first point - oooh hasnt the blogging thingy mabob changed?

next up - what an incredible weekend with the most incredible people ever! A massive thankyou goes out to everyone involved in organsing it because i loved every second!

getting to the hotel in the morning and randomly recognising a group of people in the lobby from facebook who i had never met before and then instantly clicking with them! a trek through the tube system and off to the british council buliding was to follow (with a quick stop for some breakfast). The first day was jam packed with quick introductions, re-meeting selection day buddies and a lot of realisations that us china fellows do a lot of facebook stalking! 3 hours of mandarin learning and cultural insight where i learnt the 8 rules of what not to do with chopsticks as well as how to sing the numbers 1 to 10 to the barney tune :) then all 100 fellows plus organisers trekked it off to a turkish restaurant for a very filling meal where yet again i met more people!

back at the hotel we realised just how hard it is to organise a large group of teeneagers! so we popped out to the oub in a smallish group for a chat over a drink before back to the hotel to attempt to organise again! i ended up in a group of 4 of us who decided we were going out to enjoy london, which was definitely true as we sat down in a chinese restaurant in china town at 1.30 in the morning to practice chopstick etiquette! despite a lot of walking through london without much focus (and eventually a bus) the city was alive with the aftermath of pride and we didnt even have to try to enjoy ourselves and get to know each other!

up bright and early in the morning on suday ready for another hectic day, this time of communication tasks. we learnt how not to make a video! along with how to respond to the press, answering difficult questions and how to tell our stories when we get back. it was really productive and i started to put down a few notes in the beautiful global fellowship journal i was given!

we were given the evening off which also involved getting our own dinner. i was craving fast food so went with one of the india fellows off to maccy ds! not very cultural but a craving is a craving! then we headed to a chilled bar where they had a live jazz band with a jam session for members of the audience, chilled enough to finally get a sit down! however we were able to overcome tiredness when us 2 plus 2 more fellows who joined us headed over to 'bar slasa' to salsa dance the night away with other fellows. there was such a mix of brazil and china fellows plus on from india (it seems the china fellows got everywhere!). from that night i knew just how much fun the trip is going to be because everyone got up and out of their comfort zone to give the dancing a try and thats the exact attitude i know me and many other fellows want from the experience.

monday morning and off to our corporate partners. i went with aldaine, one of the other china fellows, and we went to ARUP, an engineer and design company thst has offices in shanghai that we will be visitning. my reaction of the visit was a definite WOW! the way the offices were arranged, orgainised and deisgned looked incredible. and then under the surface arup stunned me! it was that much of a forward thinking company, heavily involved in environmental issue, key factors that will shape the future and their employee work ethic was just incredible. we got to meet about 6 people from different fields of expertise but they were able to switch projects and dip into wherever they felt like it with no issues, menaing they enjoyed their work. also they company had a strong volunteer programme where workers volunteer for projects that arup fund to help communities for free, such as building a kindergarten centre in Ghana. just, wow!

back at the british council buildings we got to meet some of the alumni comitee and go through all the burning questions we wanted to ask and finally wwe had our afternoon reception session for networking and making sure we'd spoken to as many people as possible! it was odd saying bye to some people with either 'see you in 2 weeks!' or 'have an amazing time, see you in november!' stuck on the end but the whole weekend was just amazing. i am so incredibly excited now for china, just AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! :D :D :D