A definite departure date

VSO confirmed my departure date as Sunday 6th September today, flying from Heathrow on the 1640 flight direct to Beijing. Hooray! Presumably they're also flying me from Edinburgh down to London on a connecting flight but I haven't been told about that yet.
Also today, I bought a Chinese dictionary which I'm very much looking forward to using - my Mandarin has hit a block these last few weeks and I seem to be making very little progress despite the excellent efforts of my teacher, Zhou Wei. I wonder if this blog will support Chinese and pinyin script? Only one way to find out...

下 个 九 月 我 去 中国

xià ge jiǔ yuè wǒ qù Zhōng guó

Which says (I think) In September, I'm going to China. :-)

A classroom in Longju Middle School, Danfeng
and the outside of the school.

Six weeks to go...

Well, the paperwork is done and the waiting has begun. Hopefully, on the 6th of September, I'll be heading off to Beijing for my in-country training. My placement is in a small town called Danfeng, about 3 hours south-east of Xi'an (see map on my blog.)
There haven't been any volunteers there before - it's a brand new placement - so it'll be new for the teachers at the school as well as for me (hopefully that'll be a positive thing!) I have a photo of the school which I'll try to attach to this blog (I don't really know what I'm doing with this whole blog thing yet.)