Anyway, back to China. Though I'm significantly far from Canada, this place doesn't feel all that foreign. Sure, very few people speak English, but that's the biggest difference. Of course, there's a bunch of little interesting things to say about this place, and that's why I'm writing this post.
My trip here was long; took about 24 hours to get from Toronto to Qingdao (that's including the stop-over in Hong Kong). I had some worries about travelling alone, but it was about as hard to travel by plane alone as it is to travel by bus alone -- not that hard! I sat with a retired doctor on the way down, and we shared some fun conversations.
When I got to Qingdao, I toured the school campus there (the sister campus is in Huandao, where I teach) and noticed that there was a Tsingtao brewing building directly across from the school! Eventually I got back to my place, which turned out not to be half bad (though it's only temporary). Here's a photo of my living room and my balcony.
I also have two bedrooms, but they just look like bedrooms.
Over the next few days, I got to meet the teachers, all of whom are (to my surprise) great people. Canadians dominate in numbers (there's 3 of us), but Aussies and New Zealanders are close behind. Luke (from NZ) has two very cute daughters who attend the school. Unfortunately, being a white kid in China, especially with red hair, makes you a ridiculously huge magnet for attention. I've been out with the kids once, and I already found it to be annoying, though Luke has only lost it once on a crowd who were oogaling his kids.
Oh, here's a pictures I took of the kids.
School, and that whole teaching thing is a story of its own, but much too long to tell. The important thing to know is that so far, I love it! I feel blessed to be able to teach science to little kids (they're in level 7-9, which is equivalent to grade 6-8) since they get so excited about the smallest of things. We were learning about the ear drum, and I had the kids put together "drums" made out of plastic wrap and an empty margarine container (held together by an elastic band). Anyway, I put rice on the drum, and them had a speaker play different frequencies. This makes the rice "dance" quite violently, and when the kids saw this, the "wow's" started coming out. If that's not enough, I get to play with the kids at recess and lunch! I can't express how cool this is! I've always wanted kids, but screw that, I have a whole school of kids to play with!
Anyway, like I said, too long to tell, but I'm sure I'll talk about it more in future posts.
The other fun thing this weekend was that my brother Darryn and his friend Mao Li came down to visit me. You've seen me and likely Darryn before, so here's a photo of Mao Li:
The two of them came late on Friday night, so we really only had time for eating some street meat (so cheap!) and do some street wandering, which was great since I'm still trying to get my directions down here. And since I can't find a map of Huangdao, I've started drawing one, which has proving itself helpful.
On Saturday, we all went down to Golden Sands Beach, and here's my proof.
The last picture of me is in one of the many "rubble zones" that you can find around any urban area of China. It's the physical representation of "out with the old, in with the new," and also the closest I'll ever be to something that looks like a war zone.
We next took a ferry to Qingdao for a little more action. Proof:
An interesting, though not uncommon thing happened to me while I was on the ferry. A man came up to me and asked for me to take a picture for him. This was partly unusual, as the vast majority of people here speak little to no English. I thought he was asking me to take a picture of him and his family, but he wanted me to be in the picture with his family. Then, just one with their two or so year old kid. I put my arm around the kid; they really liked that. But that's just China, you can be a celebrity for just not being Asian. And of course, if people want to take pictures of me with their kids, imagine how hard it is to do anything remotely unusual without a crowd developing. I made up a game with magnets which I was trying to play with Mao Li. Anyway, a larger than comfortable crowd appeared, and I had to put an end to it.
The day in Qingdao was pretty good. We met up with some of Mao Li's friends:
And the English speaking went from 50% to 2% of the time (Darryn and I were the only strong English speakers. Mao Li could only speak a little English, but much more English than I can speak Chinese). The most interesting place we visited was what I called "Love Land." This is where couples (who are already married) come to get their "wedding photo's" taken. It was weird to see so many brides, but kinda cool. Here's a barrage of pictures:
Oh, and here are a bunch of brides on a rock:
Later that night, Darryn, Mao Li, and I went out for dinner. The notable thing was the famous "beer in a bag" that you could buy at a TsingTao restaurant. Seems ridiculous, but it actually worked really well. Here's Darryn posing with his:
We stayed at some hotel for under 100rmb (less than $15CAN). The next day we went to a radio tower (not all that interesting, I have no pictures to prove my time there) but the walk in the adjacent park was quite fun. I found this odd picture which I'm still trying to figure out:
Also, we had to climb some gate, which many Chinese people were doing too (I think it was to avoid some fare, but it was just a shortcut for us), but when we climbed it, out came the crowds. I guess things are more interesting when a foreigner does it.
We all hung out for a little longer, and then I went to take the ferry back to Huangdao while Darryn and Mao Li went to the airport. This was a little worrisome as I was on my own, and my CHinese was horrible, but I had been practicing "how much money" and stuff like that, so I figured I could get a Taxi when I got to Huangdao. Though that's not what happened. As I walked out of the ferry terminal -- pretending to know where I was going, some Chinese woman asked me if I needed any help. I was blown away, her English was great! Then, she paid for my bus fair (I payed her back), gave me information about where to go to meet other foreigners, and (you're not going to believe this) literally walked me to my apartment building door! Definitely out of her way, but she thought I might get lost, and insisted on helping me. I'm pretty sure that was the nicest stranger interaction I've ever had!
So that's how the last few days have so far shaped up. My Chinese (which is only 4 days old) is still painful for people to hear, but I'm putting a strong effort forward. And every morning, I practice speaking the words with one of the support staff that works at the school. Hopefully soon I will have enough skill to practice with strangers.
And lastly, before I go. So far I've been really bad with responding to emails/messages. I will get on top of that when time flies into my hands. And since I can't see this blog, if you want me to see a comment, please don't put it on this blog -- I won't be able to see it for 14 or so months if you do.
Talk to you all soon!
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