A new addition

It's funny to think of the last time I actually wrote anything here. But recently folks have told me that they actually did read this.

I want to show off my new puppy.

Her name is Ramona, and Rory brought her home for me on Monday.

It was a total surprise, and I am still in awe: What girl wouldn't want to be surprised with a puppy?

Here she is--Ramona, our 2-month-old golden retriever. I love her.

The Last Days of Daguanghua

We had looked forward to leaving Daguanghua for a while; it seems like once we hit the 8 month point, the dorm room we'd been living in started to get smaller and smaller. Also, some of our "friends" at the school were becoming more ambivalent about our presence on campus. The tea was cold when we were leaving, indeed. We spent the last month and a half locked up in our room, taking advantage of 2 Chinese websites that allow us to stay up-to-date with all the popular movies and tv shows from back home. We sort of skated through our classes, counting down the days until we got to leave Daguanghua, to enter a bigger city with less of an opportunity to become bored.

We gave our "final exams"; no one was allowed a score lower than 80% even though some of the kids legitimately got zeroes. We cleaned out our desks and started packing. The school wanted us to leave Daguanghua on the same day that the other Chinese teachers were leaving campus, but it wouldn't have worked out logistically. They thought they could just pay us one morning and we could magically be on a plane out of town that afternoon. So ultimately we got to stick around a few more days, but the trade off was that the school couldn't guarantee us a van to take us to the airport.

The last week before we actually left was incredibly frustrating, as it seemed that all of those little things that can be really annoying about China and Chinese people culminated with trips to the post office, the bank and western union (with a little campus bullshit thrown in for good measure!). I don't think I've ever wasted more time standing around as I did that week. One day we were scheduled to have a meeting with the finance office woman at 3:00, and she didn't show up to the office until 4:15. Unfortunately, she's the only woman on campus who seems to be allowed to hand out money; the three other dudes in the office just collect money. Go figure.

The next day we spent two hours at the big post office mailing summer clothes and other random stuff up to Harbin so we wouldn't have to deal with it on the plane. If there's one thing to be learned about dealing with China Post, it's that you should always be persistent; these women went through all our crap, telling us "no, you can't send this" every time they fished something out of a bag or a box. They were perplexed by the deodorant and tampons, and luckily for us, all of the other patrons got to look at our "crazy foreigner stuff" on display. Yippee! They tried to tell Rory he couldn't mail his keyboard, and finally they got someone on the phone to speak to Rory in English. Rory had to explain what deodorant is and why he didn't care if his keyboard was insured or not. Then the big problem was that we didn't have our new address in Han zi (Chinese characters). So that was fun, too. Ultimately we mailed everything we walked in with, though. So there, China Post.

The next day it was back to the finance office, where we were told to meet the finance lady again; she also happens to be the wife of school's owner, and she's the sister of the evil, bitchy human resource woman. This time we waited for an hour and a half. An older man kept us company, though, and we were able to hold our own in conversation. Well, Rory was, anyway. My least favorite thing about being in China is the fact that no one listens to me. I have a hunch that it is because I'm a woman, but it makes me quite angry. I would say something and get absolutely no response from the old man. Two seconds later, Rory would repeat what I said, and the old man acted like it was the most intelligent thing he'd ever heard. And we were saying it the same way.

The exact same thing happened the next day at western union. I've sent money home every month that I've been here, and even though it's always a pain in the ass, things usually get communicated correctly, and magically the money gets wired back home. So I was talking to the woman and showing her my receipt for the month before, telling her that everything was the same except the dollar amount. She was a little thrown off by my dad's account number versus the bank's routing number. I told her that either would work fine, and even though she was completely competent, one of the other bank tellers came over to create a big problem. She grabbed the western union forms and started speaking Chinese really quickly, pointing at the two numbers, asking me "do you understand? Do you understand this?". I told her again that it didn't matter, but she was convinced that I didn't understand what she was saying. I showed her the previous two months' receipts (one using my dad's account number and the other the routing number). I kept telling her I understood and that it didn't matter. She started laughing at me and then looked over my shoulder to Rory, like he could magically fix everything. I told her--and this is all in Chinese, by the way--"don't look at him. I understand you when you speak. The numbers don't matter." Rory, fully aware that this is by far my biggest issue in China, went and sat down. The woman gave up, and I went back to dealing with the original teller. The upside of the whole experience, though, was the knowledge that that was the last time we would ever have to deal with western union in Weihai. Thank god.

Our final evening in Weihai was nothing special. We ate at a hotpot restaurant by the beach, and afterwards we walked down to look at the water one last time before leaving. As we were walking up the 225 stairs at Daguanghua, we rejoiced because we knew we'd never have to walk those stairs again. We spent an hour in Rebecca's room with her and her daughter, Rose. Rose is one of my favorite little people. We went and surprise visited her at her school, and she was so shy around her classmates. But in Rebecca's dorm room, Rose was quite the little ham, the complete opposite of Rebecca, who always seems shy and mild-mannered. I have some good videos and photos from that night.

Rebecca insisted that she see us off in the morning, even though we had arranged a van on our own to pick us up at 6:30. Everyone seemed shocked that we were able to do such a crucial task on our own, but after living out in the middle of nowhere for damn near a year, we can pretty much hold our own when it comes to things like that. Next morning, bright and early, we hopped in the van, loaded up with all our crap (that everyone seemed convinced would never make it on the plane), and headed out the campus gates, away from Zhangcun and down the Yanwei expressway. I didn't feel sad about leaving the school. Perhaps a little sad about leaving Weihai, but I knew that things were just going to be easier in Harbin, eight times larger than our little coastal town.

Chinese hookers ain't free

We've been holed up in our room a little more than usual lately. We had a big holiday performance, so we had been making all kinds of (time-consuming)props. Meals are free, and they taste like it. Also the cold weather--coupled with our location out in the middle of nowhere--make it easier to stay inside. One Tuesday night, we decided we needed a break from school, so we headed out of Zhangcun to a cleaner area of town with good cheap barbecue, a cool atmosphere and a friendly waiter who speaks a marginal amount of English.

Though we certainly get stared at more in our neck of the woods, this restaurant still provided an audience. I always wonder when and if people will ever stop staring at us, but I always realize that it probably won't happen here in Weihai. Maybe in Harbin, because it's bigger. Anyway, this particular evening was no different. Though we were in a relatively secluded booth, we could still feel people watching us eat and drink and interact, with an occasional, "hello" muttered for good measure.

One "hello" was a little louder than the others, so we looked to see where it came from. There was a man in the corner, holding up his glass of beer to cheers us. So we cheers from across the room. He seemed happy with that and beckoned Rory over to "chat." Rory joined two men who were obviously accompanied by some paid ladies.
I stayed at our table; I didn't feel much like engaging with strangers, and I was sort of obsessed with the soup we were eating.

Ultimately, though, I joined them at the table. It was a good way to practice Chinese, anyway. So we were sitting with them--neglecting the awesome soup--both loving and hating the incredible awkwardness of it all. The two men explained that they were police officers; and when we told them that we worked at Daguanghua, one of them said that his wife was an opera teacher at the school. He even called her on the phone, but kept getting disconnected.

When we were all finished, I went to the counter to pay, and the cashiers (who know us by now) made sure that I just wanted to pay for Rory and myself. No problem. I didn't want to pay for our new "friends", and that was understood. The new acquaintances asked us if we were down with an hour of ktv (karaoke). We kept telling them no, that we had class the next morning at 8:00, but they persisted, so we said okay. Our line of thinking was that a)we didn't want to offend police officers, and b)we didn't want the man to tell his wife that she works with a bunch of rude foreigners.

We walked up the street to a neon ktv place. The sidewalk sign had Korean and Chinese writing, and we read that it was a Korean style room salon. Room salons are bars or ktv places that involve "the company of women." Whatever that actually means. Anyway, we walked in, and as the new people were walking ahead of us, we made it very clear to all of the waiters and employees that we didn't really know what we were doing there.

Once we were in the private karaoke room--which isn't strange in China; you don't just sing in front of a bunch of strangers--Rory left to go to the bathroom. It was me, the two dudes and one lady. Suddenly the door opened up, and a line of women came in to stand in front of us. It reminded me of Enter the Dragon, when all the fighters are "treated" to women each evening. The black dude with the awesome afro ends up picking 5 women or something like that. Anyway, I thought it was really funny. By the time Rory got back from the bathroom, we were plus one person, and one of the police officers was trying to get the paid lady to sit between Rory and me. We had made it very clear from the beginning that we were a)married and b)not interested in a paid lady. We sang a couple of songs, and after seeing one of these old policemen making out with one young chicks' shoulder, we decided we needed to scram.

We said thank you for the time, but we had early classes, and we walked out. As we were leaving the building, the people at the counter/cash register stopped us to tell us to pay. We told them that we weren't paying because the other men were paying. That's part of a custom in China. If you invite someone out to dinner or drinking or to ktv or to your party, you pay for them. It's actually not a bad idea.

Also, at the restaurant before ktv, the staff at least had the common sense to ask if we were paying for just ourselves or the whole group. I expected at least that at ktv, because we had made it clear that we were sort of talked into doing this thing we didn't really want to do. As we were explaining that we had a problem with paying the entire 250 rmb tab, we saw the policemen coming down the stairs. We thought "great, now everything can get figured out." But as soon as they saw us talking to the folks at the counter, they took off running. They bolted out the door and left us standing there, responsible for the tab. Turns out they weren't police officers, and the wife's name homeboy had given us was actually the hr bitch at our school. She's single, and I don't think anyone would ever marry her. We'd been duped!

We tried to reason with the ktv folks, but they just wanted to get paid. We questioned why they would just let the two Chinese men leave as we were explaining that we had a problem with them. We accused them of treating us unfairly because we're foreigners (usually the case). Whatever we said didn't matter, though, because ultimately they just wanted more money.

We called our Chinese friend at the school who speaks English really well. Bill talked back and forth with the counter folks, because there was plenty being said that we still didn't understand. We got the gist of it though, and Bill confirmed our suspicions. The ktv folks weren't sympathetic, they just wanted money. We were able to talk them down to 120 rmb (we shouldn't have paid anything), we exchanged some pleasantries, and we left.

While we were outside, getting ready to flag down a taxi, a younger man from the club came running out after us. He was dressed in a cheap suit, and he obviously worked at the place in some capacity. He wanted more money. Through broken Chinese and a few more phone interactions with Bill, we realized that he was the "pimp". His rationale in getting more money was that we had been a hassle, and we'd given him a headache. We couldn't believe it. We tried to walk away, reminding him that his boss had accepted our money and we were good to go. More shirt pulling, though not nearly as aggressive as the asshole couple on the beach. He seemed more like a whiny kid than someone who could actually do harm.

He wanted 50 rmb for the ladies. We refused, telling him that we had no problem paying for beer we didn't drink and ktv songs we didn't sing, but there was no way in hell we were paying for someone else's hooker. It was so stupid for him to even suggest that we pay, because in China, hookers are pretty much strictly for men. Usually married men who go to ktv. The fact that I was a wife and even in the picture at all should have signalled something to this dude, or clued him in to how ridiculous the notion was. He wouldn't let us leave, instead asking if we wanted him to call the police. I think he thought that that would scare us into paying more money, but instead we said "bring it on."

It's at this point that I should mention that prostitution (like pirated dvds and I'm sure many other things) is illegal in China. It's just that people sort of turn their heads the other way. But for a Chinese pimp to call the cops intent on getting money for two hookers seemed pretty stupid. The cops showed up, and it took a little bit of time trying to explain everything that was going on. Once we conveyed that we had already paid for the karaoke portion of the evening, though, there was a collective "ohh". The cops understood what we were saying, and the pimp didn't dispute any of it. It was really funny, because the cops just looked at the pimp and laughed, encouraging us all to just work it out amongst ourselves. The policemen hopped in their van and took off, leaving just the three of us to try to work something out.

When the police left, we realized that was our ticket out of there. The pimp was asking us for 50 rmb, then "less than 50 rmb". We realized that if the pimp had any authority to get money from us, he would have done it with the police there. We flagged down a taxi, hopped in and went back to Daguanghua, leaving the pimp standing there wondering what the hell had just happened. It was a nice ending, even though we had already paid 120 rmb more than we should have.

"I think we're getting scammed by a kindygartener..."

Chinese kids love "Home Alone."

We were trying to decide which holiday movies would be good to show to a bunch of different age groups, and we have limited resources, namely an illegal (probably) Chinese website where we find most of our entertainment these days. As of right now, there is no "Grinch" or "Rudolph" or any of the other age-appropriate Christmas classics, but there is "Home Alone", and all of my classes have watched it, save for the one class that has a broken projector.

My second graders are the most in love with the movie, and I'm thinking it's because they're all about the same age as Kevin, their new hero. I don't think I've ever seen such a reaction from the kids before--clapping and shrieking and probably even some peed pants (I'm not joking)--they're all emotionally invested in Kevin and his hijinks. I remember seeing the movie in the theater when I was younger, but I think I would remember if the audience had reacted the way my second graders have been; and they don't even speak English or know enough Chinese characters to read the subtitles.

Plus, my theory is that any time there's a tarantula in a movie or a picture, kids go nuts. Feel free to test this.

Birthday, boondocks and school bullshit

My birthday was on Tuesday. The big 29. I don't know what I was expecting. I know that on Rory's birthday, the school and important administrative folks threw him a big birthday bash; replete with a personalized cake, booze, presents and a ton of really great food. It was nice. It made both of us feel wanted here at the school. Maybe that's what I was expecting, or at least something similar.

We walked into our dining room on Tuesday, and it was the same meal we usually have. It was Rory and me, some lychee flavored juice boxes, subpar Chinese food and a cake in the corner that said "Happy Birthday" in Chinese. I know I shouldn't complain--after all, at least I got a cake--but I guess I thought that it would be a bigger deal, because we've been told on many occasions that we're the best English teachers who have ever worked at the school, and because we really do put a lot of effort into our jobs.

We didn't think too much of it, though. We still went out to dinner that night, just the two of us, and it was really nice. At least we didn't have to be entertaining for a bunch of folks with whom we can't really effectively communicate. And at Licoshan, we were the only people there, so we were catered to, and the meal was incredible. We had donkey meat dumplings, a rack of lamb, fried carrot strips, Chinese broccoli and some mushroom soup like the kind we had when Jamie visited. We couldn't indulge/imbibe too much, though--as folks are prone to do on birthdays; I'm no exception--because we had to go to Wendeng the next morning for an English exchange workshop.

I was asked to teach a lesson to a group of 4th grade Wendeng students. I asked all of the relevant preparatory questions: will powerpoint/AV stuff be available, how many students will there be, what sections of the book have they covered thus far, how long is my lesson supposed to be...? I prepared two lesson plans, because, as a wise man once said: "this is China..." I didn't want to rely solely on a powerpoint presentation and then get there only to find that they didn't have computers or projectors.

So early Wednesday morning, 5 English teachers and our primary school principal hopped in the van and we were off. We learned that our principal was good friends with the principal of the Wendeng school, and that's why the whole thing was arranged. No problem.

We had only been to Wendeng a couple of times before, because that's where the airport is; and as we were driving through the town, we realized that the airport is probably the only real reason to visit anyway. Wendeng is tiny and much less developed than Weihai proper; it was like a much larger Zhangcun (our neighborhood in Weihai that's way out in the middle of nowhere).

We pulled into the visitor parking lot, and as we got out of the van, we saw a bunch of little Chinese kids, all dressed alike in their turquoise and white track suits with yellow neckerchiefs and baseball caps. The school uniforms over here are designed to be much more comfortable than school uniforms back home. It was a public (government) school, so all the kids were marching in formation. As they walked by, Bill (our friend who is a Chinese English teacher) said "those are all your students." There were so many of them! I said "Jesus Christ", and then he told me he was just kidding. He'd been talking about The Lion King in the van, specficially the song "Be Prepared", as sung by Scar. He used this opportunity to bring up the song again. I was wondering what the hell I'd agreed to. I asked Rory if he thought I was going to have to teach in a classroom with other Chinese English teachers observing me.

We walked towards what I thought was going to be a teaching building, and as we got closer, I realized it was an auditorium. So we all walked in, and the place was packed. A mock classroom had been erected on the stage, with about fifty 4th graders sitting in desks under a banner that said "hand in hand" and a bunch of other stuff in Chinese. That's when it hit me that this was a really big deal for Wendeng and specifically, this school. We were told that Wendeng government schools had never had a foreign teacher, and that for probably 90% of the (more than 300) people in the auditorium, we were the first two foreigners they'd ever seen up close. It was a cool feeling.

Now normally--when someone thinks she will be teaching a class of (maybe) 40 students, and then she walks into an auditorium to teach 50 kids in front of 300+ onlookers--this would be a stressful, nerve-wracking experience. But not for me. I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but I really thrive in situations where there are a lot of people. Maybe it's the idea that I can appeal to more people, even if more people also think I'm a jackass. Or maybe it's the fact that I can just zone out and try to appeal to the kids, and as long as they're engrossed in whatever we're doing, then the teachers and parents and administration will be impressed. I don't know what it is, but I never doubt myself or freak out in these situations.

There was no powerpoint or AV to speak of, and I would have to use chalk and a chalkboard for the first time in my teaching career. I was stoked. First we had to sit through a 40 minute English lesson given by a Chinese English teacher. It gave me 40 more minutes to try to cater my lesson plan to both the students and the audience. It also gave us more of an idea of how a Chinese English classroom works. We've worked at Daguanghua for 9 months now, and we've never been into a Chinese teacher's classroom, though Chinese teachers and parents have certainly observed our classes on many occasions.

It was fairly obvious that the Chinese English teacher had practiced this particular "routine" or "performance" over and over again with these students. And I'm not going to say that she did a bad job, it was just so different from a Western teaching approach. The unit she was focusing on was "What do you like?", which is all about food and how to ask for things in a restaurant. She would have the kids stand up in pairs and repeat things like "I like milk" or "I like chicken", so there was very little opportunity for the students to speak individually at all. And when she did her restaurant dialogue, she was the waitress. And her pronunciation was all off. She kept saying "I like cock" instead of "I like Coke." Rory, me, Bill and Wendy (Bill's wife and our friend) were all cracking up. I mean, Bill and Wendy are Chinese, and they still know what cock is. And she said "fish" like "faysh" and "milk" like "mee-ulk". The kids responded well to her, but the technique was exactly like I had always imagined in a Chinese classroom--very little creativity or independence and a whole lotta repetition in pairs or as an entire class. Plus, her restaurant "game" involved her intermittently whispering and yelling "restaurant". If she whispered, then the kids had to yell "restaurant" back. If she yelled it, then they had to be silent. Sort of like a less fun "Simon says."

When I walked onstage, Bill came with to introduce me in Chinese. As soon as he said that I was American, the whole auditorium went "Oh!" We took turns talking about my experience (in English and then in Chinese), and every time Bill would finish saying anything, the audience would gasp again. It was so...flattering? I don't know if that's the word I'm looking for. But if you are ever doubting your self worth (which I wasn't), go stand in front of a bunch of little Chinese kids, because they'll love you just for being different. It gets complicated when they grow up, but when they're little, the stares and pointing are innocent, and it's always fun to just indulge them.

I started my lesson and was sort of off in my own little world, paying little attention to the parents and important Chinese people watching my every move. I was encouraging, I made a lot of them talk individually, I showed them how to position their tongues against their teeth so they'd say "thank you" and "something" instead of "sank you" and "somesing", I joked around with them, I taught them some new words...all in all, it went about as well as it could have gone. I utilized some tried and true techniques that I have found to be effective in my classs, and it all went over really well.

We left to go to the actual "workshop" part of the day, held in an administrative building nearby. Not only were we surrounded by Chinese English teachers from this government school, but from all the schools in Wendeng. The idea was that they were going to ask us questions about our teaching styles, but mostly they were nervous and intimidated, so they just sat there and kind of stared at us. Finally, the head English teacher in Wendeng piped up. She had been teaching English for 20 years, and her English was great. Really great. And she was friendly on top of it. She asked us questions about our styles, and was really intrigued by the fact that I was so encouraging even when the kids didn't pronounce words correctly. Really, she was intrigued by everything about us.

It really only took one question for Rory and me to talk at length about all the different ways we think teachers can successfully implement Western teaching methods--like creativity, communication and independence--into the Chinese classroom. They all liked (were amused by the fact) that I threw humor into the lesson (like the "th" thing, when I pretended that I was spitting all over the kids), and they liked the idea of a classroom where the students do most of the talking.

The head teacher asked why I didn't spend more time drilling the kids on new words, instead having them read entire sentences and dialogues (in pairs) with some of the words missing. I explained that all of the words written on the board were words they know already (I know, because we all use the same textbook), and I have faith in the students' abilities to successfully string the words together to make different sentences, filling in the blanks with other foods and drinks that aren't in their book.

I mentioned an instance during the lesson when one particular little girl told me that she liked "ice cream and french fries" (both aren't in the book for this lesson), and I made sure she got the praise she deserved (in front of everyone) for thinking outside the Chinese book. The head teacher was all ears, and after we finished talking, she summarized what we said in English and in Chinese. All of the teachers were quite receptive, but still silent. There's plenty more that I could go on and on about, but I know I'm rambling already. But my ideal job would be to teach and to do workshops like this everyday, and then edit papers and stories at night.

After eating hotpot with our posse and the Wendeng higher ups, we got back in the van to head back to Daguanghua. Later that night, Bill and Wendy came up to our room to give me some earrings for my birthday. They stayed in our room talking with us for a long time. It was nice. We expressed our frustrations with the school, not just about the birthday thing, but about the air of indifference we've been getting from folks at school now that everyone knows we're not re-signing for another yearlong contract with them. Bill and Wendy shared a Chinese idiom with us, something along the lines of "tea is hot when you are staying, and cold when you are leaving..." It made perfect sense, not in any rationale way, but in terms of how we feel people treat us at the school these days, it seemed to fit.

Talking to Rebecca last night, I mentioned the idiom, and she said it was exactly as we feared. She said the important people at school weren't satisfied with the reasons we weren't signing with them again. It's so stupid. We aren't staying with Daguanghua because they refused to change anything about the contract. We didn't require a pay raise, we didn't ask for an apartment, we didn't ask for less work or more vacation. We only asked that they put all of their verbal promises in writing. And they refused to do it, which leads us to believe that if we did decide to stay, the school would try to find some way to screw us over anyway, regardless of the fact that we're the first teachers who have stayed here longer than 6 months. Maybe they're just annoyed because we're not stupid enough to think that a verbal contract is as valid as a written one, even though it's explicitly stated (in English) in our contracts.

So the whole Wendeng and birthday experience is pretty bittersweet. I like doing workshops, but it seems all for naught these days with our school. Really wish there was an incentive to stay here. At the same time, though, I can't wait to get the hell out of here. I want to work at a school where the focus is English and our bosses speak English. Harbin, here we come.

Beijing--Part III

The next day we slept in. It was nice. It was still gross and rainy outside, and I was still feeling pretty crappy, so we decided to make it a low-key kind of day, with no temples or walls or tourist-y things. We wanted to make sure we got our bus tickets ahead of time, so we headed across town to the bus station.

It was really funny to be in the bus station. Everywhere you look in China, you see the Olympics logo, and especially in Beijing, there is a lot of talk about preparing for the Olympics. So many foreigners will be here, and they'll probably want to travel within China. Not all foreigners will want to fly to their destinations. Perhaps they'll want to take buses. I only mention this because there wasn't a single word of English in the bus station. There isn't at the bus station in Weihai, but we were in freaking Beijing. The capital. We couldn't believe it. And we already get stared out on a daily basis (though not so much in Beijing, honestly), but the fact that we were in the bus station at all was completely unbelievable to most of the folks who were waiting, or mopping the floor, or selling us tickets. We were complete freaks.

On the taxi drive to the bus station, we had passed a gigantic pizza restaurant called "Pizza Factory". After buying our bus tickets, we decided to head back in that direction. We had written the street down on our map and had a good idea of where it was--a straight shot, really. When we hopped in the taxi to try to find it again, we had a cabbie who was unwilling to try to understand us (speaking Chinese)even the littlest bit. It's really funny--somedays we'll have entire conversations in the taxi, where the driver is eager to speak and really goes out of his way to figure out what we're saying. This particular day, though, he tried to tell us that this street we wanted had no restaurants. None at all. So we just showed him the name card for our hotel, knowing that if he just took us back in that direction we would inevitably drive past it. We did. We told him to stop, and he said (in Chinese): "this isn't your hotel." Like, we know, jerk. It's the restaurant you said didn't exist on this street. We've gotten better about being assertive with our Chinese, though, and I think we really starting perfecting it in Beijing.

The pizza restaurant was like any other pizza joint. We sat upstairs and had a nice view, the service was slow, they served every individual item on a tray. I wouldn't have minded if the waitress had just handed me some tobasco and cheese from the next table; but no, she had to run over and get the tray and make a grand presentation out of it. Fine dining.

The best part about this place, though, was the salad bar. According to the menu, one could only visit the salad bar once; knowing this, one had to make the most discriminating of choices when assembling the salad. At the table next to us, two tiny Chinese ladies debated what they should order. They decided they'd share a salad and a small pizza. Fair enough. It was the duty of one of the ladies to make the salad and the other to just wait. I have never seen such an architecturally sound masterpiece. The salad builder had a plan of attack! She lined the entire inner perimeter of the bowl with carrot sticks, thus creating even more bowl!

Then she proceeded to create layer after layer of fruits, a whole lot of thousand island dressing, vegetables, nuts, pineapple rings that she dangled off of the carrot sticks, you name it. And in the span of time it took her to create her salad, four other salad lovers came and went (they employed similar tactics), her pizza came to her table and we had finished half of our meal. And this was on top of really slow service. We weren't the only people who were entertained, either. Most of our side of the restaurant was watching her, wondering when she would ever stop. I think she and her friend were both a little embarassed and impressed. There's no way they came close to finishing (even half of) the salad.

Post lunch, Rory went back to the hotel, and I walked around our area a little bit to check out some reasonably priced silk and handmade stuff. It was nice. I broke a wooden fish in a handicraft store, but she didn't make me pay for it, and I was sort of shocked. I broke a toothpick holder once at a restaurant, and they made me pay for that. I'm a klutz. And I was a klutz with a giant purse and a bag of silk, so even better.

I wasn't feeling the best, so we called it a relatively early evening. Ate McDonalds again and went to 31 to see the rest of the band. Luckily for us, the drunk university kids weren't there again that night. They were probably still hungover from the day before. Even though the full band was performing that night, something about it was less impressive to me. I liked it better when the two guys performed by themselves the first 3 nights we saw them. It was very soothing. But once the lead guitarist/lead vocalist/person for whom the band was named showed up, it suddenly was less soothing. Less intimate. Still very good, but the fact that I was all snotty didn't really help, either.

Next day was leaving day. We had some time to kill before our bus left, and we didn't have any plans other than to eat some more duck at a much cheaper restaurant down the road from our hotel. We walked in, the place was clean enough (though there was no bathroom), and we ordered some duck. It tasted just as good as at the restaurant where it cost 3.5 times as much for it. Let that be a lesson for those who go to Beijing and want Peking duck. It's good no matter where you eat it. I mean, it tastes pretty much the same--it's roasted duck. Even here in Weihai, at the roasted duck restaurant, it tastes the same. Delicious.

We didn't want to do anything too big or that we might not have enough time to fully enjoy, so we opted for Beihai park. We learned in Qingdao that if a park is important enough to put on a tourist map, it's probably worth checking out. It was cheap, and it was close to Houhai park, so it was already in a neighborhood with which we were familiar. The park turned out to be a real highlight of the trip. It was gorgeous, there weren't tons of people there, we didn't feel like we were getting stared at left and right; it was so sprawling, too, and we ended up spending several hours there. We even got to ride on a ferry that looked like a dragon. Pretty cool.

The park was full of different pavilions and pagodas and dagobas. Real highlights, though (and Rory has video footage of this somewhere) were the clusters of (mostly) old people gathered in the pavilions, playing instruments and singing songs at the top of their lungs. Chinese jam sessions aren't too uncommon in parks (we've learned), but it's always a pleasant surprise to just sort of stumble upon them. Especially if the first song you hear is a familiar one, like "Silent Night." There's something really sweet and cute about hearing Chinese folks singing "Silent Night" in four part harmony.

We left Beihai and headed back to the hotel (to pick up our backpacks) and off to the bus station. I had no more memory left on my camera, I was cranky, and I was in no way prepared for another overnight bus ride back to Weihai. As we were sitting in the bus station, I remembered the day before, when we had distinctly asked the ticket lady for two tickets together. Sure, in America, separate us on a trip for a little while, and it's no big deal. We speak English, we can handle it, we can reasonably ask someone to move if we need to. And most of the time, people will be understanding. But in China, for 13 hours, surrounded by a bunch of people who stare, it's a lot harder. Upon closer inspection of the tickets, we realized that they didn't look anything like they were together. 28 and 13 or something. Before we actually got on the bus, I told Rory to be prepared for me to throw a fit.

And I did. I threw a big fit the second we got on the bus, telling the attendant (in Chinese) "yesterday she said we had two tickets together. We need to sleep together. We are the only Americans on the bus, the only English speakers on the bus." The lady just smiled and nodded, like it was going to be no problem to put us together. She shuffled us further to the middle of the bus and pointed to a top bunk bed. I assumed this meant we would have this bunk, top and bottom. So we started putting our stuff down and getting settled in. Then the woman tried to tell me that I was in the back of the bus. I didn't move. I just said over and over "I don't want. We don't speak Chinese. We're the two people on the bus who speak English..." blah blah blah. She still didn't quite understand. That's when I pulled the bratty, little kid temper tantrum move. I sort of threw my hands in the air and let out this big, pissed off sigh. At this point, folks were looking, not really understanding what was going on, but the fact that other passengers had been disrupted at all made the lady spring into action, promptly freeing up two top bunks in the back by the bathroom. Fine. Thank you very much.

This bus was significantly less comfortable than the one from Weihai to Beijing. I thought back to our Weihai departure--our nice send off from the friendly guard--and then the Beijing departure. Night and day, I tell you. It was raining and I'd just made a complete jackass of myself. But at least I was next to Rory and not some dude who smelled like garlic, cigarettes and motor oil. Oh wait, he was sleeping underneath us. He was an old guy who was in charge of the luggage underneath the bus. You could tell he didn't like foreigners. Rory got that impression from him even before we got on the bus and I threw my bitch fit. But once he was underneath us, he was such a jerk, giving us that "there's too much white on this bus" glare. He even got up and reached over my head/my bed to turn off the fan that I had blowing on my face. Never mind the fact that I was sweating and he was down there in just his wife beater and dress pants, surrounded by extra blankets (enough for the whole bus). Julie angry! But I didn't say anything--didn't want to add more to my reputation.

For a few hours after departing Beijing (wonderful Beijing!), I cried and cried. It wasn't because I was sad to leave the city, it was just the first time I've been homesick at all. I was acutely aware of it on this bus, trapped in some little metal bunk bed, surrounded by people who thought I was crazy cause (I'm foreign and) I wanted to be next to my husband. Luckily for us, the trip was only 10 hours this time--evidently more people want to go to Beijing than to Weihai, so there wasn't as much traffic--and when we pulled up to the Zhangcun drop off point near CCTV, the driver and everyone else on the bus were shocked that we were getting off the bus. "There's no way they live out here" they were all thinking (because most people can't believe we live in Zhangcun, which really is out in the middle of nowhere). But as we got our luggage from underneath the bus, we saw a friendly man in a parking lot (at 4:30 am) ready to give us a ride to Daguanghua (without us even having to tell him; he just knew).

It restored my faith in China a litte bit, to have someone there, in a sense waiting for us. I was back in my Zhangcun comfort zone, even if that meant pulling into Daguanghua and walking up 225 steps to a tiny little dorm room.

Beijing--Part II

Next day started bright and early. This was the wall day, and it was part of a tour package offered by our hotel, with an English-speaking guide and everything. Easy. Frank showed up in our hotel lobby and ushered us into a van, where we joined a Chinese family and a posse of four older Scottish ladies (two sisters and their daughters). It took about an hour for us to get to the wall; traffic was killer, but somehow not as bad as I expected it to be. While en route, Frank gave a mini Chinese history lesson, detailing a few different places to visit in China to get an accurate picture of Chinese history.

When we arrived at the wall and were unloading out of the van, Rory and I both noticed something strange. Two of the four Scottish women couldn't quite walk. One of them had a cane, and the other one had an ankle wrap on. They had difficulty just getting out of the van, and as we looked up at the side of the mountain we were about to traverse, we all sort of knew these ladies weren't going anywhere. The women started asking Frank about the cable cars, telling him that they had explicitly asked for a tour that involved cable cars so the two women would be able to actually be on the wall. Frank misunderstood what they were saying, so he said that there were no cable cars. What he meant was that we weren't at the spot that had cable cars, but it came across like he was saying that there weren't cable cars at the wall at all. This didn't make the Scots happy at all, so we were all standing around watching them awkwardly gang up on Frank. And they were completely right, even though it wasn't Frank's fault. But they had a point--they had come a really long distance only to be told that they probably wouldn't get to go up on the wall.

I wanted to satisfy all parties involved. I got out my Beijing tourist map and showed Frank and the ladies that there is a picture of cable cars at the wall, and that's why the ladies were so incensed. We talked about it a little more and decided to hop back in the van and go to the spot where there were cable cars, even though we would all have to pay a little more to take the cars. Fine. Whatever. As long as we all got to be on the wall, I didn't care. When we left one parking lot and approached the other, we could see that damn near everyone in China decided they wanted to take the cable cars, too. Buses were lined up for more than 10 km, and passengers were abandoning ship to walk to the entrance. So grandparents and little kids were walking up the long, winding hill (for 10 km) just to get to the wall to hike some more. The Scots weren't happy about this, either, and again, I totally understood.

But I guess at this point I also started thinking--"wow, this is time that we could be spending hiking up the wall...". I also felt bad for the Chinese family on the tour. I'm not really sure why they opted for the "English tour" since none of them spoke English, but they were really confused and annoyed by the whole cable car misunderstanding. And I think that the ladies should have been a little more understanding. They couldn't believe that buses were just stopped on the side of the road, sans passengers. But it's like--a)we're in freaking China--anything goes! And b)it's one of the biggest holidays of the year. What did you freaking expect? So there was more Frank assualt and angry phone calls, and finally I suggested that we just have a rendezvous time, with the physically capable folks going back to the first spot and the crippled couple trying their luck with the cable cars. Frank didn't seem to think this would work, but then I reminded him that adults are able to handle situations like this (and it was his job to keep everyone happy). So finally, after wasting about an hour of our wall climbing time fighting a battle for some chicks I'll never see again, we went back to the first spot. We had an hour and a half to walk up to a certain point, turn around and walk back.

The wall was even more incredible than I thought it would be. I remember when we went to Mt. Taishan--I had prepared myself for the mountain, but not for the people. This time around, I did just the opposite--I thought the wall meant "peoplepeoplepeople"--so when we actually got our first glimpse of it, even though it was packed, it was just amazing. Almost like a surprise. A surprise that you can see from space...

As soon as we could ditch the Scottish ladies, we did; Frank led us up to a certain point (where it started to get steep) and then bailed. It was nice to not have someone holding our hands the entire time. That would have been impossible anyway--it was so packed! Shoulder to shoulder with a steady stream of people coming and going. I guess to some degree that was nice, because it created a pretty good flow. There was no pressure to walk any faster than the person in front of you. At one point, the stairs stopped altogether, and the path became these big, thick logs that had been drilled into the ground. It was steep, but somehow there were still really old people climbing it in trousers and dress shirts, as well as a fair share of parents carrying their little ones. I don't know how they do it. I was worried about dropping my camera, and there they were, piggybacking fragile little kids.





After our allotted hour and a half, we met Frank to go to the next part of the tour. We got back in the van, and there were the two (marginally)crippled ladies. They never got to get on the wall. I felt really bad for them; it seems like such a tease to take people to the base of the freaking Great Wall, only to tell them, "Take a good look, cause that's all you're getting to see..." They didn't seem as frustrated by it anymore, so we took off to the next locale without too many complaints.

Initially we thought we were just going to the wall, the Ming tombs and lunch. But first we were stopping at a jade factory. Okay, it sounded cool enough. Then we walked in. There were more foreigners at this particular place than there are in all of Weihai; each of them getting the same spiel from some Chinese person who spoke a moderate amount of English. We walked past women slaving away over these little jade pieces, foreigners snapping pictures through the glass. I felt weird being there with all these other folks who probably didn't know much Chinese. I'm not saying I know a whole lot of Chinese, but I know enough to realize when I've been duped into participating in a tour designed for (rich) foreign suckers.

This realization became even more obvious when we entered the gift shop part of the factory. There were rows and rows of elaborate jade and jadeite pieces that went for more than twice as much as they should have. At this point I was thinking "boy, I wish I was still walking on the wall, without Frank and the Scottish ladies..." I think that Frank was even nervous about us saying something to the Scottish ladies about the prices of things, like we were going to ruin their tour. We didn't say much--we didn't want to seem like know-it-alls, but you could tell a little later that Frank empathized with us. Once all the foreigners were "released" into the gift shop, Rory and I snuck away to the rendezvous point and drank some beer.



Our next stop was lunch. As we pulled up to the restaurant, we saw about 100 other vans and tour buses in the parking lot. "Here we go again," we thought. We walked in and sat down at our respective tables; this was funny, because Frank opted to sit at a separate table with the Chinese family, rather than integrating with us foreigners. The lunch was standard "Western version of Chinese food" Chinese fare. We had hot and sour soup and a lot of random fried things. It was okay, but it wasn't an accurate example of a Chinese meal. I don't know what I was expecting at this point, but still... The whole restaurant was full of foreigners, many of them the same ones we had seen at the last jade place. Once we were all finished eating, we were released into another gift shop area, where the prices for the same factory jade pieces were considerably cheaper. Once the Scottish chicks caught onto this, they were a little annoyed, but happy that they hadn't purchased anything at the previous locale.

I saw a cheaply made fish kite on the wall, and just for curiousity's sake, I wanted to see how much it cost. While we were in Weifang--China's kite capital (near Changyi, where we visited Mayor Ma)--Rory and I visited a kite shop and bought three really impressive and well-crafted kites for 150 rmb. Of course, it probably helped that we were with a freaking mayor... The cheap kite at the restaurant gift shop was marked 280 rmb. I couldn't believe it! There were also signs all over the store that read: "This is a government friendship store. All prices are reasonable. No bargaining." I understand that the folks want to make a buck, I just wished I was on a different tour.

Next stop was the Ming Tombs, which were a lot less impressive than we thought they were going to be. Of course, at this point we realized how much of our day was being wasted by folks trying to get our money, and we really wanted to just ditch the tour. Couldn't do that, though, so we suffered through four more hours of the same crap. We stopped at a tea shop (full of foreigners and overpriced tea) and a silk factory (full of foreigners and overpriced silk goods), before heading back to our hotel. We did get to drive near the Olympic stadium and village that are still being erected, and we all wondered out loud to Frank if Beijing was actually going to be ready for the Olympics next year. He seemed to think it would be no problem, but the lack of progress, coupled with English skills that most Beijingers seemed to lack, indicated otherwise. We shall see.

Once we were dropped off at our hotel, it was close to 6:00, and it was hard to believe we had been to the Great Wall earlier in the day. But that's what pictures and videos are for. We certainly learned a lesson, too: if you think that there's any way you can do something on your own, you probably can. We could have figured out how to get on a public bus to head out to the wall and spent as much time there as we wanted. Next time! But we definitely weren't signing up for the Tiananmen tour we'd been eyeing at our hotel.

Ate McDonald's again for dinner (part of our budget included lots of cheap McDonald's meals; it's tactical, really...) before we decided to clean up and head back to Houhai and 31. The waitstaff, boss and band were happy to see us again, and we spent another relaxing night there, listening to music and sipping whiskey.

On our way back to find a taxi, we passed by a bar that was playing "In the name of Love" by U2 really loudly. The sign outside also boasted a "fucking good mojito", so we thought we owed it to ourselves to check it out. We sucked down a proper mojito and headed back to the hotel.



Bright and early the next day (after McDonald's breakfast and coffee), we hopped in a taxi and said "Tiananmen". Piece of cake. We were dropped off amongst a swarm of people. We saw the famous Mao portrait, and we started walking with everyone else to the entrance.



Though there were so many freaking people visiting the palace museum, it wasn't nearly as crowded as the wall, simply because it was so spread out. The size of this place was so impressive. We sort of figured out that in China, people don't screw around when they want to make something big or elaborate--they do it right!

While people were waiting in a long line to get entrance tickets, there were scalpers walking up and down and in and out of the people, selling day-old tickets, telling people they didn't need to wait in line. We didn't think anyone would fall for it, but after we had purchased our tickets and were walking through the palace entrance, we watched as the four college-aged Chinese guys in front of us were detained for having phony tickets. If I can avoid being detained in China, great.



The architecture was probably the most fascinating part of the palace for me. That and the sheer size of it. We were glad that we had already been to Qufu to visit Confucious' temple, because compared to Tiananmen, it was like a Texaco versus a Super Wal-Mart. There were so many children, too. It seemed like they were all climbing on statues, next to very explicit signs that read "No climbing" in Chinese and English. But I guess if it makes a good photo opportunity, go for it... Before we left, we tried to climb up in the gate, to take a picture of the entire palace, but the security was too tight for my liking; they wanted us to check our bags and purchases, they wanted to pat us down, etc. There was no way I was checking our stuff at a public place in China, so I told Rory to just go up without me--I'd hold onto all the stuff and he could just take a camera. But he was stopped. No pictures allowed. Fair enough.

After a quick pit stop at the hotel to drop off all our goodies, we headed over to an area of town called "Soho" in an effort to eat at a German restaurant we had read about on our map. The prospect of eating bratwurst and sauerkraut was really exciting. When we got to this Soho area, however, it was really difficult to navigate our way around. A lot of the buildings were empty, and once we actually found the restaurant, the atmosphere wasn't distinctly German or cozy. Plus, it was really expensive. We hopped back into another cab and tried to go back to the pizza place. On our way, though, we passed a Texas BBQ place and a Mexican restaurant. We opted for the Mexican Wave restaurant. We had frozen margaritas and chimichangas and nachos, and it was incredible! You don't realize what you're missing until you're teased by one Mexican meal. It was really good. While we were there, it started to rain, and we were very thankful that we had already visited the two big spots we wanted to see.

It was a pretty late lunch, so we headed back to take a catnap and to clean up before wandering around to find dinner. We settled on a hotpot place (after realizing we were on a street full of hotpot restaurants). The hotpot was subpar. They told us they had carrots, and then they didn't. Maybe this doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's a real selling point for me with the hotpot restaurants. It determines which places we go to. Anyway. My carrot issue wasn't nearly as bad as Rory's eye issue. Somehow, his super spicy side of the pot bubbled over, and some broth jumped up underneath his glasses and into his eye. Not good. So he's sitting at the table, crying one eye out, asking for cold water, and the waiter just didn't seem to get it at all. He brought back a full glass of boiling hot water. We got the hell out of that place and headed back to 31.

I think that the rain and general change in the weather took its toll on me, and by the time we got to 31, I had a pretty rockin' case of sneezing and sniffling. So that was fun. There was also a group of maybe 7 American university students hanging out, wasted. It was somebody's birthday and someone else was upset about making out with another one (we got to hear a lot of what they were drunkenly, loudly saying); one girl was puking in the bathroom while another girl was puking over the railing across the street, into a lake. The leader of the pack decided to strike up a slurred conversation with us. He was funny. We were friendly with him, but just thinking to ourselves--"I think you need to be at a different bar." 31 is a nice, relaxing place, and it just seemed weird that these incredibly wasted folks were there.

After the kids left, one of the band members came over to talk to us. His English was great! He had taken special English classes and had a degree in horticulture. He was really friendly and soft-spoken. The other member of the band reminded me of a grown-up version of my favorite student in Korea. I couldn't stop staring at him; it was uncanny. Mufel--the one who spoke English--told us to come back the next night, when the whole band was there. We had already been to this place our three nights in town, so we told him we'd definitely see him the next night.

It was only a matter of time...

Last night we were in a taxi on our way to a Korean bar near the Chinese beach. As we came upon a busy section of Shenyang Road, we noticed that traffic had slowed down a little bit. As we got closer, we saw a fairly banged up black car pulled over to the shoulder of the road, windshield busted and front (in general) pretty well smushed. Surrounding his car was the carcas of a motorbike, bits and pieces strewn everywhere. At this point the taxi driver asked us if we understood Chinese. I told him that we understood a little, and that this (pointing to the accident) was not good, and we all had a laugh.

Our taxi pulled a little to the right to pass the car in front of us, which had slowed down considerably at this point. As we inched further and further right, I looked at the ground, and there it was. First it was just a head and shoulders and a pool of blood, and then it was the rest of a Chinese man, face down in the middle of the street, his body twisted and unnatural-looking. He wasn't moving. It was real. I just started saying "Oh my god Oh my god Oh my god" over and over while trying to keep it together as we drove past. I thought I was going to puke in the back seat while Rory and the cabbie (in Chinese) were telling me "don't look don't look don't look." I couldn't believe it. I saw a dead person. And no one was helping him. He was just there in the middle of the street, by himself, and no ambulance was in sight; somehow I doubt Chinese ambulances are famed for their response times.

After that, I was just in shock--it wasn't right for me to see someone's dad face down in his own pool of blood. Dead. Probably on his way home with dinner or something. Jesus Christ.

Wear your helmets, people.

Beijing--Part I

Beijing Beijing Beijing. When people think of China--us included before we actually came over here--they think of the biggies: Tiananmen, the wall, the 2008 Olympics, the people. We have had a few significant vacations allotted to us thus far at our school, and each time we have tossed out the idea of Beijing, intimidated by the prospect of going to the second largest city in China. We have heard horror stories from friends and other foreign teachers about how expensive it is and how people will try to rip you off. That kind of stuff just doesn't sound fun to us, but we also knew that we should go to Beijing sooner rather than later to avoid all of the pre-Olympics chaos. So we said "screw it"--we had a weeklong vacation and a chunk of change to burn--we were going to Beijing.

On Monday morning, we decided to head to the bus station early to get our tickets. Easier said than done. It was the first real day of the holiday, it was morning when everyone wanted to leave, and there were no taxis. Even the buses were so full that we got rejected by a few of them. That NEVER happens in China. Really. Finally, after about an hour of trying to get on buses or get in taxis, we hopped on a taxi and headed to the bus station, which is really pretty far away from us. The cabbie loved that.

When we arrived we bought our tickets to Beijing, no problem. It paid to be early. As we were getting ready to go back into town for lunch, we saw our friend, one of the bus station guards. Every time we have gone to the bus station, he has been there, ready to help us, to push us to the front of the line, to offer any and all assistance should we need it. What a friendly fellow. We take pictures with him every time we go to the station, and we need to send them to him, we just haven't gotten around to it yet. We chatted with him in broken Chinglish for a little while, and then we headed to McDonald's. We were in such a rush because we knew how hard it had been to get a taxi.

We ate McDonald's in the taxi back to Daguanghua. When we got back to the school, we ran up the stairs (all 225 of them), grabbed our bags and headed back down to catch the bus. We got there with 6 minutes to spare. We are pretty proud of our get-up-and-go abilities now. When we actually got back to the big bus station, we had three hours to kill. So we did it the best way we could think of--in the restaurant/bar attached to bus station. We parked at a table for the next 2.5 hours, nursing our beers (the waitstaff loved that), doing madlibs and killing time.

When we headed back up to the boarding/waiting area, we saw our friend again. He led us to the right bus, talked to the driver a little bit--"These are my friends. Take care of them" sort of stuff--and posed for pictures.



I was pretty excited as we got on the bus. We've slept on newspaper on the floor of a ferry, but we haven't slept on a bus full of beds. Tiny beds. Sets of bunk beds three wide and nine deep. I just liked that there wasn't any way to pretend I was going to be productive for the next 13 hours. Options included: sleeping. I had just closed my eyes and was trying to get comfortable in my bottom bunk (Rory was on top), when I felt something rustling on me. I opened my eyes, and it was the guard. He brought us a bag of rice cakes, soda and water. He wanted to make sure we had provisions on the trip. Again, what a swell guy. We want to adopt him.

The next thirteen hours weren't nearly as rough as I thought they would be. Highlights included: muddy potholes, peeing on a building in the dark with a friendly Korean lady on the bus and trying to understand a Chinese movie that had Harvey "Bad Lieutenant" Keitel in it. From what I saw, he kept his clothes on.

We rolled into Beijing around 6:00 am, hopped in a taxi, and away we went. Rory had made reservations at a youth hotel (which is really just a hotel) recommended by a friend, and we had the name card and address of the place, so there was no problem getting there. So far so good. We're always impressed when things happen like we hope they will. We don't necessarily doubt ourselves, we're just ready for adversity should it present itself. In the hotel we bought a map, and it wasn't until we were in our room that we realized just how close we were to all of the big spots (except the wall, of course).

We were hoping to just throw our bags down and hop on a bus to the wall as part of a tour. After waiting a little while, we got the call. We'd visit the wall the next day, so the first day we had on our own to kind of walk around the area and take pictures. We ate McDonald's for breakfast and took a nap for a few hours. Though the bus had beds, that didn't necessarily mean we were well-rested. After our nap we walked around the neighborhood, doing what we do best--getting lost and running into cool things. Turns out that the side street next to us was full of guitar shops and proprietors with full sleeve tattoos and long hair. Just our luck. We spent days searching for guitars in Qingdao, and in Beijing by our hotel we were surrounded by them. So now we know.

After walking around for awhile, we found ourselves walking along some side streets that revolved around a canal and a lake. It was a lot like Amsterdam--all of these little sidewalk cafes and (mostly) bars (that weren't yet open). We saw rickshaws and lilypads and all of these cool little shops selling lanterns and silk and Mao stuff. This was an area known as Houhai Park.







We took a few name cards and vowed to come back that evening for some drinks. We were actually a lot closer to our hotel than we realized. It was lunch time, so we wandered out of Houhai park, past some bleak-looking area that was under construction, to a really nice hole-in-the-wall (but really clean and upscaleish) restaurant. Our first Chinese meal in China was a) delicious and b) comparable to any prices we would pay in Weihai. Score. Plus, they were impressed with our Chinese and ability to order what we wanted. It was really good food. There was also a table with little Chinese twins next to us. These girls were climbing all over everything, opening drawers and touching anything in sight. They were so cute. Before they left, their parents were trying to pay the bill and finish their drinks. The uncle (I assume) kept giving them beer while the parents' backs were turned. It was really funny. Start em young, I guess.

Earlier, when we had been killing time in our hotel room, I made a list of some things I wanted to check out in Beijing. There was a flea market that was pointed out on the map, and I'm a sucker for things like that, so we decided to go after lunch.

This place was huge! At first we started out in an area that was specifically furniture, all of it impressive and expensive and beautiful. I think a nice way to put it is "majestic." There were entire cabinets that spanned an entire wall of a room, floor to ceiling, all carved and polished up. Gorgeous. There were also rooms full of busts and famous Chinese folks. We didn't spend too much time looking around because I was convinced I was going to knock something over.



We walked to an inside, upstairs portion of the flea market, where the vendors mostly sold old Mao paraphenalia and old Chinese things in general. It was really interesting, there weren't tons of people there, and we managed to get some good deals on Christmas presents.



Down a different stairway and out a different exit, and it was like we were in a completely different world. A world where everything I want to buy is on sale in shop after shop after shop. Earrings, scarves, paintings, silks, you name it. It was awesome. We were able to keep ourselves under control, but we spent a significant amount of time wandering around, bargaining just for the sake of bargaining. It was great.



We spent a good amount of time at the flea market, so we were hungry again. We headed back to the hotel to get cleaned up. We wanted to experience some famous Peking duck in Beijing, so we put on our good clothes and went out again. We were trying to explain to the cabbie exactly what we wanted. We wanted a duck restaurant that wasn't too expensive and wasn't super cheap. He took us to the most expensive restaurant in town. It was all lit up on the first floor of an equally impressive hotel. Generally speaking, hotel restaurants are the best and most expensive meals you can eat here in China. I mean, real hotels--hotels that most foreigners stay in. We hopped out of the taxi and walked into the restaurant on the side street next to the hotel. It also had roast duck, and I'm imagining it was significantly cheaper.

Our waiter was really funny. While we were trying to order in Chinese, he was trying to speak English, writing things down in his little English notebook he carried in his front shirt pocket. It was cute. Once we decided that we wanted Chinese broccoli--which we'd experienced for the first time at lunch and loved--he asked us how to spell broccoli. At the end of dinner we quizzed him, and he had to refer back to his notebook. It was funny. He was a good waiter. And the duck was great! They brought out this plate of sliced up duck, these little pancake/tortilla things, some sauce, cucumber and onions. You wrapped it all up and ate it like a burrito. It was really fatty, but it was so freaking good! When we (thought we) were finished eating, another waiter came over to the table with more duck. We were convinced it was someone else's order, but really they had just prepared the whole damn duck for us. We were too full to do more than pick at it.

We felt like vising Houhai park when it was at its finest--nighttime. We figured out how to get there in the taxi, and the next thing we knew, the streets were full of people and waiters trying to usher us into a particular bar. "Looky looky! Bob Marley music! Budweiser!" It was too funny. Something about a hip Chinese dude excitedly saying "Bob Marley music!" was priceless. We walked for a little while and settled on an awesome bar called "31". What is it with all these numbered bars? 7 and 2046 in Weihai and now 31 in Beijing...



We sat at an outside table across the street from the lake--it was perfect for people-watching, drinking Jameson, smoking flavored tobacco and listening to a Chinese band play really soothing music from Western China. It was great. We went to this particular bar every night we were there.

Yantai

Jamie left China on a Thursday morning, and Rory and I found out Thursday evening that we didn't have to teach on Friday cause the kids were taking tests. Our weeklong vacation started on Monday, too, so we were basically being handed 10 days off, right after I'd already been off most of the week hanging out with Jamie. I'll take it!

We decided to head to Yantai. It's only an hour away from Weihai--when we flew to China, we flew into Yantai, but that's the only time we'd ever been there. I don't know what I was expecting when we went--perhaps something about as big as Weihai? I don't know. Our school is located by the Yanwei Expressway, so we headed down the street a little ways, and the first minibus we saw was going to Yantai. Okay, easy enough. For less than it costs to get downtown in a taxi, we were headed to a different city an hour away. I think we waited around for maybe 10 minutes before we left. So far so good.

As we pulled into town, we drove past a Super 8 motel that seemed to be right in the middle of everything that we wanted to do. I was struck by how much bigger this place was than Weihai. I guess, technically, it's about three times as big. Our city suddenly seemed really small, especially because such a big city is only an hour away. We checked into the hotel and then went to Pizza Hut. It was awesome, and it wasn't difficult to communicate at all. I don't even think we bought a map the whole time we were there, and that's usually the first thing we do when traveling to any city.

The best way to describe the trip to Yantai is to say that we went on a tour de different foods we can't get in Weihai. We didn't see any historic sites (don't know if there are any), but we ate at a French restaurant, a place called Jackie's that actually had cheese, some pretty subpar hotpot place and Pizza Hut. We also went to a few bars and saw more Westerners in one bar(than we care to) than there are in all of Weihai. And then we came back to Daguanghua as easily as we went.