I have just woke up after 12 hours well deserved sleep. It's Sunday. And our last nights full sleep was Thursday.
After a beautiful chilled out normal English night of spag Bol, copious amounts of tea, chocolate and hobnobs and just chilling in our pjs (and a quick pj trip to the Romany road) at Jades for the last time, Friday went with no hitches.
We woke up got ready, our taxi was bang on time if not early and we said our final goodbye! From now on it would be all hellos. We got to heathrow for exactly when we wanted to with a lovely taxi driver Rumard, checked in straight away, our only glitch was we wasn't seated together. So we went back to ask if we could be moved and the women explained we was sat together there just wasn't an I or J seat. So after feeling slightly silly but very pleased we went straight through security straight in to the VIP lounge and we was done, for now. We took advantage of the free pastries, and endless drinks.
After making a deal with my self I wouldn't cry I refused to read my last three cards off three of my best mates. But as one of them kept messaging me to read it, I did. Obviously the floods opened again! After stemming them we tried to be practical sorting out VPN's and proxies (I say we, my brother sent me all the links and details and we tried our best to implement them) anyway our flight was finally boarding we went straight through pretty much boarded straight away and we actually had pretty good seats the last two at the back next to the toilets and no one next to us which was good.
We spent a bit of time scoping out all the white people and trying to guess who would be with us but decided we would just see who would be on our connecting flight (which was a lot easier as every white person was in fact teaching with MKT)
The flight really wasn't that bad apart from the huge man sat on a different row snoring, loudly, throughout the whole flight. We watched 3 really good films synced together, highlight would of been being served breakfast by the aire stewardess right at the exact moment when Sarah and I had started balling our eyes out at the end of a film. She looked so concerned for a moment it was rather sweet.
And we got to watch our complete take off and landing from a camera at the bottom of the plane rather interesting or maybe we was just that bored. Anyway one flight down
Extremely tired but only one more to go. Nothing remotely entertaining happened between here and there apart from trying to stay awake, oh and Sarah seeing a boy from schools China double. As soon as we got off the plane though all the whitys stood waiting and this would make up half of our new family for the next 10 months.
After eventually dragging our stupidly heavy cases (we had 30kg, 10kg more than everyone else for some reason) to the bus we spent half hour waiting for the last few to arrive and trying to learn everyone's names, who was staying where, who came from where, the generic questions you ask people when you first meet. And obviously what made you do this. Everyone's answers varied but mainly resulted in our main answer "why not" or for the unprude "we just thought f*@k it"
The bus journey to the hostel was just like being back on the "night bus" in Cambodia, loud, bouncy and swervey. I loved it :).
We got there and checked in by this point we had been awake 20 hours. For some reason me and Sarah was on the 4th floor and had to get our bags up there but by this point we had got a system sorted one case at a time, we flew up the 8 flights. But omg was we grateful. We had a twin room with air con and en suit. We walked in and instantly stripped off and took cold showers as by this point we was close to becoming walking soup. We was told go up and come down about 3/4ish we had a 15 minutes sleep and then I popped down in what can only be described as an unfit state to communicate to ask when we definatly needed to be down we was told 4, we decided We needed at least another half hour. I collapsed fully clothed with my legs hanging off the bottom of the bed. That extra half hour sorted me right out. We headed down to meet everyone.
It turned out anyone that hasn't come with someone was in a 6 bed dorms with squatter toilets. When asked if we was in a private room with ensuite we for some reason felt we needed to defend ourselves by saying it was because we was old lol and remind them it was only for one night. And anyone that wanted to could use our toilet. That definatly helped.
We left and went for a walk around the city, our city Changsha, for the next 10 months. We walked through such a beautiful huge park, it had a theme park a massive lake with pedlos and the things, do you remember Teckahies Castle, those little water pods with water guns on. We will be using them at some point.
Right so we had been pre warned that people would stare and take photos, but in general as I'm quite blind I'm oblivious to this normally. If you ever get the chance to go to China walking through a city that has a very limited number of white people it is hilarious. There was about 25 of us. All white, all loud. We was followed by children and photod every few minuets we caught this one guy trying to get photos on the snyd so decided to ask him to get a big group photo of us all, may as well use it to our advantage. Then he got in it and started taking selfies. I understand it's meant to get annoying but the way I see it is, it's a lot better than them throwing things at us or being mean so I'll take the looks? stares and photos anyday.
We then went for dinner in a traditional Hunan restaurant. It was amazing! Seriously not only was it like playing a game with the lazy Susan ( the spinny glass thing all the foods on) but every dish was unreal. I even tried frog, I like frog, the spice wasn't as bad as I was expecting either and they do my favourite dish from Vietnam so I was a happy happy lady. By the end of the meal most people had been awake for at least 30 hours if not more and with food mongs well and truely set in bed time was calling. Although we was told not to go to bed until 10 as we wouldn't sleep. Begrudgingly we listened and headed down to join the others for drinks. We had a lovely time just chatting and getting to know everyone a bit more. Again repeating names and finding out where people will be staying. Making agreements to definately all exploit each other's accommodation for nights out and exploring China. 10 hit and like good girls we basicly ran to bed. We was out by 1030 and apart from both waking for humongous wee's I was out for the count until 930, which is basicly when I started writing this.
So far happy days. We have come up with our theory to last, we are on a two week holiday that we can extend week by week. May sound silly but works for us.
Today we're off to a temple on a hill then heading to Xiangtan for the induction/TEFL course to begin Monday.
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