Now it's cold.

HEATING

Thankfully, the heating has begun, so I'm a very happy little bunny. Now, with teh heating, this is a city-wide thing. Each house here is heated by the government for free, adn teh heating (more or less) starts all on the same day - on some day decreed by the government (at least this is what I understand). The effect is that hundreds of coal burning furnances with massive chimmneys all start burning...

Urumqi is now like a city in the clouds. Fog / smog flush the streets and buildings. It's actually not that ugly, which surprises me. It just looks like the town is really foggy, it's not smelly or black (yet).

DIET COKE

So, on anohter note, I had on of the happiest days of my Urumqi life last week. One of my super star mates, Dave Wong, brought me back some Diet Pepsi from Kazakhstan.

(those are sentences I never thought I'd write)

And even better, whilst out roaming hte Urumqi streets with Dave, we discovered a LOCAL store which sells diet coke. I bought crate. We struck a deal and I'll be going back for more regularly.

BOREDOM

So, I'm a little bored at the moment. I'm trying to find myself a hobby... Margo: knitting seems to have reentered my life.

I'm sure I'll find something else to amuse myself with, but yeah, I'm a tad bored with the daily routine right now.

HOLIDAYS

Anddddddddddddd I'm counting down to the next holiday as a result of my boredom. I've booked a few days off in November, so I'll be back up to visit the north of Xinjiang province again. Ironically it's warmer up north because Urumqi is about 1000m above sea-level, whilst cities up north are lower.

3 weeks to go. yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

BLOG LOCATION

I'm still looking for a new blog location that I can access, but in the meantime, I'm going to keep trying to plug away at this one.

Loadsa love

Cath xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hurrah! I've finally managed to log on.

Right, I have to annouce that I'm thinking of trying another blog site becuase it's becoming way to difficult to get onto this one, no matter what tricks I have up my sleeve. I'll keep you all posted here is I do change my blog site.

In the mean time, where in the world was I?
When did I write last?

OK, I'm assuming that I wrote sometime before the Golden Week holiday. For those non-Chinese / China readers, the Golden Week is 7 days of public holiday celebrating the anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic... or the Communist Party. I'm not really straight on which precisely... but on of the two (perhaps even both??) Eh. Your guess is as good as mine).

News is thin on the ground. However, firstly, my one-time flatmate, Brooke, is now leaving EF Urumqi. She's off, back to the beaches of Indonesia. Things were a little ugly. I need not go into detail.

Secondly... errr. Is there a secondly? Well, I was on holiday, but I cringe at the thought of boring you all with my holiday details. In short, I went to the northern part of the province... oh wait, I think I've mentioned this already. I was in Yili?

Hmm. In case I have mentioned this, let's bullet-form the rest:
- Yili awesome
- North, in the grasslands
- stayed with VSO teachers living in the city
- saw the lake (ooooo, the largest body of water that I have seen in MONTHS)
- had a really great time bumming around with the teachers up there, they're a blast

all in all, good choice.

Right, moving along. Huh. No other news. Susi, the German teacher, is back. I'm really happy about this as she's brilliant, and I'm starting to lose affection for a lot of the Urumqi social living. Hmm, maybe it's just the back to work blues. I hope so.

Still miss diet pepsi. Badly.

Will up-date next when I can.
Cath xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx