all in all, it was a pretty drunken evening, and pretty sure that a double date at the top of the Jinmao tower will be hard to beat for a while. Especially for Charlee who got taken for a 7 course meal at the Waldorf Astoria first, despite that though, our vietnamese restaurant was still pretty good as well!

Also been on two more pub crawls, which ended as brutally as ever and went to see Zedd perform live last week for Shannon's boyfriends birthday. Table service with the best seats and soo much champagne is great until the hangover kicks in the next morning. Along with that we went Winetasting at the Roosevelt Sky restaurant rooftop bar with Sara and Vik, also a pretty swanky place and an incredible view.  It's quite funny how the nights go from so classy to so drunk within a matter of days.

Next weekend we are heading to Beijing! And I am so excited. Going to the Great Wall music festival with 10,000 other people to go and see David Guetta perform in front of the wall. Pretty cool I must say, I will blog after my trip there!

Anyway, yet another essay of a post. Should probably blog more regularly to keep it short and sweet, but I'm just having tooo much fun to do so, sorry!

x

海南

We've recently returned from what was a great weeks break off uni to Chinas southern island Hainan, and it's beautiful resort Sanya. Originally a fair few of us were going, but unfortunately due to fractured ankles, expired visas and other issues, it ended up as just four of us.

Our week started by deciding to head on Mondays bar crawl. Typical chawker saw the responsibility to show her sister a good night whilst on her Etihad stopover, so we saw it our responsibility to join to fun, and head to the airport at 4am after a night out. However, once I get tired my body shuts down and I was definitely found having a powernap on the sofas in the bathroom. After falling asleep unwillingly about 5 times, I took the role of the responsible drunk, confiscated passports and checked us in. Success. And we headed to Sanya! Feeling very delirious on the plane only made us more confused when we all woke up to the cabin crew exercise routine. A serious routine they know as well as the safety demo, to stretch everyone before landing. Only in china.

Once we arrived, we headed straight to the beach. Bikinis on, hair up and tanning time. In retrospect, we should have invested in suncream first, I have never been so burnt in my life and am now shedding my skin like there's no tomorrow. Sexy. If only the Chinese sold proper cream that didnt have skin whitener in, I could probably moisturise!

The beach was amazing though. And so worth it, got myself some sexy tan lines to show off... Who doesn't want flower shaped sunburn on their chest?!

 

Oooops. Don't tell my Nan...she'll kill me!

 

Sanya was literally FULL of Chinese people, a handful of westerners is all we saw. And they were alll Russian pretty much. Observing how the Chinese act on holiday is a real treat to the eye, and often comical. For example, the ladies that take their umbrellas swimming in the sea so they don't catch the sun? Orrrrr the man who spat (lots of phlegm) in his wife's face to impress his friends in the sea. Orrr the ridiculous number of sleezy men that took photos of us sunbathing, my personal 'favourite' was the man who was in awe of my bum, face planted in my towel I clearly didn't realise he was observing my backside until Twist got my attention. I hope he was just trying to make out the letters of 'SoCal' as opposed to judging me for being a fatty. We had men asking to take our photos, men pretending to subtly take photos and failing and then just men that stood next to us staring. After a day, it got a bit frustrating. I'm not a pretty sleeper, and I really am not happy about my sleeping face and sweaty beach pictures being in several Chinese mens photo albums, eww. Chinese men are basically obsessed, even the taxi drivers who turn around and creepily tell you in Chinese you're really beautiful, what more can I say other than 谢谢 and I quickly changed the conversation. Most awkward taxi ride ever. Creepy!

Food in Sanya was sensational. I never used to like any form of food from the sea, and I now can't get enough. Never eaten so many prawns and oysters in my life, but when the oysters are 20p for each one, and cooked sooo nicely in a garlic flavouring, you can't say no. Almost every day we picked fresh shellfish from the tanks of various fish, so much fun but also pretty sad watching the little guys swim around and then consuming them merely 5 minutes later. Sorry fishies, but my dad would be mega proud. We've been back two days, I already want oysters again.

One thing I love is that the amount of street dancers everyday was so cheery, the same song all the time and could even hear it down at the beach front from the balcony, my favourite part was when the dancers had a break and Charles and Twist began the Macarena. Not the most in sync Macarena I have seen, but it certainly attracted a few looks.

 

Isn't the Music cheery though?

I learnt that 'cockfighting' is a real thing too last week. Genuine chickens fighting to win. Probability is they'll all be slaughtered soon because of bird flu anyway though, the poor chickens. Spend their lives fighting each other to win. It doesn't even make sense, what in life could you achieve by saying 'world champion cock fighter owner', nothing, absolutely nothing!

For once, I didn't go out much whilst we were away, a mix of sunstroke, exhaustion aaand feeling ill meant me and Emma stayed in most nights, however we made it to the beach by a reasonable hour, which can't really be said for the others! We found a secluded part of the beach too, twas lovely. We also managed to avoid the majority of the evening mosquito bites the others obtained. Didn't help us that much though, we still got bitten alive. We probably should have researched the malaria risk of the island a bit more before going!

 

With the bird flu situation here and being faced with malaria ridden mosquitoes in Hainan, we're all crossing our fingers pretty tightly that illness is not going to strike!

And now were back, back to class and back to preparing for our first batch of exams next week. It really sucks how you can go from so happy and chilled to so stressed in a matter of a few hours!

Wish us luck!

Get me some western food!

So, I haven't blogged this week  yet, or last, so thought I would give you a little update of life here. I just woke up from a wonderful nap, in which my sisters were promising to send me sweets and I was telling them to make sure it fits in my letterbox here. But, the nap has actually made me crave a random few things, therefore I thought I'd blog about the things I actually miss about home, not just why I love China, for once!

Funnily enough, during class I daydream a lot, and a lot of the time it is about food. We all know I am a fatty and like my food, so I am not even ashamed of the fact I have been compiling a list in my notebook of the food I literally can't wait for. Here goes....

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- The Baguette Shop at home - The lack of real sandwiches here and the fact they always make such good baguettes. Bread is clearly a key part of my diet, and I always fancy sandwiches of some kind here and just can't get them. Except Family Mart which sell the most processed looking sandwiches I have ever seeen, I'll take a photo eventually, they look vile. We have found a cafe that does pretty massive baguettes though, and I will be going back upon my next baguette craving. First lunch back itll be a BLT at the Baguette Shop, for sure.

- Marmite on Toast - I'm a lover. Always will be. Once again, bread. They do bread here but no toasters, why they don't even sell toasters in the country where nearly everything is manufactured I really don't know.

- Squash - For once I may admit that I've probably been drinking too much coke. Sometimes I crave something to drink otherwise, as a lot of the drinks here are soo sugary they are gross. Most orange drinks are almost fluorescent unless you pay a lottt for actual orange juice.

- Scones, cream and Jam - Who doesn't love afternoon tea? Come to mention it, I miss tea a lot as well. And I'm not even the biggest tea drinker.

- Hot Cross Buns - It's Easter so feel I am certainly missing out. Bet I have NO eggs this year either :)

- Hot breakfast - Bacon, sausages, fried eggs on toast, scrambled egg and ham sandwiches (yes, my year11 breakfast craving is back). Any kind of hot breakfast item. I swear the chinese just have noodles and rice eery hour of the day. Even paying for an English Breakfast in a western place just is not the same.

- Dominoes Takeaway - Had the most romantic Valentines Day with big sis and a Dominoes before heading here, and it was the best. I don't even care what the toppings are...

- Cheese - Challenge me to a day without cheese at home and it probably wouldn't happen. Seeing as I spent so many years of my life hating this, I don't know how I didn't like it?! Buffalo Mozzarella, Blue cheese, Fontina cheese, Goats cheese, Parmesan... Ahh. Rossetti's will be first on my list when I can go... Goats Cheese and Parma Ham spring rolls, followed by Rustic Gnocci with Pancetta. Done.

- Fizzy sweets - This is what I was dreaming about during my nap. Cola laces are the only thing I forgot off my 'don't forget to take to China' list. Mistake, as now I am craving big time. I have chewits but they aren't as good. Any kind of fizzy sweet or pic n mix item. Ahhh. Please collect me from the airport with a pic'n'mix cup Mumma ;)

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So they're basically the things I miss most at the moment and still have 4 months without them! I am going to be sooo fed up of Chinese food by then. I kind of already am to be fair. Everything is just soo oily and greasy and never makes  you feel healthy, plus the addition of MSG is such an odd concept. And I genuinely think you can taste it. We have been giving in to western cravings so much recently, and hungover days are the very worst. When all you want is bread, carbs and pizza. I thought I would come home from China skinnier, but at this rate, even the healthy food doesn't taste healthy so probably going to be a little more chubbs on return...WONDERFUL.

再见 xxx