It is 3.21am. I have to be at the British Council in about 7 hours, causing me to feel that emotion you get when there is literally no hope of getting the recommended 8hrs of sleep; a strange mixture of exhaustion, and self-deprication. I am currently packing my overnight (well, three night) bag, whilst simultaneously watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, practising how to introduce myself in Mandarin and paiting my toenails as it's going to be hot tomorrow and I want to wear sandals. This, sadly, is what I am like. Procrastinator extrordinaire, the only thing I've done recently at the right time was get excited about going to China, and I didn't even manage to do that right, jumping the gun and getting hyped too early. Did I calmly keep my glee in check until after my A-Levels were done? Or did I instead tweet/facebook about how amazing the trip is going to be when I should have been revising? Have a feeling you can guess the answer.

Anyway, I just though it would be good to do a blog before I went for the (newly renamed) Global Fellowship pre-departure de-brief. Aka when I meet the other 99 fellows, including the 39 others who are coming with me (actually, I'll probably go with them, directions aren't my forte) to Beijing via Dubai, then Shanghai. We'll be off in 19 days for almost seven weeks... 19 days!  Here's hoping I'll enough time to improve on my alarmingly terrible Mandarin. I shouldn't be shocked, my D in GCSE Spanish is mocking me from the depths of the file my Mum keeps as a record of my school 'achievements'.

Am very excited about meeting the fellow fellows mainly because I've got 80% of them on facebook and it's weird we haven't met face-to-face. Am beginning to feel a bit like one of those 'young people' on the news who retell stories of meeting dodgy old men online because I have no solid proof they are who they say they are. Am also looking forward to finishing packing and going to bed. Am even more exicted about the fact I'm going to the Perople's Republic of China in a very whort while, but I am not excited that tomorrow I will embarrass myself when I attempt to speak some Mandarin. Will blog again properly when I'm not sleep-deprived and chatting nonsense... although maybe not - I chat nonsense a fair bit and if it's not 3.30am I won't have a decent excuse. Will end this with a couple of quotes from my friends, who still are baffled that I'm going to the East for so long:

Conversations About China With Friends: "I need to watch some Chinese films for my Fellowship thing, preferably anything quite cultural? "Memoirs of a Geisha, I really loved that movie!" "that would be wicked, but it's actually Japanese..." "oh, maybe try the book then?"