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

One month down...

It has been exactly 4 weeks today since Chawks and I left Inglaterra to adventure over to this side of the world, and it has been the quickest month ever. But, its so crazy to think we are now 1/5 of the way through despite it feeling like yesterday, and, if I'm honest, I want even longer here already.

I've been feeling pretty smug this week, I'm not sure if its because I just feel so settled here and just so lucky that this is the life I have been given this year or if its just because of everything else, we've met some pretty awesome people the last few weeks, our Chinese is actually coming along and we've been discussing dates for travelling and researching costs. At the moment, I'm so tempted to stay as long as I can at the end and maybe go travelling for a bit, we're hoping on going on a girly beach week to reward ourselves for having such a great year, but even if that doesn't happen I am tempted to stay and do it by myself. But basically, I've had a smile on my face all week, and I challenge anyone to wipe it off as I genuinely don't think it is going anywhere for a while. I haven't even been too homesick, even though at home I know its a pretty sad time of year right now. Don't get me wrong, I miss the family so much but I know they will all still be in the same place in 5 months time when I come back. And, as much as I miss my babies, I keep finding cats here to play with to keep me happy for a little bit haha.

This week has been pretty similar to the last few really, we're getting into a bit of a routine. Classes, shopping (cheeeeky), a little more advertising for the language school and a pretty hectic party weekend. Being as its St Paddy's day today, we went on a bar crawl last night, despite horrid hangovers from Friday. However, starting the pub crawl on Jaegermeister shots is certainly something I didn't think my body could deal with but I coped. I also pretended to be Irish, worked a treat, I then wore glasses all night and got called hipster by a few people for actually pulling it off. There was a total of 230 people on the pub crawl last night, we had 5 buses as transportation, and as we like to say it was SUCH FUN. I also found 100RMB on the floor, now that's only £10 in English, but actually that lasts a while here! Shame the taxi was expensive home, but either way, woohoo.

I don't even have much to blog about today, I'm just pretty happy and wanted to share it.

Much love x

Why do I like China?

This is one reason why...

Who doesn't love their own personal Gangnam Style performance in McDonalds at 4am?

England meets China

During the last week, Charlee and I have been getting to know the people who are running the English teaching school where we were offered jobs. We didn't technically take the jobs, purely because we didn't want to commit every weekend, as that is our main time to travel China outside of class, so we are currently 'back ups' for if they have enough students interested in weekday classes. But we are perfectly happy that by turning down the weekend classes, it was the right decision. It is a shame though as they are lovely people!

We've been to their house a few times now, seen the school and helped them advertising for the school by visiting a local primary school. This was quite a fascinating experience actually, bearing in mind we were a good 45 minutes outside the main centre of Shanghai, so in quite a rural district, with obviously less westerners and barely no tourism. We arrived at the school and were split into two smaller groups to flyer by the playground gates. This was not at all like giving out flyers in England, every single person took my leaflets off me, and they were just staring at us the whole time. The Chinese girl who I was walking around with, Sasha, literally kept passing me half of her pile as nobody would take them off her. When the Children came out of school, they would walk past us, stare and smile, and the occasional one would mutter Hello, as they could obviously tell I was English. It was so cool to see the little Chinese children just so dumbfounded at the fact we were there, looking all western. One thing I noticed was this one little girl staring at my arms, it was a hot day so I only had a Tshirt on, but I think they fact they were just so white and obviously hairier than chinese peoples arms (I was blessed with ape arms haha) was quite a shock to them. 

Another thing I noticed whilst we were there, was the general manner of the school. All of the parents weren't allowed in the playground like an English school, but all waited behind high gates. Children were marched out by their teacher and a child from each class lead the pack of students with a big sign saying which class they were in. A very clever way of doing it, but it was all so formal and strict in comparison to when we would finish school when we were younger, run around the playground like animals for 5 minutes looking for our parents! The child at the front gave the sign to the security guard at the gate, who announced the class number over a microphone and then the children were let out of the gates. It very surreal to witness how such small things can be so different.

But, thanks to us, I genuinely feel our presence during the afternoon flyering helped a lot, and for the 15 minutes we did, we got equivalent of £10 each, which really isn't bad. We are going to do some more with them next week hopefully!

On Saturday, we then were picked up again for a day with them, witnessing a demo class, run by another girl from Estonia who studies here. We all kind of chipped in with the teaching of the class, helping these little Chinese children from the age of 3 years old start to learn English. Some of them were absolutely adorable. One little girl came running up to us at first, stroked Charlee's blonde hair and simply said, 'My name is Dora, pleased to meet you'. I loved her. And in fact, I loved all of them. All of their choices of names were so traditional too, choices such as John, Peter and Eric. Except the one little boy who was nine years old, he told us his name was happy. How can you tell the cutest little kid that that isn't a real name? We just smiled at him instead, and got on with teaching the class. During the class hour, there was a little boy sat on the corner of the table, he wasn't making a single noise or facial expression other than fear, he just sat there looking terrified. I know I am quite a 'children person', but I genuinely loved going and sitting with him for the remainder of the class, I made him smile and feel at ease with being there. I even managed to get him to whisper the word puppy, and even if it wasn't very loud it was such a cute moment and I really loved how much he started to enjoy the class by the time it was the end, all from the encouragement I was giving him that he was doing a great job. I didn't even know his name he was that scared to speak at the start, I just wanted to give him a big hug!

After the children had left, the people who run the school insisted on us staying for lunch. We had a mini class on how to make Chinese dumplings and then they were sent off into the kitchen to be cooked. When they were done, they came out with some other things, including a strange date and mushroom soup and a type of Chinese potato which you dip in sugar. In these instances you really have to throw away the fear of trying things, half out of politeness and half out of the knowledge that opportunities like this are pretty rare. They may not be my type of food, but they certainly weren't unpleasant.

After lunch, we sat around their Chinese tea bench and had numerous cups of Chinese tea which were made freshly in front of us. The tea table was beautiful, made out of a tree trunk, and the tea set was a really nice turquiose green colour. The tea also was great I suppose, I am loving the weird tea here, and think I will certainly be a herbal tea fan when I am back in the UK.

The neighbours of the school had a wedding coincidentally on the same afternoon, and in Chinese culture the wedding party travel from the hotel to the brides house and then to the grooms house and at each stage, when their arrival is nearing they set off firecrackers down the street. So, the groom's house was nextdoor and when the firecrackers started, we all gathered on the front step to witness the wedding party going by. The bride looked like one of those perfectly made up Asian models you see in advertisements, and the groom was wearing a particularly shiny silver suit. But either way, it was really nice to witness something so cultural and coincidentally it happened whilst we were there!

The next door neighbours from the other side also had the cutest kitten in their garden that was recently born, and I was pretty happy that I got to play with it. I felt bad at first, all I did was say how cute it looked from afar and one of the Chinese ladies Vivian insisted on going next door and getting it. I didn't want her to take the kitten away from its mother, but she came back a minute later holding the cute little ginger. I didn't feel as bad when I saw how the family next door treated it though, I know mother cats pick their litter up by their scruff, but humans in general have the ability to be a little more caring, so I think I gave the little man more love in 10 minutes than they do everyday!

Tonight , we have been for dinner with our Chinese buddies that Fudan assigned us. It was a great night and we went to a Chinese restaurant with food from a particular part of China, very spicy and garlicky but great. The boys were lovely as well, and they paid for the majority of our food. It was quite nice just conversing about different ways of life here and in the UK, and what we are all used to. Like for instance the fact they are only allowed to shower between 3pm and 10pm in the public showers which they have to walk to, and I can shower as many times of the day I want and just roll out of bed into my en-suite to do so. Its crazy though, the accommodation here is around £1000 for a semester, already a lot cheaper than home (Mason especially!), but yet to them that's still expensive. They pay 1500 RMB for the year I think they said, so £150. And on top of that, 5000 RMB for their tuition fees for the year, £500. How crazy is that?! I genuinely have no clue how international students financially survive in the UK. But nonetheless, the conversations we had were really interesting, and it was good to see the different perspectives a different culture can give youths. I am already looking forward to the next time, as it was actually really fun - and even got to practice a little chinese over dinner!

Yet again another essay of a post, but overall I feel I have had a wonderfully cultural weekend, may not have been as productive as it could have been on the studying front, but it has been pretty interesting and full of great experiences that for once don't involve drunken stories or clubbing!

That's all for now. Love from the other side of the world xxx

Week 2 begins!

This is going to be a relatively short blog post in comparison to the previous two, so I thought I would basically share the ups and downs of the last few days.

First up, passed my semester one in Spain! Averaged at 68.5% so unless my final module beats that (unlikely) then that's going to be my mark, hooray!

Next up, had the most productive day yesterday. Started well with the sun shining (even through the pollution) and then continued to improve when we were told our schedule had changed from 8am to 12pm starts on Mondays and Tuesdays. We has 4 hours of class, followed by 2 hours of studying on the lawn, two trips to the post office in which I sent forms to Birmingham and a cheeky card to Mumma and then finally a job offer whilst walking down the street. We then went to Hooters, which was ironic for China but good fun. All in a day!

Today was great too, had a lie in and then 4 hours of class. Went to check out the teaching job, which doesn't seem exactly what we wanted but still such a compliment how keen they were to have us on board! Going back to see more tomorrow, and to help them advertising the school at a local primary school.

Also met a really cute dog, which I wasn't even scared to touch because of the fear of rabies. It was a really well cared for house dog, a golden retriever and we had to speak to her in Chinese, always fun. I also love the amount of cats there are here, we don't touch them for obvious reasons but they are quite friendly and very very cute. They are literally everywhere, and I will openly admit I'm such a pet freak.

Other than my horrific hangover on Sunday (made better by finding proper Tomato Soup in TESCO), the only genuine disadvantage from the last few days is that I gashed my finger with a knife in the excitement of having a fresh baguette earlier today and trying to cut it. So now I have a poorly index finger, and it is so inconveniently on my left hand which is stopping me from doing normal things at the moment. I hope it is better by the morning, or writing characters is going to be a mission!

Oh well, cheeky update for the last 3 days. We just do so much here, this blog is going to be so loooong by July!

Lotsa love x