Kebab. Flavoured. Pot Noo-oodles!
My after school snack has been the amazing ‘Pot Noodle’ many a times. They are easy and quick to make and frankly, they are yummy (to use a grown-upyy word). Just add boiling water than kah-pow! You have noodle soup of the oriental/asian variety. On the only channel I watch that isn’t for 8-year olds (like Disney and Nickelodeon) I saw this amazing advert for the new Pot Noodles. That’s right. I was on E4, watching either F.R.I.E.N.D.S or 90210 (the new one) and I came across this singy-songy commercial that at some point reminds me of the video for Beyoncé’s ‘Single Ladies’. ANYWAYS! Hope you like it and I’m off to try and find some songs from Phineas and Ferb…
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D of E(vil)
So the Duke of Edinburgh Awards Scheme. It’s basically something the English government made up to make us stop whining about how heavy our school bags are. The cover up of this invention is that the award looks “good” on “CV’s” and “stuff”. Pft. NOT WORTH IT.
As you can probably tell, I went ahead and decided to do D of E (clever person that I am and all). Before I tell you about my, oh so, fun adventure, allow me to explain in further detailed detail what it is.
It’s a hiking trip with VERY heavy packs and lots of hills.
THERE! Now you know.
I slept over my mate Annah’s house the day before the expedition to save my lovely parents the hassle of driving me to school at 7am on Friday. See how nice I am? My good friend Ella also joined in this party of slumber. We actually went to bed ay 12.30 which isn’t that bad for us. Of course, before this, we went outside and discovered a HAMMOCK. We lay in it for about 40 mins and when people walked by decided to BE the hammock. (For your information, hammocks talk in in deep fast voices and repeat things many times.) We also arranged the potted trees in a hallway to stand in the middle of it and played frisbee (we are quite bad at this particular game). The frisbee then had to be returned to the hammock (where we had found it). Twas a fun night.
The next day at school the bus came (40 minutes late) and took us to somewhere in Kent. There we started our trek.
Here’s a sum up of the first day:
My group was Annah, Me, Emily, Bea, An-ma (Anne-Marie) were doing well at first but at some point went south for 2km when we were meant to be going north. (The first half, we walked with a teacher who I blame for our lostness).We were second to last to arrive at lunch. I was carrying two halves of a tent during the first half of the walk which caused me to cry many times. At lunch, we gave Annah one of the tent halves which helped loads. We met up with a group about an hour in being led by our resident Scottish teacher, Ms McNabbers (this is not the actual spelling of her name but I worry about teachers googling themselves because yes, they are that sad)! She gave us a right laugh! The other group wad hopelessly lost so Ms said ‘Let’s go that way!’ Her group asked why and she replied with ‘Well the other way leads to Scotland.” You had to be there. It was hilarious!
We actually got to camp second at around 6pm which was our goal in the first place. We cooked pasta and put up our tents and then went beddy-bye. Sleeping in tents is cold and my tent-mate, Bea, rolled onto my side very often.
Day numero two:
We were in much better spirits on Saturday and were first to leave camp in the morning. Over the hike, various groups caught up to us but quickly fell behind. We were told to leave a card at a farm to show we’d got that far before going ahead. Ours said ‘We got here first! Na Nicky Na Na! (We probably won’t get home first).’ Well…WE DID. We arrived at our pick up point before our TEACHERS let alone everyone else! We were well proud. Sadly, me and Annah got picked up last ‘cos our ride was Ella’s mum. Not only did her group get back almost last, but Ella also forgot to call her mum and tell her to pick us up. Ah well, I learned a few card tricks and horrified all the teachers with my music.
And this was only the practice expedition! I have the real thing in two weeks. My shoulders and legs still kill so much but I’ll survive (barely).
Here’s a pic of our arrival at the pick-up point! From left to right:
Annah, Bea, Emily, An-ma, Me
(the sign say ‘We got here first!’ btw)
I’m Baaaa-aaaack! Did’ya miss me?
So China. It’s big. It’s Chinese. It is now crossed off the list of places I haven’t been to. That’s right. CHINA.
So I went on my school trip to China. ‘Please tell us all about it’, I hear you cry. Well alright, since you insist, I shall indulge you.
I get really annoyed on big trips because there is so much to tell and my fingers and brain get bored of typing it all out. I’ll try my best to tell it all but I have a proposition. If I get lazy today with my tales, I promise to continue them on another post another time. Deal? Good. I knew you’d see it my way.
First I’ll chat about the food. It was okay but the wrong kind. Half-way through the trip I noticed that it said it was Sichuan. Then I remembered going to a restaurant of that persuasion a few years back and being told it was from a different region then I was used to. Well, that was my explanation. All the take-out I get is not Sichuan, it’s Cantonese. The food was still edible, but not amazing. Though we did have a hotpot on the last day and got to cook our own junk in a (can you believe it?) hot pot.
One good thing that came from it all was that I am now the master of chopsticks. They are fairly easy to use once you know how, actually. It’s like being thrown into a country of a language that you don’t speak. Pretty soon, you have no choice but to pick it up. So I picked up the chopsticks so as not to starve.
Second. I am famous in China, as are all my friends. We got our pictures taken, had to pose for them with families AND had them taken and sold to other people. I liked being a celebrity, twas very fun. Believe me, it’s cool to have people notice you just because you look a little bit different. Especially if they are Chinese boys. They are just beautiful! You cannot actually describe them as handsome or good-looking, they are just gorgeous and have really pretty faces (in a good way). Either that, or they’re very ugly. There is no in-between. English boys all look dull to me now.
Toilets=hole in the ground framed by the stuff normal toilets are made of. No toilet paper. Enough said.
We visited two schools and they were really nice to us but much bigger. Our school has 300 pupils altogether. They have 3000. It’s rather similar to our own school, though. We learned some Tai-chi at the first one. The second place, we only did a musical exchange but I didn’t mind. It seems that all good-looking boys from the first school (there were none) were transferred here so I was relatively happy. The students were wearing their own clothes but I think that’s just because we were there. But those I saw wearing uniforms had nice ones. The first school had sweatsuits instead. Ew.
Overnight trains are officially mega cool. We rode one to Xian and back and they are awesome-ful. Really comfortable and cozy. There’s not much more to say about them but I liked the trips.
In Xian, we visited a Chinese community and I was loved by all the little children. They called me Pandaperson. This was due to my amazing panda hat but still, they were so sweet and wouldn’t leave me. They even gave me gifts and a lollipop. I seriously loved those kids so much! The community was putting on a little show for us of Tai-chi and dancing and this was very sweet. The place reminded me kinda of Rostov in that everybody knew everyone else and the atmosphere was the same. If I wanted to learn the language, I’d stay there probably.
The Great Wall. Hmmm. Yea, it’s great all right. But I though there was something on top. Turns out, the whole point is just the climb. Very good exercise but here is a point of warning. We were told to dress warmly ‘cos it would be ‘very cold’. HA. I ended up with my jeans rolled up to who knows where and only a T-shirt. I started out with a jacket and jumper and tights. The tights sadly could not be taken off so my feet got heat stroke in my opinion. Bring a light jacket and lots of water because it is NOT nice having to lug it all up, trust me. Anyways, with about 100 steps to go our teacher informed us ‘Right girls, we are running late so you can get to the top but we’re coming right down.’ Needless to say, I was distraught by this piece of news. All that climb and then pft. Well I reached the top, with my climbing buddy Alice, and we agreed on a conclusion for the climbing experience. We made it, but it came with a price. Our sanity. Yea, we lost it somewhere along the line. It didn’t start coming back until a few days after and I’m still not sure it’s all back. Hehe. I bought my panda hat at the store at the bottom of the wall when we came down.
Last thing I’ll ramble on about is bargaining. Oh my god, you can do this anywhere! In museum shops, in food stores, ANYWHERE! The last day was devoted to only shopping so we went to a pair of huge indoor markets. 6 floors each. Fun times, fun times. I love bargaining and it’s really easy as well. (Quick math lesson. 10 yuan equals 1 pound, okay?) I got a pair of shoes from 380 yuan down to 100. I didn’t buy them anyways ‘cos a) I needed prezzies for family and b) I only had 75, but still! That’s quite good in my opinion. Plus, as we’re students, they gave us even more off!
Quick funny tale about bargaining:
At the terra-cotta warriors museum, tons of guys were selling boxes of replicas and these went down A LOT in price as the day went on. So soon my mates were buying whole boxes of them with clever schemes in mind. When the next man offered to sell them a box for 20 yuan, they opened their own and said I’ll sell you my box for 50. We confused many Chinese salesmen that day…
Yea. Those were the most interesting parts of me trip and there shall be photos on my Dad’s site quite soon. I just wanna put up three on my own first. ENJOY! Or else the Chinese boys will come and get you. Not that I’d mind that actually…
3 Comments on I'm Baaaa-aaaack! Did'ya miss me?
