Happy Christmas Season! ^_^

Most exciting news recently is that we are moving from the lovely (massive rip-off) student accomodation in to a flat not far from here. Very excited, purely because I will be far away from the damn students on this corridor who have screaming matches at 4am and respond to all requests to shut up with "不好意思，不好意思" (Really sorry, really sorry), then shut the door and scream again *head-desk* Luckily I'm moving out and the knife I've been polishing for the past 3 days won't see any action ^^ The new flatmates are two Korean girls called Boram and Sara, both very nice, very friendly and very organised. Boram managed to chase down the owner of the flat (who was a bit peeved the estate agents hadn't fobbed her off), then took him all over the flat pointing out the broken bits and backing him in to a corner (literally) about the hot water etc. I like this girl.

Last weekend I followed Louise to 沂水 (Yishui), a small village by Chinese standards, a sizeable city by my quaint British ones. Lou goes with a teaching cohort, so they pack five of them in a mini-van, pay for a hotel, then spend all of Saturday teaching adults at the "Kellogs" factory there (it makes 5 differents brands, but is known as the Kellogs factory). I went with because Lou had described it as "the sticks" and I wanted to see something vaguely resembling countryside. The organisers were called Raymond and Edward and both had pretty damn good English. Alot of people (my focus being on those who say they can speak English) can't quite grasp the concept of conditional form and tenses so these guys were nice to talk to. The drive to Yishui was dusty and bland. The road out of Qingdao gave a good view of the surrounding areas, but even the fields lining a sluggish river were covered in a layer of dust. The only trees were very small, evergreen-types, but with no leaves.