The six of us in Xinjiang got the train to Lanzhou for a language course with the rest of the China group at the end of September, adventuring off for a few days before for a visit to Labrang Monastery. Took about 28 hours to get to Lanzhou, where we took a bus for 3 hours to a town that Lonely Planet said was "a sleepy town, waiting for the camels and caravans to come back", but turned out to be a bustling city. We headed for the night market, which again Lonely Planet made sound amazing, but was actually just a few food stalls. We have soon discovered that with China's quick development, many places which were once very traditional, have now become industrialized, leaving only small glimpses of the old towns.         From there we got onto a second bus, which went from being 3 hours to 5 hours through the mountains to Xiahe, a small Village home to Labrang Monastery. The monastery is one of the six major Tibetan monasteries of the Gelugpa order, Tibetan Buddhism. Home to 1200 monks from Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Inner Mongolia, it has the most amazing wall paintings inside it's many prayer halls, temples and chapels, two story high Buddha statues draped in silks and fabrics, and brightly coloured Yak  Butter sculptures. The village we stayed in was decorated in a Tibetan style with colorful painted buildings and lots of little shops full of handmade souvenirs. Everywhere you looked within the village, you could see traditional China, from little food stalls, to clothing stalls, monks walking the streets, and the locals in traditional dress.     We arrived back in Lanzhou, ware we  were hopping bus stations and taxis trying to find the right place, and ended up sitting outside for 3 hours whilst trying to get the rest of the group who were already there to give us the address and come find us. Eventually one of the guys managed to find us and get us back to the hotel.  Getting around in the big cities is very difficult when you have little information on where to go, little of the language, and very little knowledge of the public transport systems. 

The language course aimed to give us a few of the basics in mandarin, however with so much new information unfortunately I didn't pick much up. We each stayed with a family during the week learning about their culture and family life.  It was nice meeting up with everyone though, and we stayed a couple of days at the end where we all sat around in the schools playing fields, chatting, playing football and basket ball, and dancing out songs to everyone's i-pods. In the evenings we ventured into Lanzhou's nightlife. First experience of Chinese clubs, lots and lots of tables and seating areas, with only a small dance floor, and they play alot of British and American music (with a few cheesy Chinese songs thrown in).