No, in case you're wondering, I've not been drinking solid for two weeks. Just last night, though it feels like longer, judging by the state of my head today.

So, apologies for the huge delay in writing. Now, where do I start? First, I guess, we should go to school...

The first of this month's two 'demo' lessons went off without any serious problems last Tuesday. Well, I mean, I did refill the whiteboard markers with the wrong ink, which meant the boss's wife putting the demo on hold to get busy cleaning said wall, but aside from that if was okay - the one potentially worrying psycho kid was very well behaved (his mum was there so he behaved... maybe she's a bigger psycho than him?).

My next demo, which I know for a fact will be bad, bad, bad, is this Tuesday evening, so think of me around 11am GMT and picture the chaos of 15 7-year olds trying to remember their lines to The Ugly Duckling and me in the middle of it all, grinning inanely to keep up the 'nothing fazes me' teacher image.

Otherwise, I've not done much the last three weekends as I've had so much work on. On the new friends front though, we've met two great South African girls - Renee and Nicky. Renee's 22 and just finished Uni,. She's pretty wise beyond her years, and speaks Afrikaans and English. Nicky is, i think, 28, an ex-music student and (when at home) a piano and art teacher. She studied classical music initially, then jazz, so we've been rambling on about that plenty.

Last night was the first time Phil and I had properly spent some time with these two, as we went round to check out their apartment, which their school supplies. This 'checking out' is really code language for lots of beer, straight vodka (ouch, I really detest that stuff), some impromptu dancing lessons and a new game called 'let's teach Matt some Afrikaans and laugh at his dodgy accent!'.

The few words and phrases I can now speak in Afrikans are sadly untranslatable here (i.e. I'm unwilling to offend you by telling you the bad things I learnt), so I'm learning a little of two languages now from different continents!

After the dancing and teaching, it turned into one of those unexpectedly deep conversational evenings, which ended with Phil and I making it home at around 5.45am (suffice it to say, he missed church!).

Oh, and the plan is, we're going to borrow a guitar, maybe a cymbal or two, and set-up a busking band to stand on Huwei main street and traumatise the locals (or maybe this was a vodka-induced idea, I'm not sure)...

I'm quite sure my next update will be soon, so hold onto your hats and I'll be back. In the meanwhile, I have to go pick up my washing.

Matt

PS: I've noticed some products here that strike me as very useful (in a 'why don't we have THAT at home?' kind of way). If anyone knows whether these are available at home or not, please EMAIL ME - matwade76@hotmail.com

* 24-hour kettle type thing (technical, aren't I?). This is basically a big water container that you fill in the morning, leave plugged in and it keeps the water at 95C all day. No more 'putting the kettle on', just push the button on top and top up.

* LED light switches - when they're turned off, a small led (various colours) lights up, meaning no more fumbling around in the dark trying to turn the lights on. Ingenious.