Long way home

My journey home started at 5:30am in Changsha and ended at around 9am on my door step in Southport. What happened in between was quite entertaining, it's the things you think of as crazy that actually make an experience what it is. Who would want a direct flight with perfect transfers anyway? Not me and Beth...

Here's the story, I left Saeeds apartment at 5:30am and took a taxi with my luggage to ChangshaNan HoucheZhan (Changsha South Railway Station. My luggage was so heavy, I had a huge back pack on my back and then a slightly smaller one on my front (looking very Chinese). When Saeed and his friend gave them to me as they couldn't go any further I felt my shoulders almost give way... Already. It was really difficult to say goodbye, to Saeed and to Changsha. It's the first city that I have ever lived in and it's the place I've called home for the past 5 months. I'll save my heartfelt goodbyes for another post. My train was due to leave at 7am, it was a bullet train and only took 3 and a half hours to Shenzhen, the journey is 506 miles so that's pretttttty fast. The journey wasn't as quiet as I was hoping, as I hadn't slept at all because I was organising (trying to) my things. There was a young boy and his mum sat next to me and I knew straight away that they would start a conversation soon and of course they did, one of my last conversations with Chinese people. I think they liked me even more as a WAGOREN because I gave up my window seat for him, so kind aren't I. Then there were other people getting involved with the "let's pick the foreigners brain game". They were impressed with my Chinese actually, li hai (amazing) Kelsey!!

When the journey was over, I got my bags down with some assistance and eventually got them hauled onto my body. It took me a while to realise that I took up more space with the bags so I was bumping into people and things a lot... Oooops. Beth was already waiting for me outside of the station when I arrived and she had been for a couple of hours, she told me about her very eventful morning which included Chinese people with guns and being pushed under the stairs with her luggage without any prior warning. When I saw her, I tried to hug her but of course the extra weight on my front didn't exactly help... We had a great laugh trying though. Once we had stopped laughing, or tried, we headed to the subway station which we were going to get to the Ferry port. This journey saw some crazy sights... me changing on the subway platform to protect my shoulders and shuffling down the seats with two extra bodies attached to me. I couldn't believe how painful my shoulders were by the time we got to the Ferry port which was Shekou port. We got the Ferry from here to Hong Kong airport. When we were at the port, we were told we were too late to check in our luggage so we had to take it with us ... we heaved in onto our backs again and headed for the ferry, this included, noodles flying through security scanners. We finally sat down on the ferry and wow, we felt like we had never sat down for years. We did think the ferry was going to be a lot longer than it was though. I was chomping on my noodles when it pulled into the port, I was eating them so fast that I overheard a little Chinese girl commenting on how hungry I was... Hahaha she was surprised when she realised that I understood her.
We arrived at HongKong airport and were able to check in our luggage straight away which was a huuuuuge relief! Then we had many hours before our flight at 10pm. We wandered around the airport, looked in pointless shops and sat at many irrelevant gates to pass the time. Catching up on the past months since we last saw eachother in Hangzhou. I really do feel incredibly lucky to have made an amazing friend like Beth. We started the journey together and ended the journey together and saw each-other twice in between. We boarded our flight to Manila and took off an hour late but that helped us anyway as we had around 14 hours to wait in Manila. When we landed in Manila we thought we would be able to go out and have a look around as because we are British we can stay for 21 days without a visa but the airport staff had other ideas. We entered the airport and were directed to a room that was occupied with many blue chairs and tired travelers. We were told that we had to wait here until the morning, there was no food or water anywhere and I only had a quarter of a bottle for two of us so we had to ration ourselves.

When it got to around 4am we were allowed out of the pen although then we wished we had stayed in the pen... Manila airport isn't exactly entertaining. We thought we would be able to wander around... well no, there was nowhere to wonder. There was a bird that was flying around and some random shops selling cigars. We had to wait there until 1pm. The not so desired part of travelling I guess but still it adds to the experience. So yes, the wait was long and involved being escorted from my camping spot which I was oblivious to until Beth and a Filipino airport guard made me pretty aware of their presence and the plane full of people who were waiting to come and sit there next to their gate... Ooops. I hope Beth won't mind me mentioning her emotional spell, exhaustion does funny things to a person. This was among other things including Beth giving me a very painful massage when we were waiting for our gate to open, my shoulders have never been so sore. I wasn't looking forward to this 15 hour flight, it's the longest flight I've ever been on and the flights were pretty cheap so I wasn't expecting much but it was great actually, well I didn't get any sleep but it wasn't as uncomfortable as I'd imagined it would be. All I pretty much did was ate, watched movies and tried to doze, oh and got one of the cabin crews contacts who said they'll show me around the Philippines. Perfect! There was a very old man close to us on the plane and Beth ended up being his in-flight hero. He didn't know how to eat some of the food that was given to us or his arm rest so Beth helped him, he was so grateful!

When England was in sight, it felt so strange, I can't explain how I actually felt, I knew I was excited but at the same time I didn't know what to expect when I got to England. I always feel differently, each time I come home. After we landed, I had to be pretty quick as I had a coach to catch from London Victoria, luckily, we met a lovely lady on the plane called Karen who came with me on the underground. I said bye to Beth at the baggage carousel which wasn't ideal, but of we went, I got to London Victoria and although I have walked from there to the coach station before, I was pretty tired and disorientated so I decided it would be better to ask and not get lost. After a 10 minute walk, I got there and tried to look for my gate but I couldn't find it so just asked again, when I found it, I just parked myself in front of the gate and waited for the departure time. When we got on the coach, there was a woman outside crying her eyes out and another guy screaming, I don't know what happened bu they weren't happy at all. It really makes you realise that you just don't know why or what people are doing in a certain place. That's one of the great things about traveling, learning about peoples story's and I am so grateful to know the people that I do now.
The coach journey was around 6 hours to Liverpool, it was pretty uneventful and I didn't manage to sleep at all. I arrived at the bus station (Liverpool One) and walked to the train station with an escort who was from Sri Lanka, it was very kind of him but the first train was not for an hour so I just had to wait until the station opened which was a pain. When I saw the train to Southport, my stomach felt so strange, I was like "I'm definitely going home then". At Southport train station when I was waiting for Abbey to pick me up, I was mistaken for a homeless person. I didn't look my best of course, traveling for so long and having a blanket wrapped around me but I didn't think I looked that bad. I was offered a hot drink by a lady, of course that's very kind but I wasn't a homeless person hhaha.

My mum didn't know that I was coming home on this day, so she was pretty surprised when I turned up on the door step, but she was happy when it sunk in... I hope hahah. I took many photos and short videos of my journey home and I have put them altogether as a short movie, I am planning to upload it but it's pretty long so I'm not sure, keep a look out.

Wildly wrong weekend

This weekend in China is the famous Dragon Boat Festival (端午节) pinyin: Duanwu. The history behind this festival is particularly interesting. The festival remembers the death of an ancient Chinese poet Qu Yuan, of the ancient state of Chu. He was banished for opposing the powerful state of Qin and during his exile he wrote a great deal of poetry. Twenty-eight years later, Qin captured the capital of the state which Qu Yuan was minister of and in despair, Qu Yuan committed suicude by drowning himself in the Miluo River. All of the local people who admired him, raced out on boats to  try and save him (well to retrieve his body), this is how the tradition started. When they couldn't find his body, they dropped balls of sticky rice into the river so that the fish wouldn't eat his body. These are no a famous food related to this festival called, zongzi. The thing in the photo's!

Of course, with it being such a special occasion here in China, me and my flat mate Frederikke thought it would be a great idea to go and witness the racing on Miluo river as it's pretty close to where we live (China close- China is so big so everything is far away compared to the compactness of Europe). We contacted some teachers at the school to help us arrange our trip, one of my teaching assistants actually comes from there but they then told us that there were important political people going there for the festival so all of the tickets had sold out already. We were pretty gutted. I really wanted to be able to witness the festival. So on Saturday, we headed to Orange Island (Juzizhou) for some dragon boat racing but when we got there, there were no boats to be seen, we were either too late or China had just one upped us again with the whole uncertainty thing. I'm going with the latter. We enjoyed a nice afternoon though, had Chinese ice-cream, relaxed on the grass until we were unbearably sticky from the humidity. 

As our plans hadn't really gone to plan, we decided to just take a random trip to Pinjiang... well it turns out the place we wanted to go was another 3 hours drive but I'll come to that. We left our apartment at 7am on Sunday morning and arrived at our destination at 4pm. Let me explain to you what happened during those 9 hours. We were nearly at the bus stop, and I realised that I hadn't picked up my purse when we left, so we had to go back (15 minutes walk). That was fine and we finally got on the bus to go to the East bus station, boatze's in hand. We arrived at the station after nearly missing our stop because we were dozing off. Got our tickets (piao) and with 8 minutes to spare, we raced to find our bus and after a few partly understood conversations, we found it and were on our way to Pinjiang 平江县. The journey took around 2 hours and we arrived at Pinjiang bus station, one guy on our bus was really helpful and pointed us in the direction of another bus which could take us to Shiniuzhai 石牛寨风景区. We were about to get onto the bus when we noticed that the driver was asleep in his seat, there was one other passenger on the bus. We sat down and waited maybe 30 minutes but nothing happened. I went to find a bathroom, I found one and walked in, then I heard a small voice saying "yi kuai"! I apologised and yi kuai (one yuan) to an elderly lady selling tissue paper outside of the toilets. She was really sweet and by Chinese public toilet standards, I was happy to pay for the kind of cleanliness. Then it was snack hunt time, one lady started asking me where I was going and when I told her, of course she had a friend who would take us in a private car for a very good price. As we were having a conversation, an intrigued crowd gathered around us listening to a foreigner speak Chinese (very amusing apparently) but I went back to the bus were Frederikke was, still nobody else had got on to the bus. The driver was still asleep. I asked the girl what time the bus was going to leave and she had no idea either but I guess she was used to it more than us. We decided to go out of the station and see how much a taxi would cost. Bad idea. We were swarmed by guys asking us where we were going. We were told a very expensive price which we declined and tried to bargain, it didn't work, he wasn't budging. I then had to make a phone call to Saeed, who is fluent in Chinese for some help as the conversation was getting too complicated for us. What could be better then being woken up by a phone call only to have to speak to a Chinese person about money. Ooooops, sorrrry! After about an hour, we decided to just go and see how the bus was going and more people had got on! Hooray, so I asked again about the time. We got an answer but of course we had to clarify a few times. A word of advice if coming to China... always clarify and more than once. Now it was 12:30, we had an hour until the bus left so we went to chifan (eat). We found a charming/filthy place at the station and ordered.

I was still worried that the bus would leave sooner so I ran in the pouring down rain to see if it was still there and it was but we decided it would be best if we took our food with us on the bus. You just never know! As we polished of our food, we attracted the usual foreigner attention and then a young student asked us where we were from in English. If a Chinese person can speak English then they will always try. Imagine learning a language for most of your life but never being able to practice, that's how they must feel so when they see a foreigner, they're like "yeah here's my chance" but I want to practice my Chinese, dayum hey. She was sweet and when she got off at her school an hour and a half afterwards, we thought we were also really close to our destination but apparently not... it was ANOTHER hour and a half. We really didn't think it was so far. We weren't going to give up though, there had been too many hurdles. We had waited more than two and a half hours for the bus to move so we had to persevere. When we arrived it was 4pm, we were forced into trying some spicy tofu on the way to the ticket office and then we bought rain poncho's even though I was already soaked and ended up taking it off anyway because of the humidity.

When we finally got to the ticket office, we were greeted by three young women, we asked for two tickets and asked them what time they closed. We had two hours to explore. They insisted that we didn't have enough time and that we should come back to tomorrow. We explained that we had nowhere to stay or the time to come back to tomorrow so we would go now and see what we could. We knew that we would have enough time because we aren't Chinese (you would understand what I meant by this straight away if you were here). Most women wear high heels and pretty dresses to climb mountains here... logical? I think not. Me and Frederikke had appropriate footwear and were not going to back down after it taking us 9 hours to get there. Finally, we got our tickets and we set off looking very attractive in our blue and yellow ponchos. The rain was so heavy, dancing on the lake. It was so beautiful though. We chose a great day to take the trip as we could see the mist twisting in and around the mountain peeks. We took a cable car to the top of the mountain and the views were insane, we went through the clouds of mist and couldn't see anything! It brought back memories of my Skydive,the last time I was so high up and immersed in clouds. I did record the journey alongside my great narration if you would like to see. When we reached the top, we saw the glass bridge! A 180m high suspension bridge that connects one peak to another, which is glass... It was so slippy also which made it slightly more scary but it was ace, I loved it. As I looked over the edge, my stomach sank a few times but then the clouds of mist began to move over the bridge so once again we were immersed. Imagine if we had fallen over the edge? Nobody would have seen us fall. Trust me to think about that but it's so true, the world has it's ways of covering things up doesn't it. Off the radar. 

 We then, began to explore the rest of the National Park, we were stunned. It was really worth the journey. We walked around for two and a half hours... late coming out, oops! Among the other attractions were Drunk Immortal... yes haha! It was 50m high pillar formed by various geological processes and the result was a pillar that looks like a drunken man on his side apparently. As we walked further and further into the depths of the mountains, I was getting pretty hot and sweaty so I took of my poncho and tied it around my bag to keep the contents dry. In the mean time, I got incredibly soaked but I surprisingly enjoyed it. Strolling up and around the mountains along narrow bridges. I also came across a Chinese straw had that had been abandoned by it's owner and hung onto a tree. I took this opportunity to make myself look like a Chinese farmer for a few minutes and tried it out for size. I will definitely be investing in such a flattering piece.


I had a near death experience as we began to descend. I stood and turned for a photograph and as I did so, my foot slipped slightly backwards. Fortunately, I caught my balance and all the damage was my stomach sinking (this is this the photo that I nearly died for).
We paused a few times to enjoy the beautiful view over the surrounding area. We took the hard way down and found ourselves slipping and sliding downwards whilst passing human excrement and being bitten by multiple insects. The perks of China!!
The next part of this journey, is worth reading and worth writing about in my opinion so I do apologise about the length of this post. 


We found out that there were no more buses passing here going to Pinjiang because it was so far away from anything so we decided that we would just start walking the way that the bus had passed. There was a thunderstorm happening too but we didn't have any other choice and liked the idea of a crazy adventure anyway. A the odd motorbike or car passed they would slow and look at us for a minute and then carry on driving. We bought a packet of very dry biscuits on our way as our rations and ate half a packet straight away (wo men er le!). We were walking through random roads heading nowhere but we knew we had to keep moving anyway, we passed random houses and the few people we saw just stared at us, which I found pretty funny. Now something happened in their lives today thanks to us sparking a conversation between them. After walking for around an hour, we continued to say "lets just walk until it gets dark and then think about what we should do next". A small van passed us but cam to a stop. Inside was a man of around 40-50 years old, he asked us where we were going and we tried to explain that there were no buses but we needed to get to a station. He was very kind and he allowed us to get inside his van. We jumped into the back seat and we chatted some more. We were very trusting... but here in China, it isn't a huge problem. We didn't  have any other option anyway. I said "Ni shi henhao ren" (you are a very good person), the most appreciative thing I could think of saying. He seemed to be satisfied with the compliment and we carried on driving. He came to a stop at some kind of car rental place and explained our options by drawing and writing a diagram. He went to so much effort to help us and even took us to a place to eat and paid... We were going to insist but then the whole losing face thing would be even more severe.

He told us that there was somewhere we could stay for the night and that we could catch a bus at 6:30am the next morning. We admitted defeat of getting home to Changsha in the evening and agreed. We had only the clothes we were stood up in which were drenched. The room was surprisingly nice but then when I was on the phone to Saeed explaining what had happened, I spilled water all over the bed. Just a wet day overall. We hit the hay around 11:30 and then woke up at 5:45 ready to catch the bus. We got downstairs at around 6:10 but didn't actually get on a bus until about 7:30... typical. 

At 6:30am waiting for a bus

It took us 3 buses to get home. We arrived home at 2:30pm. Good job I had wonderful scenery to keep me occupied alongside my current read about the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Well I think that "sums up" our wild trip. Hopefully it proved an interesting read! 

Hangzhou... 8 modes of transport

30/04/15 - 3/05/15
I boarded the train to Hangzhou, the slow train and guess what, the beds had sold out so I had to sit up for 12 hours with very bright lights. No sleep. When I was waiting for the gate to open, I saw that a few people had their own stools with them, I panicked and thought that there weren't going to be seats but thankfully when I got on, there was. Phew! After around one hour, a group of students asked if I wanted to play a card game with them, they were really lovely! We played for a couple of hours and I learnt some Chinese words, two of their names were Lava and Kathy. I asked if she knew what Lava was and she said yes, I wish I had a crazy name like that, would make things so much more interesting.
I think I may have dozed of for no longer than 30 minutes. When the sun began to rise, it was so beautiful. I went to the "bathroom" (two blocked sinks), and washed my face before I arrived in Hangzhou, the train arrived just before 7am and met Beth in the arrivals hall. She had bought me some water and dried fruit, definitely needed. We saw a lady being violently sick and then on the subway there was a child being sick, at that point I thought it might have been a good idea to get back on the train and go home hahaha. When we were on the subway, Beth thought that we had missed our stop so we got off and went to find the line that was going the opposite way but it turned out we hadn't missed it, she was just looking at the wrong map. So we laughed and got back onto the subway line that we had just got off. I got overly excited about the fact that there was hand soap in the station toilets too... Hangzhou seemed so luxurious to me by this point, easily pleased hey. After the subway journey, we had to take a "Rapid transit" bus, we also don't have these in Changsha, very posh! Beth had used this bus many times before, but after about 20 minutes everyone got off the bus and when we asked what was going on we were directed to a bus station, we asked someone again and were put on a random bus that Beth had never been on before. The driver was really helpful though and told us where to get off, then we realised that the bus we needed came to this stop. Finally it made sense. Buses really don't like following a route here in China. After a dramatic journey and zero sleep. We arrived at Beth and Nathan's apartment. It was lovely, she said it was sparse but I didn't think so. She took me to her favourite "Boatze" shop for breakfast, they were reallly good! After I had showered and made myself look slightly more presentable, we went for a walk around the complex, it was so relaxed, lots of places to just sit and chill out, lots of trees! It was so family orientated too, there were lots of places that held activities for families, very arty! The weather was so niiiice, it was really hot but not uncomfortable and humid like Changsha so I wasn't dripping in sweat. Although I needed some more "flowy" clothes, there was a stall outside of the complex and I saw a dress that I liked so I got my bargaining phrases out of the bag and ended up getting 20 kuai off, not the best but I did try. It's one of those dresses were you feel like you have no clothes on, but you still have the reassurance that you are wearing clothes. Always a good thing!!
Next, it was time to try some Hangzhou noodles, and I sure did try them, I tried so hard to finish them but it didn't happen, after eating them I felt like a waddling pregnant lady, not a good feeling. They were so different to Changsha, not spicy at all and more of a creamy/sweet sauce. In Changsha, it's all about the spice, with each country I go to, my spice tolerance is always pushed further. After the mammoth about of food we had consumed, we sat down to digest and figure out our plans for the rest of the weekend, we went through the guide/map and starred a few places we thought looked good and then narrowed them down and hit Google with our final choices. I also drank some coffee, I think I needed it to be fair but I don't want to start drinking it all of the time, I never thought I would like drinking coffee but I do like it now, mum will be proud hahaha.
In the afternoon, we took a bus ride to West Lake, a famous lake in China, it would take about 7 hours to walk around it. Beth shown me an app that she has been using to learn Chinese, its really good. Brainscape is what it's called so if any of you are interested, have a look! So we had a mini Chinese lesson, on the next bus, I then tried out my new Chinese on a lady who decided to take photos of me, not so subtly. I didn't get everything right and she found it quite funny but practise makes perfect right! When we arrived, there were sooo many people, never seen anything like it, I guess it was the holidays though. We wanted to take a boat ride so we began our search. This ended up with me shouting some average Chinese to a family that were having a chilled time on their boat, someone heard my desperate plea and told us where we could rent a boat, worth all of the stares! The place we were directed to was allllll the way around the other side, but the walk was beautiful so it was OK. We finally found a boat, it wad very typical, what you expect a boat to be like in China, there was an old man "paddling" the boat at the back. It was 150 kuai for an hour, so worth it. A Chinese lady joined us and we got on, she was really nice. The "Shifu" started singing, felt so cultural. I started trying to speak to him in Chinese, asking him to keep singing, he thought it was hilarious and asked us to sing so of course, me and Beth belted out a tune to the best of our ability... We had a blast on the boat, really relaxing yet entertaining. When we got off, we were about to pay and the Chinese lady wouldn't let us, she insisted on paying, she would have lost face if we continued to insist so we thanked her and took some photos with her, that seemed to be pleasing enough.

Hefang street, a famous walking street, very touristy but all the same, a great experience. We started to walk there from West Lake. On our way whilst we were still at West Lake, me and Beth decided to sit by the Lake and dip our feet in whilst watching the sunset. We got so many funny looks and one lady even shouted something at us. It was a bit of water, wasn't going to kill us. I turned around and instantly recognised a certain phone case that I spotted and then I saw the girls face, it was one of the girls from the train!!! I didn't know what to say, I was so shocked. She was as much as me too. When I thought about how many people were at West Lake at that moment and we just happen to be in the same place, it's so mind blowing I think. We took photo's together and then said goodbye. When we eventually put our shoes and socks back on, we carried on our walk to Hefang Street, it was quite a way. We saw a young boy singing in an underpass, he was will an older guy who was disabled. They were begging. It hit me quite hard, what had that young boy done to deserve the injustice?
Henfag Street was insanely busy, as I expected it to be. I got some amazing souvenirs. I won't tell you about some because they're for people at home, don't want to ruin the surprise and all that. I will tell you about the one I got for me and Beth though, Beth spotted a stall, a guy was there and he had painted beautiful pictures into the inside of beads (if that makes sense). He was such a chilled person, it felt refreshing actually, the fact that he could sit quietly and concentrate on something so delicate in the middle of all of the crazy tourists. Just shows that whatever is going on around you, if there is something you want/need to do then you can put yourself into a state so that you are able to achieve your goal. I was looking through all of the beads for so long, they were incredible, then I spotted one with two footprints on, I automatically thought about how me and Beth had been sitting by the Lake with our feet in the water. There was only one that I could find so I took a chance and asked the guy if he could do another one and two minutes later it was done, we also got the date on them. Keeping hold of memories.
Over the course of this weekend, I felt so much more confident using Chinese, clearly because of how much I was practising and me and Beth spoke to each other in Chinese too which helped, oww I miss Beth, why is Hangzhou so far away... Dammmmn. There was also a famous pharmacy on Hefang Street, we went in and there was so much traditional Chinese medicine, it dated back to the 1600's I think, don't quote me. It was really interesting to see and great to see that the building is still being used for it's original purpose.
Afterwards, we went to find the subway station but couldn't find it so we asked someone and ended up with some escorts, everyone is so helpful. As my family say, "as long as you have a tongue in your head, you'll be OK"- it's so true, my Chinese isn't great but it got us to where we wanted to go, and Chinese people really like it when they hear you speaking Chinese, just have to try :)
We then got the night bus from Wulin Square, it was so packed so we ended up standing, we quickly got into a pretty deep conversation. We were supposed to be counting the stops, I thought it was going pretty well until we got to the stop which should have been the one to get off at but it wasn't, Beth didn't recognise it so I asked a lady and she told us it was the next one. Must have messed up the counting somewhere, ooops! We then went to "rice man", a guy who makes rice outside of Beth's apartment, we spoke to him and his friends for a while, they mostly laughed at us but it was OK and then we ate our rice on the balcony on a blanket, what an ending to a great day. It was definitely time to sleep after being awake for 41 hours.
I woke up and found out that Beth had been awake for hours figuring out how to get to the mountain that we wanted to go and climb. After a little drama with Beth's bank card we got ready and went out and I wore Beth's clothes, just like Beijing times but not with socks because I actually packed some for Hangzhou, I'm getting better. We had an interesting conversation over breakfast actually, we got onto birthdays and Beth told me how one year she actually bought her mum presents on her birthday. I guess it doesn't actually make sense for us to be showered with gifts on our birthdays because we didn't actually do anything. It's our mums that went through all of the pain and sacrifice for us. Bringing a life into the world is a pretty big thing to do so why aren't they praised and appreciated on the day that they did it? The mountain we wanted to climb, was called "Two peaks piercing the clouds", we left and we finally got there after having yet more escorts show/take us to the bus stop we needed. We definitely got off at the correct stop  and it stated on TravelChina that it was only 50m from the bus stop. Turns out it was only the sign, it took us so long to figure out where it was, it was so far from the sign which makes no sense whatsoever right? It was at least an hours walk. It was definitely worth the trouble of actually getting there anyway. We got there and began to climb. We realised that what they meant by rope way was a cable car. It wasn't so hard to climb, more fun. The views from the top were stunning, I don't think I've seen anything like it before. The clouds were swirling around the peaks, hence the name. On the way up we saw so many dead centipedes or millipedes, I'm not 100% which one. Me and Beth stopped to look at them which the Chinese people thought was really weird and then one guy picked one up and started chasing me with it, pretty weird. It was just over 3,000m that we climbed apparently, it took us around 2 hours and there was a big bell at the top that you could ring with  a bamboo barge pole. So Beth did but then of course we heard "er shi kuai" (20 yuan). I bought a red ribbon and we wrote some messages on it, along with our names and the date. We tied amongst some others. Then to get down, I took my first ever real cable car ride, it was so cool, we went through all of the lush, green surroundings.

The girl from the train also told me that she saw us again asking for directions. When we got back, Beth took me to street food heaven, I can't believe how much I ate.
In the morning, we went to the clothing market, it was huge but we were limited for time as I had to get to the station to catch my train back to Changsha. I was trying on some things and found myself with an audience but most of it was all too small, Chinese girls are tiny! We left to try and find the subway station and again had to ask but had no luck. One of the motorbike taxis told us he would take us, I persuaded Beth and off we went, clutching onto each other. At one point he tried to go up a curb but couldn't do it with us, all we could do was laugh, everyone was staring anyway but even more so. It was a pretty hilarious ride and he got us to the right place.

We got to Hangzhou Dong Station. Before I entered departures, me and Beth sat and did some people watching. We soon noticed that there was a member of the SWAT team and two police officers stopping young men and checking/scanning their identity cards. It was also like a scene out of mice and men outside, men sat with their bundles of goods, must be migrant workers. This was my first bullet train ride so I was pretty excited. It was like an aeroplane and had a western toilet... wow. The "train hostesses" were dressed so smartly. It was a chilled train ride, I wrote my journal, read my book, learnt some Chinese and enjoyed the views. It didn't feel as long as it actually was. I had an apple but it wasn't washed so I was glad to realise that I had my water spray bottle with me, a necessity for travelling in China.

Gender equality and empowerment of women (HUGS HUNAN) Union of Ghanaian students

I feel really lucky to have been invited to such an important event. If I hadn't of met Quame, I wouldn't have got the opportuntity, he and his colleagues put in so much work to ensure it ran as smoothly as possible and that everyone had a great time. I think I speak on behalf of everyone when I say that it what very successful, it was an honour to listen to such excellent people talk about an incredibly relevant topic. After being scammed by the taxi driver on the way, I arrived at the hotel where the event was being held, I was actually one of the first people to arrive, Ghana time in China, I have to say I have missed it so I began to enjoy the wait. I met Quame inside, he was really busy as he was organising everything. When other people started to arrive, I moved to talk to the people behind me, three girls who are studying medicine here in Changsha, two from Zambia and one from Nigeria. We spoke about life in China, our likes and dislikes and then of course, they wondered why I was actually at the seminar, so I told them about my experiences in Ghana how I'd met Quame, what shocked them most was that I like Fufu "You can eat Fufu?!", always seems so shocking. The seminar began at around 11am, started with an opening prayer and then the Ghanaian National Anthem, it took me back to the early mornings at Golden Gate, singing and learning the words at the front of assembly.
The Women's Commissioner of NUGS Hunan, Ms. Omar Nuratu gave a welcoming address, giving us an idea of how she felt towards the topic. She talked about how women impact on every sector of society and that if women are allowed to succeed then nations will prosper. It was a great way to open as it started the thought process. The Spouse of the Ghanaian ambassador to China, Mrs Huseina Demuyakor gave us a speech, she started with a question, a very important one at that. What is empowerment? Or actually, is empowerment just a myth, a concept that just gets thrown around? The general idea the majority of the population have about empowerment is that it is a fuel, a gas that gives us energy to change certain things. A definition that came around in 1999 is that... Empowerment is a range of processes that helps those who have been denied choices, it helps them to aquire the ability to make choices and think for themselves freely. She then went on to discuss The Power Cube, a model produced by J. Gaventa in 2006. The Power Cube is a device used for analysing how strategies for change can in turn change power relations. I would definitely advise that you read more about it if you are interested. Click the link (The Power Cube) above.
Hidden power: This is the power that isn't public but within families and communities, more hidden in smaller villages etc. This kind of power struggle can leave the victim (mainly women- for the purpose of this seminar) with mental damage and even physical, depending on each individual circumstance of course. This kind of power struggle, for me is the most dangerous as it's usually only a small amout of people who are aware of this but even so they aren't aware of the damage that is occuring as it is seen as normal. When talking about smaller, more rural areas, we would guess that if you are educated then you are empowered right? Not necessarily. There are so many areas of someones life that oppression can be present, relationships are perhaps the most common and most severe source of female oppression. Mrs Huseina Demuyakor said "In the name of love, women are raped and psychologically assaulted". Such a strong statement to make, yet it seems to be the norm, everyone knows that this happens within some relationships. What if it were to happen in your relationship or to someone very close to you? The manipulation that occurs often causes the victim to feel like it's fine for it to be happening. Now that is dangerous, just think for a moment about how many women have been raped, murdered, tortured by someone that is supposed to love them. They are made to feel like they deserve it. Let's get something straight, the empowerment of women is as much a benefit to men as it is of women, when men come to realise that women are equal to them, I believe that more relationships will become happier and in turn, more stable.
Mrs Demuyakor then went on to talk about babies. When an ultrasound scan shows the beating heart of a girl, it is seen to be negative in so many ways in so many parts of the world. Currently being here in China, this is something I have been so interested in, I've asked many questions but haven't had anybody be honest with me about the negative impacts that the One Child Policy has had. I see it with my own eyes everyday in my classes, there is an obvious difference in the numbers of girls and boys in my classes. Thankfully China has changed their policy slightly, I really hope that it will continue to be adjusted until girls are valued as much as boys completely. So much so that women are being put through "back street" abortions, often leading to severe gynaecological problems. If a baby girl is "lucky" enough to survive, when she is of age then there will be discussions about who she will be married to, these discussions are often held without the presence of the young girl. Here's a scenario. If the mother of the young girl, felt like she had the power to stand up for her daughter, to tell her husband that she is too young to be married then imagine the impact that decision would have on the rest of her life. Women DO have the power and ability to make their children happy. They are mediators in so many aspects of life, yet they are so poorly equiped compared to men. SO many womens lives are absorbed in the struggle to support the rest of their family emotionally and physically yet they're uneducated. Perhaps the thought of an educated women is too intimidating for some men?

Women A + B
There are two areas in which I think empowerment is most relevant in life. There is the need for personal liberation and with this the need for the individual to decide if education is the key to that liberation. Everyone thinks that education is the key to the empowerment of women but it's definitely not, not everyone feels that a high level of education is for them. Having the freedom to make the choice is an aspect of a womens life that can lead to personal liberation. The other area would then be educaton, having the power to make decisions about your own life and learning to make educated decisions... It sounds incredibly basic to me and to many other people but believe me this is so far from many young girls reality.

Gender equality and sexual health by Dr. Mamoudou Camara (President of Guinea entrepreneurs in China)
Dr Camara began by talking about the need for positivity when talking about sexuality and sexual behaviour. There have been so much negative media surrounding sex, all of the bad things it can do to you. For example, the HIV epedemic, people are afraid to have sex because now all they know is that it could kill you... There are around 40 million people who have AIDS right now and in 2001 there were 14,000 new cases each day, 95% of those were in developing countries and out of 5 million, 800,000 are children. You can't pretend that these facts aren't powerful, as the human race, we can't afford the consequences of selective silence. Ill sexual health can also lead to infertility, unwanted pregnancy (leading to unsafe abortion) or another unpleasant sexually transmitted disease (STD). The word "sex" doesn't just refer to intercourse itself, it refers to our biological characteristics. It is so important to have a healthy sex life, and no I don't mean that you should have sex twice a day...  I mean, it should be healthy in many ways. Physically, emotionally, mentally and socially. Sex is a deeper topic than most people think, who'd have thought it could effect you in so many different ways.

Rights
We all have rights, each one of us. Although in some places around the world these rights are compromised or not observed at all. There are national and international laws surrounding human rights but also within a relationship, when talking about sex within a relationship, it's important to remember that everyone involved has a right and a choice. They also have the right to sexual healthcare. This is a tough topic because it's known that in some developing countries, access to this kind of healthcare is minimal and also seen as "taboo". If a women is known to have sought any then it is likely that she will not be able to get married or even be divorced.

Female Genital Mutilation
If a girl has not gone through the horrific process of FGM then she is seen as unclean and therefore will be unwanted by a future husband. This is why so many young girls are forced to have it done to them, because in developing countries, parents cannot afford to keep their children after a certain age so girls need to be married. To know more about FGM, click on the subtitle.

Talking about the lack of sex education in developing countries is serious. The effects of the silence can be seen all over, when I was teaching at a Senior High School in Ghana, I was teaching a geography lesson and we got onto demographics and then of course, contraception arose, they did not have a clue what it was. No clue. And then the next week, guess what the news was. One of the girls in my class was pregnant, she was so smart, such a waste of an intelligent girl, all because she didn't know anything about sexual health.

Women and Leadership
You can be a leader in different aspects of your life, professional, social and within the family. Leadership is when you can demonstrate the skills needed to direct, guide and influence the behaviour of others in order to work in a team. Malawi and Liberia currently have female leaders which is a great step, they have recognised that women too, do have invaluable leadership skills. It's important to stay humble when you are in a position of leadership, not to get ahead of yourself and take too much pride. You need to relate, mentor and encourage your "team" and of course, if we are generalising, these qualities are typical of women right? Women mostly have the ability to go deeper to find the reasoning behind something and not to be so sceptical or scripted. A good quote that I picked up from the seminar was "Women are like tea bags, you don't know how strong they are until you put them in hot water". An interesting take on the topic... I guess I would say, the longer women are in "hot water" the stronger they get, but of course, this could also apply to men aswell. I think the point that is being portrayed here is that, the longer women are oppressed, the stronger they will be.

Gender fairness in education
There are 41 million girls who have not been educated at Primary level and 2/3 illiterate people are women, thats 10 million more illiterate women than men. Girls are marginalised for no reason at all within education, most of the time its subconsiously because of how societal norms have influenced us. The fact that males are educated more than girls is kind of crazy when taking other facts into consideration, 70% of failures and school dropouts are boys and 4/5 crimes committed are by males. Looks like investing in the education of males isn't actually that worthwhile.

To sum up the seminar, I would have to say that it was like 3 worlds collided. I never imagined that I would get the opportunity to attend a seminar, on a topic that is really important to me, held by people from my favourite nation whilst in China. China is the land of opportunities... I want to mention "metaphorical miles", it was amazing to see so many women from different places that clearly have all come so far, not only within themselves but literally, coming from the African continent all the way to China to persue their dreams. Let's take the world girls!

Chance

I had a really interesting Skype call with one of my online English students this evening, Pratap. He is from Bangladesh and told me that him and his friend are planning to set up an NGO to enable more children to be educated in Dhaka, at the moment they both self-fund 15 children to get an education. They pay for a teacher to teach them in a room beneath a temple which they have been able to use free of charge. Pratap has asked me to get involved with the project, see if I can help in anyway and of course I would love to. I love how just by chance, I have come across someone that thinks the same way as me, and I get to be his English teacher.  I really do want to be able to help as many people as possible across the globe, I know one day I will look back on my life and know that I achieved my goal. Even now, sometimes I just sit and think about what I have been doing with my life over the past two years and it really does make me happy, to know I have made a positive difference to the lives that are the future of our humanity.
For Larabanga at the moment, I have been in touch with an NGO based in Canada called BooksMatter. They ship books over to Ghana to benefit disadvantaged schools. Larabanga Primary School, is totally under resourced so for us to get this opportunity is amazing. Fingers crossed by the end of June, the school will have recieved lots of books! Just the organising to do, getting the books from Accra to Larabanga and finding someone with a camera so we can send photographs of the presentation to BooksMatter. We have to pay for the transportation of the books from Accra, which is a really long way, we weren't sure if we were going to have the funds to do this but a friend of mine, that I used to work with, Chris, is doing a sponsored expedition next month and told me he is going to donate his sponsor money to Larabanga Life Project. This will really help us to get the books. We're really lucky to have lots of people to support what we are trying to do.
Another thing that happened by chance. Here in Changsha, Hunan province of China, I've met a Ghanaian!! I was out with friends at a bar, I got chatting to a couple of people and we were telling eachother where we were from, when he said Ghana... I was so happy, literally all of my memories came flooding back. We met again the next weekend, it was great to be able to talk about Ghanaian stuff like... Jollof rice, Shatta Wale, Al Qaeda dance, CHARLIEEEE and Fufu, he actually told me that he makes Ghanaian food here.. Definitely going to have to try some. Ghana always follows me, homeland.So I got a call from Quame and he invited me to a seminar on Saturday which is being held by members of the Ghanaian embassy. It's going to be about gender equality and the empowerment of women. I'm so excited to go and meet people that really know what they're talking about, I love how opportunities like this are so random but mean so much.

Aunt Shao in Zhuliangqiao

So to try and cut a long story short... Frederikke (my flat mate) was in Beijing three years ago and met a Chinese girl who is now studying in Frederikke's city in Demark and she has been in contact with Frederikke's mum. Wang Lee found out that we were in Changsha and insisted that we visit her Aunt here, we agreed of course. Nothing better than actually knowing Chinese people and getting to know the real China. It was the Sunday just gone. The sun was shining so we were in high spirits anyway, we got picked up from our school by Aunt Shao's nephew and his Fiance. They told us it was going to be an hours drive North of Changsha to the countryside, I was sooo happy when they told us. The city can get really tiring sometimes and we both needed some fresh air at least. We arrived after driving down some really narrow, winding country roads. We pulled into the drive way and came face to face with the whole family, I really felt under dressed and out of place... The "house" was so fancy, I've never seen anything so grand. Aunt Shao is an architect who designed the whole house herself, she and her husband also own 14 properties in Changsha that they rent out. The country house is only for the weekends. So posh!
We were served tea the traditional way at a table with a thousand tea pots and minute cups. Soon, we had met every member of her family and had seen the whole house. As we were being shown the house, I was in complete amazement. Everything was so "show home" like, it didn't look lived in at all! We were told that Aunt Shao had arranged activities for us in the afternoon. One of the activities was digging up bamboo shoots. It was much harder than it looked and they had to end up taking over from me and Frederikke, just not got the strength. The bamboo shoots that were dug up, were cooked and served to us at dinner time, they were so good. I'd never had bamboo before so I wasn't sure what to expect but it was so delicious! And so fresh.
Aunt Shao and her husband were eager for us to play cards with them, a Chinese game of course and it was definitely a step up from what I'm used to (Snap), it took me a while and a lot of help to get the hang of it but we ended up playing outside for around an hour, in the sun. Then there was also their Mahjong table "machine", they thought it was great that we sat at the table so they decided to get lots of pictures of the white girls playing Mahjong ahah.
Before dinner, we went for a walk around the village, it was so peaceful. We were introduced to some of the other people in the village although there only seemed to be around 5 houses in the whole village so everyone knew eachother. We were served tea at each place we went. We ended up refering to it as the "tea crawl".

Changde

Hopefully this is not a really boring account of my weekend and will actually be an enjoyable read. After two quite challenging Grade 3 classes at a public school on Friday morning, I was so ready to get away for the weekend. Our Friday afternoon though, was full of creativity on mine and Frederikke's part. We were making musical instruments from reused items ready for the second part of our environment lessons. Not exactly how we wanted to be spending our time but we also didn't want to have to worry about it over the weekend. In the evening, we went to Changsha Cultural Evening at Orange Island, there was awards for various things, like photography. There were performances from many acts from around the world, lots of talent so it was a great evening! Then of course, we headed to Crave, met some more new people. Then to Hawa, I spent around an hour talking to a guy from Cote D'Ivoire, I was actually able to have a coversation in French. Although I did fail my French A-Level, I really want to improve. It would be really strange if I actually went home from China having improved my French more than my Chinese. My Chinese is going "ok" I guess, it is really difficult but I am able to ask for the things I would really need, like directions and how much something costs. As long as I am able to get by, I think thats ok for me. After speaking to my new Ivorian friend, I really want to concentrate on getting better, I shocked myself with how much I do actually know, but my grammar is pretty bad. So getting back to the apartment at around 3am, we had planned to be at the train station at 6:30am, this didn't happen. We agreed that we would leave at 7 and get the later train. We woke up, still feeling slightly light headed and went to the train station. We asked for the tickets but were told no and that the train timetable we had seen online was wrong. Thanks China! We left and were approached by a random guy asking if we were going to Zhanjiajie, so we said Changde and he whisked us off to some random place behind the station. Probably not the smartest thing to do of course but yeah. We couldn't believe it when the "bus" pulled up, it was a mini-van. The door opened and there were no seats to be found, just a few plastic stools that definitely weren't suitable. We just got in and laughed and laughed about it amongst all of the random Chinese people that weren't even phased. Even Tro-Tro's in Ghana had seats... Half an hour later, the van stopped and we were all told to get out, there was a coach waiting for us to get on, what a relief! 2 hours later, we were in Changde! But then we needed to get to Taohuayuan for the Peach Flowers we planned to see. We asked a few people at the station about the buses to get us there but had to go to a different station. When we got there, we were directed outside to a "car park" full of random little buses. We found the one going were we wanted and asked if we could get some food quickly, she said yes and we went. Two minutes later, we turned around and heard beeping, they were leaving, so we had to leave the food and run back to the bus whilst it was moving... We never seem to know what the hell is going on but that's all part of the adventure right?
Taohuayuan, was a really peaceful, there was a Lake right in the middle and one side, the Peach Flower mountain/garden and then our accommodation and food places on the opposite side. We dropped our things of in the room and went to the Peach Flowers, I think we were actually too early or too late... Although, we had been told that this was the right time to go. There were some and they were really "pretty". We also didn't realise that we would be basically climbing a Mountain. On the way up, there were some cool things, there was a guy who was writing peoples names on weird scribes and he wanted to take pictures with us, that part of living in China is getting really annoying but his voice was quite soothing so we didn't mind so much.
At one point, we entered a Buddhist temple and were given incense sticks to "offer to the Gods" I guess. Then we had to kneel down and pray in front of the statue. It then took a turn, there were maybe 5 guys in the room and then me and Frederikke. We were about to leave and they called us over to a table with a book to write our names etc. Then he said "Money", as clear as anything, the only English word he knew, we told them that we didn't have any and there response was "You're from Denmark and no money?!" (in Chinese of course), we got a little freaked and just left as quickly as possible. Then there was more hiking upwards! I had 2 hours of sleep the night before...
Zhangjiang- we went here in the evening, we weren't sure what there was to do there but it was one of the closest places to where we were staying so we got on a bus and were shoved off when it was our "stop", we looked slightly lost when we got off so we were approached by a lady who spoke English. She turned out to be such a lovely person and her English name was Amy... Basically sisters! Asking where we were from, she thought we were Russian as that's what someone on the bus had said... ahhaha oh! She recommended a restaurant for us to try so we went, when we eventually found it, we sat down and they only had a Chinese tick menu. It was pretty hard trying to use our Mandarin to order but then a girl must have overheard and she came over to help, we just ordered some random stuff but it turned out to be really good so alls well that ends well.
We realised that there was a river in the city, we went off tto find it in the rain, it was dark and smoggy... not exactly the perfect setting for appreciating the aesthetics of a river, but we tried. We got back to the hotel, extremely tired and fell asleep to a really enthusiastic Chinese talent show. When I woke in the middle of the night I managed to turn the tv half off and then I vaguely remember us waking up to the sound of the heavens opening. Sunday! Sunday was a great day. We got to Changde, after an uncomfortable bus ride, I sat next to such a sweet little family. A young couple with their baby daughter, they were kissing and cuddling her all the way, I got a picture of her, it's lovely to see how much they cherish their children here. Another difference between here and Ghana. Not that I'm saying they don't love their children but they're born and raised with different ideas. I find it quite hard to get my head around the fact that our reasons for living can be so far apart yet we can all end up being so close to eachothers lives.
The first walking street of the Hunan Province is in Changde, so sure, we had to go and have a look. It was really quiet and there were just a lot of expensive shops. We wanted to find something really good for breakfast/lunch, Frederikke saw a sign for coffee, not actually sure were the sign was pointing but we walked into the nearest door. What happened next is quite cool. There was no coffee, only a piano school and an English tutoring school... We looked so confused, then two people came from the English school and asked if we needed help. We told them we were looking for some food and it turns out, Habby (one of them) has studied in Newcastle, she was so excited because I'm from Northern England, so yeah from here, we spent the whole day with her and one of her other teachers. Who is Chinese but lived in Vancouver for 10 years. One of the things I love about travelling, is just that. We wandered into a random building and ended up meeting some really cool people who actually made our trip. Chances? They shown us the Poem wall, hundreds of poems written by famous Chinese poets and there is even a famous line from Shakespeare featured there. I really had such a meaningful conversation with Habby, I won't write anymore than that on my blog. I will just say that, being able to relate and impact on someones life within two hours of meeting them really is something. She gave me a Times magazine issue that I had really wanted to read, although it was from November last year. We got in a car back to Changsha around 6:30pm, we decided that we needed another massage (Chinese massages can be addictive), when we got back, we went straight to a "spa" and had a very strange experience with a hollow glass ball and fire... on my feet and oh a wooden tube stuck to my foot. It was really good though, they are so good at it here, they actually make a difference to your body. This concluded a really weird/fun weekend spent in and around Changde.