Thunder and lighting seems to be Shanghai's cup of tea at the moment. That and torental rain which stops and starts depending on whether you are inside or outside.
Thunder is definatly not good for the nerves while walking through the school at night.
I've started my lessons at the school as of yesterday and it is so scary. I spend most of my days in perpetual fear of the next lesson to be quite honest, but that's what I wanted to get better at!
This week is mostly an introductory week which includes talking about Ben and England as well as playing hangman/tictactoe. I teach all of the fifth grade, 1 3rd grade class and two 2nd grade classes. Generally the standard of English is very good and so far I seem to be able to relay what I want to say quite well. Tommorow (Wednesday) I teach 5 classes, which is my most intensive day so far. It's also the day when I'll have to try and move away from introduction on to actual lessons!
Another big point of the day is I MANAGED TO GET SOME MONEY! Which is brilliant, now I can buy foooood as well as paying Albin back for all the money he lent me.
I found out Battles are playing in Shanghai on march 28th I believe which makes up for the lack of jose gonzalez last week.

Pictures are up on my facebook now so the blog is sure to follow in it's footsteps...

It's a bit late now so I think thats all, but I'll update again in a few days!
Ben

Zao shang hao,
Yesterday I went to the fake market and I bought myself a new watch, which seems to be the 'thing' to do. I do feel abit pissed off now because the days of the month goes from 0-39... Obviously I got too caught up in the moment. It's amazing how you find the watches though, you have to ask about them to specific shops. The shopkeepers will then press a button which makes one of the walls open. Once you walk through you then have to go up a ladder to find the watches! I was so excited that I obviously forgot to make sure that it all worked. I'm not too bothered it still looks good. A similar thing happened when I purchased my 'genuine' Armarni wallet. I promice I'll put pictures up tommorow when I'm at the school.
Ahhh I forgot about the school! Well going to the school was very scary. One of the teachers picked me up from the volunteer flat and drove me there. Once there I met the coordinator who gave me my timetable and gave me a very basic runthrough of things. Maybe A bit too basic because I'm not actually too sure what to do on monday and I'm a bit scared but hopefully it'll be alright on the night. The children do seem very nice though. I had to sign about a billion autographs after watching some of the lessons on friday. And everywhere you go the children run up to you and say hello, sometimes it actually ammounts to somewhat of a swarm. My room is very big, and has a computer/water dispenser. Me and fellow volunteer Albin are the only people who sleep in the school though so perhaps it may be a little creapy. We'll see.When I was walking through the halls I saw a child, about 6 or 7, playing the most amazing piano. So hopefully at night i'll go down and play it. I saw a guitar shop today at the market, and I may buy one but In the last 2 days I have spent nearly a hundred pounds. It's cheap here but everyone seems to go out alot so it is quite hard...
This morning it is tipping it down with rain, which made the normal trek to the bakery so much less fun. You can get these really nice bun things with jam inside, and it seems to be the closest thing to a breakfast you can really find as I'm not usually up for a full on plate of noodles at 9am. The people in the bakery always seem very friendly and even though my mandarin is pretty terrible they seem to always think I am fluent which usually leads to me being pretty confused Unless I hear one of the key words 'speak', 'where', 'what' and 'money'
Oh and Mum and Dad I need you to stay awake all the time now, because the bank Has cancelled my account...
I hope planning for your gap year stuff is going well gap year legends...

Ace so I'm beginning to figure out how this city works. Push people to get things you want, speak as much mandarin as you can as they really appreciate it, and get used to people staring. And pointing. And Laughing. And also getting alot of "hello!"'s.
I went out for a walk around Shanghai on my own on monday and boy was it nerve-racking. I wanted to try and find a temple/pagoda which was not too far away from the flat so I took the metro to 'Caobao lu'. However I had decided that in order for people to to try and take advantage I needed to look like I knew where I was going so instead of looking where I needed to go on the map I just took an 'educated' guess when I walked out of the metro station. Bad Idea. I ended up going in a big circle and getting in a bit of a panic that I was lost. My brilliant sence of direction did lead me back though, but for a first taste of individual travel it was slightly scary. Next to people's square I went, in which I thought I'd be able to blend in with the bigger crowds but nope. The first thing that happened is I was approached by a group of (quite friendly looking to be fair) chinese people, who straight away asked me am I english.
I thought to myself 'errrr what do I say' because while they may be innocently trying to practice their english, it could be a clever roose to beat me up, steal my wallet ect ect(well in a very worst case scenario). In the end I just mumbled something about me being busy and walked on. and this happened all the way down, the very long, 'Nanjing lu' with people asking "yoo wan DVD' or 'Rolex, want Rolex'. This was the moment when the acumulation of the hours of mandarin training came out. BU YAO. bu yao bu yao. Urgh, maybe one day I'll be able to say something more elaborate, but in all honestly I guess it's all you need to say.
Yesterday It was Annemaries 23rd birthday (fellow volunteer) so it was the task of me and Nele to go and buy a birthday cake. It's amazing how much they like it when you try and speak mandarin because as soon as you say anything for example; "qing gay wo nage" they instantly become alot more friendly and helpful, and everyone was laughing when I tryed to work out how to say "ar sh san"(23) on the spot. Then we went to KTV in pudong, which for people who don't know is karaoke. I think chinese people really like it because it's a way to express themself, which the chinese people are not very adapt at doing in normal social/everyday situations. Well at least that's what I've read and It seems true enough. It's so odd to be so far away from all the things I knew before I left for Shanghai. I suppose call it a touch of homesickness but I think its different, because it's more in awe than anything else.
Anyway thats enough for now,
bye bye

Brilliant well i've arrived safe and sound, and i'm in the flat so no trouble so far. Long haul flights however are not fun, and definatly should not be done. Ever. To be fair I was amazingly lucky to find that A: I had a window seat and B: The guy who was meant to be sitting next to me must have missed the flight so I had a nice lot of room, always a good thing but it was still an extremely tedious 11 hours with the only entertainment looking at the 12 inch tv screen for hours on end or talking to the french guy next to me. Anyway enough about flights.
I got met by Tucker, a shanghainese local a bit older than me, who managed to shoo away all the people waiting to take advantage when I stepped out of airport and led me safely from pu dong to pu xi (east->west of the river) where the flat resides. I was really suprised actually to find loads of other volunteers in the flat (6 others) and it actually left me feeling a little overwhelmed especially after the solitude of the long flight but everyone was really friendly so it was all fine. Tucker showed me around and helped me get my chinese sim card as well as my travel pass.
I'm staying in this flat until next friday when I move to Pu Dong Primary School where I will work with a fellow volunteer Albin who is from Sweden. And yep he does have blonde hair and yes you guessed it blue eyes.
The first evening I went out with the most of the volunteers to a club which everyone had heard of but noone actually knew the way so we ended up walking around for about an hour before we actually found it. Shanghai is a big place especially when you don't really understand what is happening and I still haven't got my barings yet so at the moment I just follow everyone else around a bit like a sheep but I'm getting better...
To add to the chaos I call a body clock I didn't get back until 6 am, so who knows if I'm gonna be able to sleep tonight but still I feel fine and it's not been to much of a problem.

Right that's enough blogging for one night,
goodnight! 好睡

After a somewhat tedious week of various safety talks, photocopying, bank phoning, emailing, equipment buying and dealing with over cautious parents ( who I'm sure will disagree with me saying that) the penultimate, or perhaps you could say last FULL day, has arrived!
Bags are packed, other bags are packed, sadly the mandarin knowledge isn't quite there but i'm sure i'll be able to pick it up as I go along...
So this time tomorrow I'll be on the plane heading towards Shanghai, I might add that it's a direct flight which seems to fascinate people over the age of 40 who perhaps are more used to hoping on the horse and carriage whenever they needed to get out of Thame. HA, sorry i'll stop bad mouthing old people soon enough. The flight is at 2.00pm so if you need to catch me before I go, rather like that last episode of Friends, i'm leaving from Heathrow!

Anyway that's all I have to say for noww.

Zai jian! 再见

Test. Testing. 1,3. Test.