Sadly due to china's love for stopping everyone doing things blogger has been blocked, or at least made very slow difficult to access. This leaves me with two options:

A - no more blog
B - new blog.

This is the new address: http://benholding.socialgo.com/

Cheers, safe blud.

I doubt there is not a single person out of the 2000 strong school that has not said this, but it's ok...
The treatment I get in this school is like the last one but x1000. Everyone is so much more happy to have me around, I feel really like respected and thanked which is good for my shanghai broken ego. Though I have probably already put on about 5 stone or something ha haa.
Last night I had to have dinner all alone because the english teacher, christy, had to go and see her ill mother so I had to rely on my own devices to get around and make sure I didn't starve. I had alot of snickers bars. But seriously everyone is very nice, There is always a crowd of about 30 people waiting for me outside my office, maybe it'll change! who knows.
Also I watched the sequal to Donnie Darko - S. Darko ... aweful. Then I watched 2 episodes of stargate atlantis - awe...SOMEE! I'm actually looking forward to watching more tonight. I'm sorry this blog seems to have turned into a monologue of my life. Lets get back on track.

I still don't actually know my full timetable, but instead I seem to be finding out on a day-by-day basis, It doesn't matter at all because I'm free all the time but I suppose it would be nice to get into a routine. I taught two fifth grade classes today, and two sixth graders yesterday which went super well, they really loved me. I feel really confident in classes now though. When I think of how I felt/taught when I first arrived in china I can't help but feel proud. I'm not brilliant, but i'm not a cowering wreck like before...
After class it was a trip to the cafe behind the school for lunch. I think the school and them have struck up a deal so I don't have to pay for food which is good! Perhaps the variety isn't as good as the shanghai school but still very good. Oh man food is spicy though. The first hot pot I had I was very very close to tears so they gave me a less spicey dish haha. Following lunch me and christy took a trip to the haircutter people who gave me like a massage, washed my hair, cleaned my face and errr... my ears too.

Now I'm at the teachers house watching chinese music videos and blogging. Huzzah.

and I've not got swine flu. They actually tested people as we got off the plane, oh man that would of been bad!

One of the headmasters (apparently they have two!) and 2 english teachers met me - already nicer than the shanghai school, and took me by car to the place where I would be staying for a month.
They stayed and sorted out the room, took me shopping and exchanged phone numbers before departing. How nice!

I'm in a internet cafe at the moment with an english teacher, neither of us originally planned to come here but we had a few hours to kill before hot pot tonight with the entire english faculty. I'm finding it confusing I'm not really too sure what's going on most of the time and it sounds like i'm gonna be spending alot of time with the teachers (I already know I'm going fishing this weekend!) and because of this I'm actually very glad I didn't end up staying with a chinese family. Mann they are a handful ha haa. None the less today has been fun and I hope for alot more of the same.
I am sort of counting down the days back to shanghai in a way, which of course is sort of bad, but It'll be a good experience and I'll have fun.

Pictures another day - yes I'm still putting it off.

Ben

...the moving day to Mianyang has arrived! I was meant to go yesterday but...well... I forgot to renew my visa so now I'm leaving today instead!

Apparently I get my own hotel/appartment room which is ace, Jessie gave me the option of a homestay with a chinese family but Betty really put me off that idea...
This way I'll be able to finish my 'History of western philosophy book' Oh man it's so big!

Yesterday I spent the time doing bit's and bobs and alot of western eating. We went to Babela's AND Hooters for Rine's birthday song. Perhaps Hooters works well in America but everything just looks a bit out of place here. oh and the only other people in there were like old western men haha. I really felt like being western. Maybe it's like the 3 month bluesss
I also collected my visa, exchanged some money at la banks. OH AND BOUGHT A NEW MEMORY CARD.
AHHH ok to parents -> if someone in china happened to loose their ipod would it be covered by the same insurance as I have? This is totally hypothetical of course...

Friday afternoon at 17.47 (or something like that) we took the hour and a half trip to Hangzhou by super CRH train (CHR, HRS, JFUEIK or one varient).
It's famous for it's AMAZING west lake and china calls it 'heaven on earth' or something which is actually quite a name to live up to!
We arrived at about 7.15 and we had two jobs to do:
A) buy return tickets - Check
B) Find a place to stay! - Problem! The hostel we wanted to go to was full up. I felt like how Mary must have felt at christmas 2000 years ago\\\\\\\
It wasn't too bad though, having a Betty comes in handy and she just phoned another hotel place and got us a room. EASY.
The hard part was trying to find where it actually was and the greesy, money-grabbing taxi drivers didn't make things easy! One even shouted at Betty because apparently she should know where it was because 'she's not a foreigner'... urgh.
We found it though, don't worry!

have a look here for some picturesss!http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=www.b-etty.blogspot.com&sl=sv&tl=en&history_state0=

My memory card has actually ran out of room! I've taken 8gb's of pictures now haha, so I didn't get so many pictures of hangzou...