Hello all! Sorry I have been slightly lax with entering anything on to my travel blog recently, but for a while nothing exciting really happened...and then I was ill! However now I am here to make amends as it were.

In October, we went to Shanghai for a dinner with the Vice Chancellor of Engineering, all the way Sheffield! He was in the region so he treated all us Chinese studies people to dinner. We left after lessons on the Friday morning, taking exciting packed lunches with us, and got to Shanghai about two-ish I suppose, where we went off to our hostel and dumped our things before going on a miniature shopping expedition. The meal itself was in a very posh Chinese restaurant, it was lovely, we drank Baijiu or liquor (spirit) and ate lots of yummy food! On Saturday we just kindly wandered, Deborah and I decided to have a lie in so we joined every one else later on in Starbucks, Shanghai has one on every corner more or less! Anyway then we headed of to M&S to buy some Western food as we are that sad, I got over excited as they had the M&S bakery up and running,
And bought wine and soup and pasta! I had soup in M&S for lunch and it was divine, I know it couldn't get more ex-pat if we tried, but Shanghai is like our little holiday back home. We also found a very amazing bakery where a one person quiche costs a fiver, apparently it was amazing anyway, and only Jimmy and Robynne bought anything!

Nothing massively exciting happened again for a bit, and then Deboarh had a friend come and stay so we did some Kareoke out and that was fun, however that was also the week before a mid term. I personally think they need to rearrange when mid terms are given here, as we had a speaking one which was quite scary (I still don't know my mark for that!) and a reading one. I say the reading one was badly timed as just a few days before it one of our classes was cancelled as we had a trip to Anhui and we lost an evening going to a celebration, however I can't complained as I really quite enjoyed both!!

On Thursday the 30th of October lots of foreign students were invited to a celebration of the open door policy in Jiangsu Province (I think, something like that anyways!), comprising of a banquet and show in the Nanjing Olympic Stadium. The banquet was lovely, although our coach driver got lost so we arrived a little late, much to our embarrassment, as our tables had been filled by other people, eventually we just sat down on an empty table and the waitresses set places for us, no sooner had we arrived and eaten it was time to go again! We were just in the middle of pudding when we were told the banquet was over and we were to go to the show now! Anyway we got on the coach and this time arrived in time, we were shown to the main building and then we wandered around to where we were meant to be, but the girl there looked at us and told us it was forbidden, to which we were a little surprised, we showed her our tickets and she apologized and showed us to a box (not ours, we had to move. At the start there was a lot of talking and politicians from other countries and then a quite long display of dances, acrobatics and songs. The Chinese acrobatics were good, and the most amazing was a guy who was singing Beijing opera, he was dressed as a woman, and he sang some Beijing opera, then he sang the male and female parts of the same song really well, it was really quite amazing and the Chinese crowd went wild.

The following day we went on a school trip (!) to Anhui province to see some mountains, the area was lovely, but pretty much the same as all the other Chinese places like that. We wandered around for a bit and then had some lunch, then I kindly persuaded everyone to go up some really steep steps to the top as it said it was the way to a heavenly palace, so I thought although they looked steep it may be worth a look...we got to the top of the steps we could see and there were more, then we went to the top of those, and there were more, then we went to the top of those...any way you get the picture, we probably claimed at least five times what we originally thought and I'm surprised that no one killed me! Any way we got to the top bit eventually and there were some lovely views and another Chinese temple thing. One thing we all found vaguely embarrassing was that we were all puffing and panting, and when we got to the top there were a couple of little old ladies with stands of stuff on them, they must have carried all that stuff to the top, and they must do it everyday, we felt a little unfit and amazed!

Last week my room mate and I came down with a mysterious flu like illness which meant we spent a lot of time in bed...not great for exam time! It meant a couple of days before the exam I was too tired to revise and on the day of the exam all I did was get up, go through the exam in a dream like trance with a temperature, then return to my room to sleep again. Not surprisingly I could have got a better mark, I think it is the closest scrape of a pass I have ever got! In China you need 60 to pass, I got 62, (don't tell any one I'm a little embarrassed about it! *joking, joking*) which made me panic slightly, I fear now for the end of year ones, especially as I have now found out as well we have a listening exam, there is no way, no way at all that I can get 60 in that exam, at least attendance counts towards you passing, so hopefully I won't fail!

By Saturday I was a little tired but mainly recovered so I took myself to the tailors to get something made, I have been to a tailors before but I never had a clear idea of what I wanted, and as we didn't have a printer to print a picture of anything I would like to have made and I didn't have any idea where to buy material I never got further than asking prices. However I found some where that had a printer you can pay to use, and also a tailor that had fabric in it already! So I went and got measured up, I have to go back this Saturday for a fitting and I am quite excited, a dress made just for me, wooh! If it's any good it will be the first of many!

This week I have been working very hard, however yesterday I had quite an interesting day. After class Deborah, Robynne and I went shopping for stuff to stop us freezing in the Nanjing winter. We went to a place a foreign student has named *made in China market*, as you can get a lot of things there, we hadn't been before and only knew the name, so we were quite glad when we turned up in the right place. When we first walked through the door we were slightly horrified by the choice of clothing available, it was bad, very bad, however when we went past all the clothing and up the stairs a world of marvelous cheapness unraveled. We knew we were never going to find anything tasteful, but I have to say a lot of stuff was very cheap. I bought some fleecy slippers with a Scandinavian pattern on them, another blanket (and it was a lot cheaper than the other one I bought from ARTE mart), some truly hideous bedclothes (my only regrettable purchase, they didn't look so bad in the shop...) and a couple of exciting hot water bottles, apparently it's a Japanese thing, because you plug them in to heat up (you do unplug them again, don't worry I'm not going to get electrocuted) , any way they do the job of keeping me lovely and warm in my room. After that Robynne and I went to Costas, which was a nice break, as we'd wandered around the interesting market for quite a while and then to H&M, where I bought a hoodie and some more knitted tights, which do a very good job of keeping my legs warm and don't say every five minutes like other tights! Then we had to rush back to our rooms again because our class was going out to eat with a couple of the teachers, it was a really interesting evening, I ate loads of stuff that I haven't tried before but embarrassed myself by pouring soup over my hand, Robynne later did the same thing so I felt a bit better, any what I finished off the evening with a glass of sangria at Behind the Wall, meaning I got no work done at all yesterday, so now instead of typing this blog I really ought to do some work!