So yesterday I thought I'd give my new 'fan in a box' a try. It's this contraption which is a bit like a fan in a box, and you put cold water and ice packs inside, so when it's turned on, it blasts out cold air, instead of warm air like an ordinary fan does. To start with, my room temperature was 29.1 degrees. After 30 minutes 10 inches in front of the fan, the temperature reader was reading 29.0 degrees, a truly enormous change, producing igloo-like conditions in my room. And because it's quite noisy, it has to be turned off when trying to sleep anyway. Another quality Chinese product.

What have I been doing recently? Not a huge amount. Have 2 hours of Chinese lessons in the morning with a 'tutor' (Masters student), going through an intermediate level textbook. So it ensures I continue to make progress. I've been working a lot on my 'fayin' (pronunciation) recently, I have successfully learnt how to pronounce previously unpronouncable sounds, but I know I still have a horrible foreign accent. I've also started writing things again, and having them corrected. Learning new words, grammar, and using them both correctly is only half the challenge - the style of writing in Chinese is very different, and obviously incredibly hard to imitate. I think I could write a grammatically perfect essay and it would still be obviously penned by a foreigner.

Last week, I made 2 mistakes. One, agreed to teach English to some kids for a few days, and two, agreed to teach English to one rich kid for the summer. I've finished with the group of kids, and this week started with the rich kid. I teach him for 6 hours a week, 3 times a week. He's only 10, but really bright and already speaks decent English, much better than my flatmate whose 'major' is English. Today he corrected my spelling ('switches'). I tutor him in his house, and his mum sits next to him during the lesson. But today she gave me a Cornetto after the lesson, so it must be going OK. I got him to label everything with post-it notes today, that took up quite some time. Maybe next week I'll get him to label everything in the bathroom - 'What's this? That's right, it's a bog brush'.

Apart from this, I spend a lot of time reading Chinese, re-reading things, speaking to random people, and wandering around Xi'an on a bike. The bike allows what is a hectic, dirty, and stifflingly hot place to become a leisurely and relaxing city. It's all about the old fashioned handlebars that point in. I feel like I'm in cycling round Cambridge with deck shoes and a jumper tied round my shoulders, until I see an old man walking backwards across the road and realise that I am, indeed, in China.