Days 354-360 - We're outa here!

With only one week left in Jinan, we experienced a cocktail of lasts (last class, last Wei Weis, last lesson, last mountain men etc) mixed with frantic organisation. For Adam's final Wei Weis night he decided once and for all to start and complete the Wei Weis 10 beer and 100 chuanr challenge - this resulted in an immensely enjoyable evening of smack talk, photos, goodbyes and eventually one hell of a hangover for his last 4 hours of class on Thursday morning.

On Thursday night Mumbles and Pops returned and joined in the celebrations of knowing that we have taught our last English class (possibly forever) and are about to embark on our 11 month adlibing tour around Asia. On Friday we steadily worked on our 'pack pack pack' mantra, and at 4am Adam finally made it to bed - with only a few more hours of organising left on Saturday. Saturday morning, 8am, our boss Eileen arrived and was more efficient than usual (typical, just as we're leaving things start going to plan) and gave us our money to sustain us for the next few months.

We left campus around 10.30am, after saying goodbye to Matt (Mr K), who we'll hopefully catch up with again sometime, somewhere, in the future. For the next 2 weeks the adlibing crew has doubled in size with new recruits Mumbles and Pops Porter joining us before they head back home to the kiwi paradise, we'll slowly make our way home to over the next year or so.

Our first stop was Shijiazhuang, the capital city of Hebei Province (another one down!), where we arrived and once we found a great hostel (Shijiazhuang City Central Youth Hostel, just across the road from the train station) we started enjoying ourselves! We went out to a yummy Korean restaurant for dinner, sitting at the window, watching people watch us! Afterwards we wandered the street markets, and sat on the side of the road drinking beer and lemonade, enjoying being part of an un-touristy part of China.

After a bit of a sleep in on Sunday we ventured out to Zhengding, about 1 hour away, where we spent the day ambling in no particular direction, but ending at destinations well worth the walk. Zhengding is a town where instead of high rise buildings dominate the skyline, intricately carved pagodas and towers reach into the sky. Instead of paying for a through-ticket to power through 10 or more temples/pagoda complexes, we wandered past them and just went into one of the more interesting ones - the first pagoda Mumbles and Pops would climb up in China. We wandered off the main roads, following dirt paths into the farmland and later found ourselves in the back alleyways enjoying a different experience to what many tourists experience in Zhengding. Back in Shijiazhuang we set about planning the next 10 days or so, but before long our stomachs were calling out for food and we went wandering. We ended up in a cool little side street where we dined on a true feast, that would easily have fed a few more people, but was so unbelievably tasty that we couldn't stop eating!

Adlibing it back on the tour.