We've had a ridiculously busy week with teaching and trying to find our feet, but we’re slowly getting there.

The main news is that I have now officially moved into Ali’s apartment, although I’ll still visit Carol and go for dinner some nights, so it’s the best of both worlds.

Robert invited us to his favourite restaurant for lunch on Monday, before taking us on a tour of the area surrounding the school, where we’ll be living once we finally get our own accommodation.

Both he and Maria have been incredibly helpful to us, showing us bus routes and offering advice, which is very much needed as the city is so vast and sprawls for a number of miles so it’s easy to get lost.

On our way back to the school, Robert pointed out something we surprisingly hadn’t been observant enough to notice before- split pants.

As nappies are so expensive in China, most babies walk around with a split in the back of their trousers, allowing them to go to the toilet through this gap, which certainly explains the high level of human excrement on the pavements.

My immediate question was how the babies communicate when they need the toilet, and apparently they are trained from birth to go when their parents whistle.

It really is a sight which needs to be seen to be believed.

Much to my mum’s surprise, I’ve finally mastered the art of dry mopping, and have cleaned the apartment every day since I moved in, although admittedly this is more due to necessity than choice, as there is just so much dust outside which gets carried in on our clothes and leaves a fine grey film over every surface.

We even managed our first grocery shop on Wednesday, but somehow forgot quite how far away the apartment was, so had to lug heavy bags three quarters of a mile home along a dirt track.

When we finally reached the apartment and had recovered from the exhaustion, I discovered that I couldn’t find my pen knife (which, much to my annoyance, was at the bottom of my bag all along) so resorted to rather unsuccessfully spreading honey onto our bread with chopsticks. All part of the learning experience, I suppose...

Chinese supermarkets themselves are minefields, full of dubious looking packages, so we never quite know what to expect when we buy groceries.

Even items which are unwrapped are very deceiving, and the green wafers we bought from our new favourite bakery which we assumed to be mint flavoured turned out to taste like watermelon, much to our displeasure, and so we now have ¥5 worth sat on the kitchen counter, which we plan to hand out as prizes to the pupils.

In terms of teaching, we’ve had a lot of fun playing ‘Just a Minute’ to improve the pupils’ fluency and it was great to see their confidence grow as the lesson progressed.

Certainly, by the end, some of the boys were good enough to give Paul Merton a run for his money.

However, the students have begun to grow restless as it’s near the end of term, and I was so tempted yesterday to commit the cardinal teaching sin and abandon the lesson and play games instead, when a large group of people entered the classroom unannounced.

They turned out to be the students’ parents, keen to observe the new English teachers at work, although the school had conveniently forgotten to inform us that they were coming.

Much to my relief, the class instantly perked up, and we raced through the rest of ‘University Life’ with no hiccups at all.

It was also Carol’s 17th birthday yesterday, so we bought her a giant teddy which she has named ‘Sarah’ and now sleeps in her bed. We had planned to watch Avatar in 3D, but all of the tickets were sold out, so we’ve booked tickets for tonight.

Instead, we went bowling and without the barriers to conceal our lack of skills, put on a rather pitiful display. Surrounded by semi-professionals bowling alone, Big Lebowski style, we managed rather shocking final scores of 45, 44 and 42, as our fellow bowlers shook their heads in dismay.

As for our travel plans, Tibet is now looking increasingly unlikely, for various reasons.

We do however hope to head to Shangri-La which borders the region during the May holiday, so we should still be able to get a flavour of the culture.

In the meantime, we’ve been told by many people that Xi’an, which is about a nine hour train ride away in the neighbouring province, is really nice, so we’re going to look it up in the guidebook.

Also, we have been informed that our apartment will be ready for just after the Spring Festival which should be brilliant as we’ll finally have gas to cook and hot showers!

We’re off to watch Avatar in 3D now, and I’ll write another update once we’ve managed to locate the nearest internet cafe as the school is now closed for the festival.