Welcome back to my blog for my three followers (of whom I am one myself) and the other casual spectators. I am writing to you from Beijing, where I am now a student and have a surrogate Mum, Dad and Sister!!

I suppose that I'll do this blog in the tried and tested chronological format, but if anyone thinks of anything more quirky, I'll try to implement it.

The flight was average - I got upgraded to World Traveller Plus, which was an excellent start to my trip. I have inherited, thanks to Mother, an aversion to sleeping on planes, and I tried my best to overcome this with a beer, a glass of wine, and a herbal sleeping tablet... Inevitably, this didn't work, and I was reduced to watching some average films, and some quite decent comedies. For those of you interested, I watched Transformers (very silly, very American and mildly enjoyable) and Burn After Reading (again very silly but a bit more enjoyable). I did somehow manage to grab a couple of hours sleep, and left the plane feeling relatively awake.

Arrived in the new Terminal 3 at Beijing Airport, and it looks fantastic. Efficient, clean, with polite staff - everything you'd want an airport to be. I will post pictures later, but at the moment, the family computer doesn't have an SD card reader so you'll have to wait.

So I arrived in Beijing, was picked up by a driver from my language school, and taken to meet my new family. After a short drive, we reached what looked like a Chinese council estate - I'm assuming that these apartment blocks were rapidly built during the last 30 years, to cope with the influx into Beijing's commercial centre. Met the family, and was shocked to find out that they don't speak a work of English！I haven't studied Mandarin for over ６months, so I was a little rusty, but we made ourselves understood, whilst I wondered what the hell I'd let myself in for!

Since then, its actually been pretty enjoyable living with the Chinese family. The mum took me to and from school on the first day, and I felt like I was four years old again, and we have gradually been getting used to one another. The mum really mothers me, telling me to button up my coat when we go outside so that I don't get a cold, constantly questioning why I eat so little, and even (annoyingly) sitting with me for an hour whilst I was doing my homework. Thankfully she stopped short of holding my hand when we crossed the road! The dad and daughter are nice, albeit very quiet, but the mother compensates for this! The food is passable - normally a banana and a slice of toast for breakfast (complete with powdered orange juice!), lunch out, and a couple of vegetable dishes and a bowl of rice for dinner. Inside, the apartment is actually very nice, although the view is pretty miserable (again, I'll post photos later).

I started at　the language school yesterday and they're already working us really hard. We do more Mandarin in a day here than we'd do in two weeks at uni. So for anyone thinking of studying a language, don't study at uni, just do an intensive course abroad. I've got mountains of homework to do, and really should be doing that instead of writing this blog, but what the hell - got to live life on the wild side!

I found a vegetarian restaurant close to the school and the food seems pretty good - so don't worry about whether or not I'm being fed! The family seems to find the concept of my vegetarianism very amusing, but I haven't seen a piece of meat in the flat yet! Lets hope it long continues!

I'm struggling to think of other things of note that have happened. My biggest gripe is that the pound is almost half as strong as it was last time I came here, and as a result, everything suddenly seems very expensive! I guess that I'll have to reconsider all the purchases of DVDs and clothes that Mihir was dreaming of! Those 1 yuan notes suddenly don't seem so worthless!

I haven't really visited the same places I went to last time, so can't really talk about how much/little Beijing has changed in two years.

That's it to be honest, sorry this blog was so mundane. I should be doing something slightly more interesting this weekend, and hopefully I'll soon be able to upload my photos, so that you lot aren't faced with line after line of text.


Zaijian!


PS the Nihal-Nihao joke is still amusing for Chinese people as it was last time