Marie's Birthday

Today was Marie's birthday and we celebrated by going to a Uygur Restaurant for dinner and having a delicious cake. We have had many birthday's in the group over the last four months but Marie's is the last! It is unfortunate for those whose birthdays fall outside our time in China as it is a great place to celebrate. Due to the unique environment – not the nightlife!

local kindergarten class

This morning we had a visit from a local kindergarten class in our Comprehensive Chinese class. We told the children where we are from and our names in Chinese, we also taught them how to say "hello" in our own language. They sung a song for us and recited a poem.

Shui Che Yuan Primary School Visit

We visited a local Lanzhou Primary School, Shui Che Yuan. The School has 2,200 students and they study English from a young age. I spoke to a 7 year old who had excellent English skills. Some students performed for us and we then played some games with them. This school is very different from the rural one we visited, it was very well resourced.

My Birthday!

Today is my birthday and its the 3rd time in the last 4 years I have spent it abroad. It has been a really good day. I first treated myself to extra time in bed - the only problem being that the hot water is cut off at 9am :( We went for lunch at a western cafe just outside the University - I had a burger and it was amasing!!! Then a group of us went to my favourite restaurant in Lanzhou - the Japanese place! I must go there about once a week, but it's really good. After dinner Marcia, Team Extreme (the 3 Japanese) and myself went to a Karaoke place, I really am a terrible singer!

It was a Japanese style birthday in China :)

I do love burgers!

Cutting the cake whilst wearing all my gifts

Me and the girls

As if I don't already know what I'm going to order!

Me with my cake-for-one sent from Scotland :)

First Hospital of Lanzhou University

This afternoon we visited the First Hospital of Lanzhou University. The Hospital has an 23-storey inpatient building with over 800 beds and 18 operating rooms. The Hospital first opened in 1948 as the Medicine College of Lanzhou University. A lot of the equipment in the hospital comes from the U.S. The key areas of this hospital are cardiovascular surgery, blood diagnosis, general surgery, and obstetrics. Gansu has a high incidence rate of Congenital Heart Disease (nearly 8%) and since 1998 medical teams from other countries have been sent by an international charitable organization, Children's Heartlink, to work with the Cardiovascular Surgery Department. While visiting the hospital we met a 3 year-old who is due to leave the hospital tomorrow after a heart operation.

Some of the machines bought from the United States

Test day!

This morning we had our second test in our Elementary Chinese class. The quiz after our first five lessons was a lot easier! Although some of us struggle with the Chinese characters and pronunciation, we have definitely made some progress. For some reason most people in the class already knew most of the expressions for shopping before we came to that lesson. Unfortunately our final exam in a couple of weeks probably won't focus on how to ask for a discount!

Chinese cooking 101

Today a group of us went to another campus for a cooking class. We learnt how to make a beef dish, a tomato and egg dish, and most importantly, noodles. It was interesting to see what goes into the food that we eat everyday. The cookers use coal and I imagine this doesn’t help with the air pollution problem.

The venue for our master class

Remember - Don't ask what it is!

Scott showing us how it's done

Cleaning the Wok after each dish

Me showing people how not to do it

Noodle making

The best thing about cooking - the tasting!