Colourful Jane mix of cloud! Sounds delicious!

So yesterday was my 1st Chinese class, I got up far too early so I wasn't late. However I did end up rushing out the door as the Grandad cooked me Breakfast (special fried rice) but I'd eaten when he was dropping off Leo. So for five minutes I failed to explain that I had already eaten and didn't need the gigantic bowl of rice, seriously it would serve about 4 people. It's times like that when you really wish that Chinese had tenses.

I made it to the subway, which is only 5 minutes away, and squeezed onto the commuter train. As I've said before the trains are actually air conditioned, so it wasn't too bad. It also runs above the ground on a bridge for the first couple of stops, I was thinking this isn't too bad at least I can look at stuff, including this giant gold hotel that is being built. However we descended underground after that, so all I could look at were the ads for toothpaste on the tunnel walls. My journey takes about 50 minutes and encompasses lines 5&1, which are the busiest apparently. Lucky me! 

The agency where I have my lessons, is based in a hotel. It's a pretty small office, but when I got there I realised that no one had told me my teachers name or where to go. So asked this lady and she could not be more helpful. She kept repeating that if I couldn't tell her a name or the phone number of the teacher then she couldn't tell me where to go. Then Rose came along - she is the families link to the agency - and showed me where to go. A little partition off the main room, where all the lessons happen apparently, so thank you helpful lady. Evangelina arrived first, she's Swedish and is going to be out here all year. She has a pretty good deal, she has 2 kids, but she has her own flat across the hall from theirs, a nanny, a housekeeper and a driver. Also she lives in an area where there are loads of western people, so she doesn't get stared out every time she takes a step out the building. There was an American boy called Cullen, but he left this morning, he seemed nice though. The lesson itself was different to what I expected though, he gave us a couple of poems, one was a nursery rhyme type thing that Leo learns about. The other however was the equivalent of one of Shakespeare's sonnets, and when I showed it to Helen she said to me that they don't study these until the last couple of years of high school... So I think I'm going to go find some textbooks or something. 

After the lesson, we went to Wangfujing which is this big shopping street with a ton of malls. Walking past Marc Jacobs without going in was tough. As we walked down the street they had fountains timed to music. Obviously! We found the apple store, as I left my charger in England, and purchased the horrifically over priced plug and cable. We grabbed some lunch, not in McDonalds as Helen asked me later, but a Shanghai style restaurant, with some interesting options...

We decided to go with noodles and dumplings. I could only eat about 1/6th of my noodles though, the bowl was massive! I seriously don't know how they eat the amount that they do. But. It was only 14¥ a bowl so can't complain. As we walked back through Cullen showed us this place where they have live scorpions on sticks which then got deep fried... Scrummy. There were actually 2 fighting each other on opposite sticks.

On the tube back I actually got a seat, but some old guy was wiping something up. I really hope it wasn't sick, but looked and smelled like it was...

The good news is that I didn't have to ride the bike to pick Leo up, because the grandad went to do it. Helen said to me later that I don't ever have to ride the bike, yay! Bus it is. I'm not going to be smushed by a car. I took Leo for a walk which consisted of me watching him on the play ground.had dinner when we got back. It all started off innocently, salad with dressing, he then tried to put strawberry jam on it... I was all like 'hell no'. 

I took a bite. It was horrific, definitely not salad dressing. I had to spit it out. I went into the kitchen, to as the grandad what it was. Turns out it was sponge bob square pants banana flavoured yogurt. The rest of the meal was fine, apart from the eggs we had had the night before, which had turned blue... The grandad kept pointing at the salad going 'not tasty', but then he'd carry on eating it. I suppose that has something to do with living through a famine. 

Bad news is iplayer isn't working, so I can't watch the great British bake off. Oh how will I cope!!!! :P