Goodbye...for now!

Well, the time has come for me to go to China. I am leaving to go to Heathrow airport in an hour to catch my flight to Shanghai, from where I will be catching a connecting flight to my destination, Guilin in Guangxi province. I am feeling a large cocktail mixture of emotions right now. On the one hand I'm very excited to be going as I have wanted to visit China for years. On the other, I am absolutely petrified because it will involve 2 flights to get there with a total journey tme of about 16 hours, and I have never made such a long journey by myself before. I also have no idea what the actual place is going to be like and what the people are going to be like, and I always get stressed when I don't know exactly what to expect. But I am trying to put all that to one side as the programme I am going on looks absolutely amazing and I am sure that I will have a good time.

For those who don't know, I will be travelling to Guangxi province in the far south of China, on the border with Vietnam. I will be visiting the famous city of Guilin and the lesser well known but equally beautiful Yangshuo, which is also situated on the well known Li river. I will also be visiting several traditional Chinese villages, including Zhuang minority villages, who's language and culture is rather different to that of the Han Chinese. (The Zhuang also make up almost 40% of Guangxi's population). Guangxi is also known for its tropical climate and breathtaking scenery, and I am looking forward to some summer heat!

I think that this blogging site is blocked in China, which means that there will be no blog posts until I get back on August 14th. If it happens to be unblocked, however, I will try and make a few posts with updates on what I've been up to. I also have not finished blogging about all the things I want to about Bosnia and Herzegovina, but that will have to wait until I come back. See you all in a months time! =)