Saturday 3rd September

Found out today that my room mate isn't leaving until tomorrow so I made the most of it and took her to the supermarket with me (so I would have someone to help me carry my shopping home) I’m finding it really hard to do food shopping as I don’t have a clue what most things are. Everything is either really salty or really sweet and what you think might be savoury or looks like it is sweet, usually turns out to be the opposite. I bought what looked like a custard or almond pastry from a bakery and it turned out to be a cheese pastry with a sugar glaze!

I then went to try and buy a train ticket from the corner shop, turns out you can only buy the ticket 10 days before you travel, no later, no earlier. Makes it a lot harder if you don’t decide to go anywhere until a few days before, everything has to be planned ahead.

At 12pm I met up with Jodie and Milzie (who are staying in the other apartment in a complex 200 yards down the road from mine and Sophie’s. Their apartment has just been built and is a lot posher than ours (so jealous) and they have a lift where as we have to climb up four flights of stairs! They had a friend staying with them from Beijing who all she did was moan, we went for lunch at an American restaurant not far from us at the Pinnacle Plaza. The Pinnacle Plaza is a bit like Cheshire Oaks, but with restaurants (American, Italian, Mexican, subway, Starbucks, dominoes, Indian, dry cleaners and supermarkets). After lunch we went to the Euro Plaza which is a 6 floor shopping centre to meet 3 of Jodie and Milzie’s other friends who are also based in Beijing. This just shows how many interns were based at the hotel for the orientation fortnight as I had never spoken to these people before. I then went back to my apartment with the plan to go round to Jodie and Milzie’s apartment later for drinks and then go to KTV (local karaoke bar).

At one point I went to open my door to my balcony today and it was already unlocked, it must have been unlocked since I arrived on Monday! Upon further investigation I realised the door doesn't lock at all, that’s good to know! I will have to report that to the school on Monday.