"I was on a island..."

We finally made it out to Liugong Island, and now that I think about it--that's the only island I've ever been to. Neat! When we were walking around downtown on Friday, we saw signs for Liugong that had all these pictures of temples, and it sort of looked like a magical place. I mean, even the billboards called it an "enchanting isle...". So we decided to come back on Saturday, spend a little chunk of money and get out to this island.

We rode the bus downtown and got to the ferry terminal with minutes to spare. We paid for our round trip ferry tickets and hopped on the boat. At lunch I had taken some dramamine, just in case. Once, I was on a deep sea fishing boat in the Gulf of Mexico on a fishing expedition. For more than 6 hours we were out at sea, in this choppy water. Initially (as in, like, the first 20-30 minutes), I was having the time of my life, making fun of all of these little kids barfing off the side of the boat. And then the motion sickness kicked in, and I joined their ranks. For the next five hours. I didn't want a repeat, even if it was only a 20 minute ferry ride to an island 4 km away from Weihai. But there were no problems. We stood on the highest deck of the boat against a railing, leaning over and looking out at the approaching island and all of these huge fishing boats that seemed to just appear out of the fog. It was almost otherworldly (then again, everything is otherwordly over here). There was some guy on the ferry (who was maybe famous), and he had a cameraman following him around everywhere, taking pictures. So he made sure to take a picture with us. Maybe that's going to be in some Chinese version of Tiger Beat magazine or something soon.

We made it to the island, and even the ferry terminal was impressive. From the outside it looked like a building that ninjas would scale down in a movie, right before they get annihilated by Jet Li or something. But instead of ninjas, the building was full of all of these little shops; selling binoculars, drinks, cigarettes, swords and anything (and everything) that could conceivably be made out of shells. We opted for the temple tour, paid another fee, and we were on our way. We were surrounded by all kinds of interesting and completely foreign (obviously, to us) vegetation. Yes, there were your standard bonsai trees--which we incredible!--but there were also these taller trees that looked like giant yuccas, with some type of heavy duty twine wrapped all the way around their trunk parts. Landscape architecture is something that is taken very seriously here in China. Even on our campus, there are a few different people in charge of landscaping. On the bus to Rizhao, too, we saw an entire, massive tree being transported from one spot to the other on the back of a huge, industrial truck (like when you see those "oversize load" mobile homes being trucked down the highway in the US). It makes me look forward to springtime. I'm sure it will be beautiful--things are just now starting to bloom...

Once inside the initial walls of the temple, we were amidst a labyrinth of different buildings and sculptures. We looked up towards the top of the main mountain--"main" as in it's the first peak you see when you get off of the ferry--and saw another impressive temple, with all of these little teacup-looking, two-person cable cars that ran from the base of the mountain to the top. They looked scary. And rickety. And distinctly Chinese. And I was determined to ride in one.

We wandered around these different scenic sites--taking pictures, walking up inside temples and going to the "British folks are bad for occupying Weihai" museum. We walked into one building that had these giant, barbarian-looking statues in it. The second we walked in, this table full of Chinese twenty-somethings who were sitting behind a table, dressed in similar garb as the statues, started laughing at us. I don't know why, but I have to guess it's because they could sense how hilarious and entertaining we are. I'm sure that was it. We took pictures and left.

I should mention that once when I was visiting the royal gorge with Jamie and a friend, we thought it would be a good idea to ride a cable car, too. Over the royal gorge. Long way down. We waited in a line for a long time, and once we got to be next in line, I chickened out. I just couldn't do it. I'm not necessarily afraid of heights, but something about a car dangling from a wire, full of 20 other people I didn't know seemed really scary. And it was a looooong way down, let me tell you. But we walked into this little cable car building next to the temple to check out prices, and I thought "hell yeah we're riding one of these cars." I mean, there was a little certificate on the wall that said the establishment had passed the "rope safety" test. In the nineties... So we paid some more money, got in a car and started our ascent. Initially I thought I was going to freak out--I told Rory I would have my eyes closed the entire time, but I didn't even do that. It wasn't bad at all. It was actually really nice. It wasn't too windy; it was a long, slow ride; and there were plenty of cool things to look at and take pictures of along the way. When we first got into the cable car, there weren't any other passengers in cars going up or coming down, so the machine was stopped, we could take our time getting in and out of the car. But once we got up to the top, some other folks had decided to take a ride also, so they didn't stop the ride at all. A Chinese man met us at the top; he quickly opened the door of our teacup--while it was still moving--hurried us out and told us not to hit our heads. It was pretty funny, but it was okay because it was moving very slowly. Still, it struck me as very odd. On a busy day in the summer you could have some kids in jeopardy of riding back down the mountain, half in and half out of one of these little cars. It was the same when we got back in the car to ride down. Too funny.

We descended the mountain, and the view coming down was even better than when we went up. We could see so much of the island, the mountains, the water, everything. It was nice. At the bottom we decided to get back on the ferry, head back and eat some food. The boat ride back was great, too. We were moving much faster this time, and we got to see different parts of the island (that we'll have to explore next time). There was a trio of older Chinese businessmen on the top deck with us, and they were taking all kinds of funny pictures on the boat, trying to look regal and get all of these "good" shots of each other with the wind and the seaspray. It was funny.

Once we were back on the mainland, we decided to go eat at a restaurant that had quickly become our favorite around school. The food was really good, the friendly waitress always recommended something delicious, and they didn't screw us over with prices. So we went there and ordered our eggplant dish that we're addicted to, this pork rib and dumpling plate that we'd had the time before (that was awesome) and something else she suggested, but we didn't know what it was. When the first two plates came out, the eggplant was great--as usual--but something about the pork rib dish was "off." It didn't taste bad, it just wasn't as good as the time before; like we'd gotten the bottom of the barrel or something (some questionable pieces of meat, anyway). Then the lady came out with this giant plate of fried bugs. Maybe beetles. This was the dish she told us we would love. She could sense our skepticism and encouraged us to eat anyway, telling us how delicious it was in Chinese. So we ate a few bugs. Rory ate a few more than me, but I really just couldn't do it. And the more room temperature they got, the more they smelled like earth and those gross bondaeggi beetles in Korea. Anyway.

Several hours later we had food poisoning. Two bodies fighting for bathroom time. With a squatter. I don't need to go into too much detail, but it was horrible. We don't think it was the bugs that did it, either--I mean, they were just pure, fried, disgusting protein. But that meat! Something was off about it. And even thinking about it makes me want to ralph. Anyway, it's been a rough week, recovering and everything; trying to convince our bodies that we like food. Last night was a good sign, though. We played basketball with some other teachers and colleagues. Rory and I look like Shaquille and Kareem over here. It's awesome. I get to post up again, because I'm a few inches taller than damn near everyone.

On Saturday we're supposed to have a "surprise" visitor here at the school. We have no idea who it will be, but we keep getting these hints from Rebecca, who is getting them from someone else. Hints like: "this person may be your friend", "this person knows you but you may or may not know this person" and "this person will wait for you in the director's office...". We don't even really have a hunch as to who it will be, but you can bet your buns there will be a blog about it.