St. Patty's Day in the China!

So yesterday was one of those days that was so jampacked with activity that is seems (in retrospect) impossible that we were able to do so much. In one day. Whew!

We slept in late, skipping breakfast. We decided that there's really no need for us to get up at 7:00 on the weekends to go eat porridge and fried eggs. Plus, it gives the cooks a little bit of a break; especially now that we have to log when we're going to be there for meals. Seems like that makes sense (so they know how much food to make for us 3 foreigners), but it's a recent development that came after Cecilia complained about the freshness of the food (it's always something. Seriously...); and now we have to know in advance when we'll be eating at the dining hall or not.

We did end up going to lunch, though. Lunch is usually the most impressive meal of the day, and during the week, immediately after lunch, we have a nap time "siesta" built into our schedules. The whole campus sort of shuts down and everyone "take[s] some rest." So at lunch yesterday we had some meatballs and other random things. The food is getting better and better for us (both taste-wise and tolerance-wise), and our palates are becoming more receptive to Chinese cuisine. Well, Chinese dining hall cuisine. When we eat in restaurants it's no problem, because we get to choose what we want to eat, but in the dining hall, it's anyone's guess, and they don't necessarily know that we don't like squid or octopus in with our vegetables or broth or whatever. But there's always rice and a juice box of some sort.

Yesterday at lunch we were in charge of talking with Cecilia about a little nitpicky logistical contract thing. We spoke with Rebecca--the Chinese English teacher who has taken on the responsibility of being the liason/translator/go-to chick in all matters between us and the higher-ups--and we figured out the glitch and are happy with the results. So we had to explain our decision to Cecilia, who has been saying that we should stick together as a team from the beginning (and now she just wants us to talk to people on her behalf. We're not...). So she wasn't very happy with us or the school, because she wants the school to pay her for days that she wasn't even in China yet (like I said, it's always something with her...). Our lunchtime conversation made us a little frustrated and annoyed, so we were happy to escape campus for a few hours to go meet Thomas and Alyssa (who we met at "church" and with whom we ate dinner earlier this week) to go hike up a mountain. Alyssa is really cool. We talked about travelling (she's been to some of the same places I've been); she was actually applying for a Fulbright grant to Chile before she came here to Weihai. She also has big feet (like me), and is going to hand over some of her shoes to me when her contract is up.

We met Alyssa at Shandong University (where she's an English Instructor), and then we all rode over to pick up Thomas, our guide for the day (he's a natural). Thomas had previously shown us all of these different mountain passes he's traversed, but yesterday he wanted to check out a new spot in a familiar location. So we were happy and thankful that he wanted us to tag along with him. We rode our taxi all the way to a dead end, where the pavement ended, and we could see this pretty massive and impressive mountain looming in the background. Right as the pavement turned to dirt, there was a building that was being renovated. We walked up and peeked around, wondering what it would become--a house? a restaurant? a school?--and I felt like I was trespassing. But I trust Thomas. He had been here before, after all. He gave mountain tours as his summer job last year. He led us up a dirt path, past a couple of elderly women who were washing their clothes on rocks next to this dirty little mountain trickle (not quite a stream). It struck me that I had never been in a situation like this--this was real China (whatever that means--maybe I just have all these images from PBS specials in my head). There were really Chinese women washing clothes on rocks, their shabby dwellings behind them. They told Thomas (in Chinese) that we should cross over and go the other way. Thomas didn't want to, but he didn't make a big deal out of it; we simply crossed the trickle and walked a different route, to make them happy.

When we were in Korea, we never got to experience anything as intimate (?) as this in nature or in the countryside. Sure, sometimes Jamie and I would hike up to this mountain behind our school, just to kill time during our lunch break, but part of the way up was paved. I'm sure we could have climbed mountains, we just didn't know anyone who was knowledgeable about where to go. And here we have Thomas! I think that we're very lucky in that sense. So we headed up, still a little dumbfounded that we were about to climb a mountain. The next thing I know we're face to face with some cows, just hanging out right next to this trail. Their rears were right at the edge of a dropoff, so every time they had to poop they just let it fly, and it fell down a ravine into the trickle. The same trickle the ladies were cleaning their clothes in. But they cows weren't confined by a fence or anything like that; they were tied up, right there, hanging out. A little further up, past a few houses (signs of civilization), we came across a pen full of dog houses. Evidently one of the houses we had passed belonged to a Chinese man who breeds some kind of dog. I don't know what kind of dogs they were, but lemme tell you--these were some cute puppies! So not only are we hiking up the side of a beautiful mountain, with beautiful weather and nice friends, we got the added bonus of getting to see a bunch of puppies. And who isn't a sucker for puppies? What a lucky day, right?

So we kept walking, and it wasn't too rough, but then we ended up at the bottom of this really steep hill. And we had to get to the top. Lucky for me, we decided to climb our first Weihai mountain with a cross-country runner and a guy who has gotten paid to take people to the top. I've mentioned that we have to climb 225 steps every time we enter our school gates, just to get to our room, but it was still no preparation for that section of the hike. I was bringing up the rear, reminding the world "Wow, I'm really out of shape...", but after stopping a few times and resting against trees, I was at the top of our first section. We turned and looked how far we'd come up. It was impressive to me, even at this point, but we had only just started the trek. So we started making our way to this craggy area of rocks that jutted out, and I was really scared all of sudden. I don't know why I do this to myself, but it's like a nervous thing I have. For example, before we flew from the US to China, I had built up in my head all of the terrible things that could potentially happen once we were in the air. And so I was really nervous to get on the plane at all. But once we were up there, it wasn't nearly as bad as I had made it out in my head. And save for a littlest bit of turbulence near the end, the flight was perfect, I'd survived, and I was in China. If I ever go canoeing or something like that, I always build it up in my head that I'm going to drown or get bit by a water moccasin (a la Ricky Schroeder in Lonesome Dove). Similarly, on the mountain, I got nervous crawling on parts of rock (unchartered terrain for me), knowing how much of a klutz I am, thinking "if anyone's going to fall off of a mountain today, it's going to be me...". But I remembered that Thomas knows what he's doing and wouldn't take us out on a hike to kill us. So I joined the others on the crag, and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The view was incredible! I mean, we got to see parts of our city that we didn't even know existed! We got to see the island that we'll be visiting soon, when we go ride bicycles and look at British architecture.

Thomas pointed over to another ridge, towards an old, dilapidated house; and he suggested that we do some "ridge hopping" and go check it out, because he'd never been there. I sort of thought that he was joking, and I said "well, we don't have to go that far, but we should definitely do some more climbing around...". So we started crossing all of these ridges, down and back up, down and back up (and none of it nearly as exhausting as crawling up that initial slope, which we remained on top of the entire time); and at the top of each ridge you could see all of these different views of the city and the boats and the islands. It was so cool! And the whole time Alyssa and I chatted about travelling and exploring. It was great! Before I could even realize what was happening, we were at the house! It took a lot less time than I thought it would. So we walked around in this old, (now) roofless structure, taking pictures, drinking gatorade and looking down at where we'd come from. We could see the puppy pen, and it looked so tiny now. I felt very proud of myself for making it to the top. We followed the trail a little further, and we came across another cement structure. It was basically just a cement platform that had a few cement steps leading up to it. So we all walked up on the platform--it was perfect for a "scenic view" of Weihai. But everything about the day thus far (after leaving campus) had been perfect. But Rory and I wondered how the hell people got cement and bricks up this freaking mountain! I can't imagine a genie lift or anything like that that is capable of reaching the top of a mountain ridge, so I'm sure the the construction involved a lot of Chinese folks carrying things on their backs up this mountain.

We started the journey down, and we passed through another cemetery. This one had all of the mounds like the one that we had stumbled upon last weekend. Chinese folks are cremated when they die, and then their loved ones place their urn full of ashes inside these mounds. It's really pretty cool-looking. But there was one (non) mound that was actually a pretty elaborate cement structure, in amongst all of these piles of dirt and decoration. Someone must be a pretty rich person to have such a nice burial plot (if that term even still applies here).

As we got closer to the bottom, we saw a really nice hotel that had a driving range behind it. Alyssa wanted to check out their prices for pool usage, so we just hiked down next to this driving range. Along the way we saw our first Chinese person (we hadn't seen anyone since the ladies washing their clothese--this seems rare for China, where there's never supposed to be any privacy). An old man was gathering straw and bundling it up in some netted basket thing. He was friendly and said "Ni Hao", and we continued down. We stopped inside the swimming pool area of the hotel, and I saw one of my students. We had her friend translate the little card the hotel clerk had given us with pool rates on it. We all split a cab, getting out at our particular destinations and vowing to go climbing again soon.

So we went back to the dorm and got ready for the evening festivities. We had heard through the grapevine that there was going to be Guinness (for St. Patrick's Day) at a bar in the city center. Until I heard this, I had sort of forgotten about St. Patrick's Day altogether. But we hadn't been to a bar at all yet, and we were excited about drinking some real beer. We hopped on the bus and got off at the first stop to eat at a Korean restaurant we'd been eyeing for awhile. So we walked in, excited about using our knowledge of Korean to order food. It turns out that there weren't any Korean-speaking folks there, which is weird for us (well, for our experience here in Korean restaurants, anyway), because Weihai is full of Koreans. So when we ordered "Budaechige", the waitress just looked at us like we were crazy. So Rory flipped back through the menu, reading the Korean aloud (surely that would impress a Korean, right?) until he found our soup, and he showed our waitress. Written next to it was the Chinese version, so we just ended up pointing at it. Oh well, next time we'll get to use Korean somewhere!

We hopped in a taxi and made our way to the Tomato Bar, where the friendly bartender was, indeed, serving bottles of Guinness. They also served us two shots of Jameson. We were the first foreigners there (we were meeting Neal and Alyssa), so we just sort of sat at the bar, singing along to the Beatles songs playing over the loudspeakers. Turns out The Beatles are universally appealing. Fine with me. We saw that there was a little stage and wondered if there was live music. Five minutes later, we discovered that there was--score! So these three Chinese dudes get up there with their percussion, keyboard and guitar, and they start playing the Eric Clapton Unplugged songbook. There were other songs, too, and it was great, but a whole lotta Clapton. So we were singing along to all of these songs, cheering for the band, and you could tell that everyone was staring at us, amused by the fact that we were so amused. The two men sitting next to us bought us a couple of glasses of wine to cheers with, so we had to drink the whole glass to show them that we know what's up with drinking here in China. We drank and pointed our glasses towards them, showing that we had finished in one gulp. They were impressed--we were having so much fun! I think that it is always a little shocking for Chinese folks (or Korean folks) to see us foreigners dancing around and singing and really interacting, instead of being shy or just sitting in a booth trying to avoid eye contact. But I just want everyone to know how happy I am to be in China, and it always goes over really well. It has thus far, anyway.

Neal showed up with another Neil, I think British. We got some more beers and paid--going to bars will be a rare thing for us, I think, because it's significantly more expensive than just getting some beers with dinner. Alyssa showed up with her French friend, the new French teacher at Shandong. She was really nice, I just can't remember her name. It was loud when she said it... The girl sitting at the table next to us "cheers"ed me. So I held my glass up next to her, and we both chugged. Her table cheered for me when they saw me drink the rest of my beer. I think the cheers did a number on her, though, because the next thing I knew, she was taking a nap on the table.

We migrated to a different club, 2046. Before we walked in, Neal turned to us and said "I think you're going to like this place..." So we walked in, and there was a free coat check. Okay, already I like it. We walked through some doors, and we were escorted to our own booth. The room was dimly lit, but it was totally a dance club. All of the booths and tables were situated so that everyone had a clear view of the stage area, djs perched behind, playing random, loud music. It was so fun! So before we even thought about ordering drinks (we didn't have the budget for it last night), Rory and I were out on the dance floor, and it was hilarious. All of these Chinese folks saw us coming, and it's like they parted the waters for us when we got to the floor. So then it was just Rory and me, surrounded by a bunch of folks staring at us and laughing (with us, not at us). The dancing didn't last very long, as it was time for an emcee to come out and get the crowd riled up. So the dance floor was also a stage, a stage where this dude excitedly yelled a lot and chugged entire beers in front of his audience. Once, he even double fisted some Coronas, getting beer all over his jacket and face. He was really zealous about it, though, and you could tell that being a hype man at a dance club in Weihai is an important position.

After he finished getting drunk and letting us watch, he brought up members of the audience to participate in a game. The girls had to hold a bottle in between their legs, and the boys had to hold a straw. The objective was to get the straw into the bottle, but it was really just an excuse to see a bunch of shy(?) Chinese girls get dry-humped on stage by horny Chinese dudes. Like being at a frat bar in Co, MO or something. But with games(?)... Next, all of these dancers came out onstage, dressed like they were in Vegas or something. The girls had on these really elaborate headdresses (bright pink and orange) and belly dancing costumes, while the dudes wore the same color scheme and looked like homosexual matadors. It was too funny! Funny awesome, I mean. As the night progressed, the dancing chicks ended up in less and less clothing, finally writhing around on poles in little more than their skivvies. Then I understood why the table full of Australian, douchebag-looking dudes was sitting so close to the stage. We found our frat boys! But it was so much fun. And it was just too funny--little Chinese chicks who giggle when I say "Ni Hao" to them on the street were now pole dancing in hardly any clothes.

We called it a night and headed home. It was all too funny. Mountain climbing by day and pole dancing by night. Only in Weihai.