Easter weekend in China... sadly not a single chocolate egg in sight

Today I'm walking round with a massive sense of achievement as I feel like I've finally conquered the art of travelling in China! Friday after school I made my way from Houjie to Guangzhou on my own and then on arriving in Guangzhou made my way to the hostel to meet my friends...and then the next day battled through the Guangzhou metro to make my way to the bus station and successfully arrived back in Houjie! This sounds very unexciting but when everything is in Chinese (well GZ has a fair amount of English but still) and there are very few people who speak the same language as you this is actually quite impressive! On top of that, people that know me well will tell you I can barely find my way around my hometown after living there my whole life. London will be so easy for me now!

That aside, this weekend as I said I went to Guangzhou for Kathryn's birthday and to see some faces that I was reunited with last weekend (plus a few random Chinese tag ons, for example new chinese friend Luke - called this because he likes Star Wars). We celebrated Friday night and then on Saturday went to watch some women's rugby ( Kathryn is a huge fan). England vs USA was delayed for an hour because a massive storm came out of nowhere, but aside from that it was a great albeit slightly hungover day. 

The ridiculously heavy rain stopped me from staying in the big city another night, so I resentfully made my way back to Houjie for a more peaceful night in. This did mean however that on Sunday I was alive enough to go for lunch and shopping with my Chinese assistant Linda! We had some amazing duck noodles and I got some bargains (£3 for a beautiful top, about £5 for a leather bag) and it was so interesting to talk to her about her life... for example, the fact that she wants to travel around the world but Chinese people don't have passports and need to apply for one and get official permission to visit other places... it makes you realize how lucky British and other nationality people are that they can pretty much come and go where ever they want, whenever they want. It was also good just to be out with a Chinese person. I definitely got less ripped off than I would have done without her! She wouldn't let me pay for lunch or drinks and even bought me some face wash when I said I needed some, despite me begging to let me pay, she kept saying it was her honour and that we are friends. This goes against every bone in my British body, but I think she was just so happy that I wanted to hang out with her. But it was a lovely, girly day of shopping and eating, I guess some things are pretty much universal. I also discovered where the good shops in Houjie are which may come in useful when payday comes around....

Me and Linda and yes she is that tiny!

We only have a three day week this week as this weekend is Qing Ming, the Chinese tomb sweeping festival (basically where all Chinese people visit their ancestors graves and set fire to fake money and stuff to send to them in the afterlife). Soo me and Phil have decided to use this opportunity to leave the South and see some more of China and some other very missed people from Beijing... so we're off to Chengdu! Home of the pandas! It's a tad expensive (even in English terms... very so expensive by Chinese standards) but I worked so hard before I came out here so that I could see and do anything I wanted to when I got here so it's gotta be done. Can't wait to be reunited with people and see my first panda!