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.

Jamie came. She saw. She conquered.

Jamie left for Korea at the beginning of October last year. Though we talk damn near everyday (via email or skype), when she finally got to come visit, we hadn't actually seen each other for almost a year. This marks the longest amount of time we've ever been apart in our 28 (almost 29) years of existence. You could say that Rory and I were excited. We went to the giant supermarket in town and loaded up on cheese(s), champagne, beer and snacks; and we actually did a pretty thorough cleaning of our room to prepare for her visit. We secured a spot for her in our dormitory--on our same floor, even!--and I arranged to only teach about 6 hours the entire week she was here. We also made a funny sign to hold up at the airport, because there was no chance in hell that anyone would understand it. The final two days before she arrived became a countdown of hours, and there was no way to predict how I was going to act once I actually got to see her.

Rory and I arrived at the airport with an hour and a half to kill; the airport was actually about 45 minutes away in Wendeng, but it was a cheap shuttle ride from a downtown hotel. We had a little time to kill, but there was nothing to really do at this tiny airport out in the middle of nowhere, so we drank a few beers, got stared at and did madlibs (an amazing investment, even though they're way too hard for any of our esl students).

It was raining a little bit, but that didn't delay any of the flights at all. Initially we were a little worried about the weather conditions, considering there were typhoons in Southern China and in S.K., but for the most part weather was great. Finally Jamie's flight came in, and seeing her walking amongst all of these short, (mostly) Korean men was really surreal. We hugged, and it was an emotional moment, but I tried to hold it together, because there was so much we had to talk about. We hopped back on the shuttle bus to ride back to Weihai, showing each other phones and cameras and purses and catching up on everything. It didn't really feel like a year had passed.

We hopped off the bus a little before downtown to try to get a taxi back to Daguanghua, which has proved relatively difficult when it's raining (waited for an hour once), but this time we didn't wait long at all. Headed back to the room so she could unload her stuff and we could work out dinner plans. We drank some beers while waiting for Rebecca to call--she wanted to treat us to hotpot, because Sunday night was her only free night, and she really wanted to meet Jamie. At the hotpot place--"The Little Sheep"--we drank champagne and showed Jamie a proper Chinese meal. You can't go wrong with hotpot.

We called it an early night and went back to the room to watch funny stuff on the computer. It was great. The next day we had dedicated entirely to shopping.

Monday morning, after a brief run-through of the neighborhood market, we headed downtown to get fitted for some custom-made silk garments. I think that one of the first words I learned in China was the word for tailor, because I knew I would be getting clothes made at some point. Jamie opted for a standard Chinese dress that she will actually wear, and I opted for a floor-length robe that will probably be framed and put on a wall when I get back to the States. It's gorgeous, but it's not really a practical item of clothing.

We did a lot of shopping--everything's so cheap!--and went back to meet Rory for our dinner date. We eat at a neighborhood barbecue restaurant fairly often, and they were anxiously awaiting Jamie's arrival. They were even making a special menu for us. Even though we had eaten hotpot the night before--and it's legit Chinese food--we wanted to show Jamie the dirtiest locale we eat at, and really it's the only sketch place we go to anymore (since the food poisoning). We would stop going to this place, except that it has the best barbecue in town, and the people there love us. It's a shame that their bathroom is just a drain on the floor.

When in China, it's custom to order way too much food. So we did, and all of it was delicious. The mom and pop who run the joint have a really cool little dog, too (he does tricks), and he came and sat in a chair at our table with us. He's just so cool. While we were finishing eating, we saw the waiters and waitresses setting up chairs near our outside table. It was time for the photo shoot!



After taking a bunch of pictures, we went back to the table to give Jamie her first taste of baijo. I think this particular batch was full of "snake and penis and mushroom and weird shit and death" (Rory). It was full of at least 3 of those things, anyway.



We hadn't planned on going to any of the clubs in town (all two of them) until the next night, but after our friend Simon told us about a special show at "7", we couldn't resist. Turns out there was a midget show going on. Yup, midgets. Or little people or dwarves or whatever the hell they're supposed to be called. Anyway, the lead midget sure could wiggle. He came out with a normal-sized lady who was singing, and he had on a gold, floor-length robe. He looked like a little Chinese pimp. But together they looked straight out of "Willow." It was all too funny. The main midget danced around on stage, but he saw that he was getting a pretty awesome response from us, so (with a little help from a "7" waiter)he hopped up on our table and started wiggling his hips some more. It was amazing. In this picture, keep in mind that the little guy's standing on a platform and Jamie is standing on the ground.



After the main guy was done singing and dancing, it was time for a skit. This skit involved a female midget and two male midgets. The premise of the skit isn't important, but let's just say it was pretty vulgar. The lady ran out and squirted fake breast milk all over the dancers and whoever else was in the audience. It was like on Saturday Night Live when there's a skit that involves puking--they have the fake puke tube--except this was fake breast milk.

The next day was pretty low-key. Jamie came to three of my classes, my two favorite classes (with my really little kids) and my Korean class that I really don't like. They are just a rude group of kids. Jamie used her Korean to put them in their places. It was awesome.

Reba is my newest first-grader:


The plan was to go back downtown to go shopping, but let's just say that some of previous evening's reveling caught up with one of us (Jamie), and it made shopping downtown in the heat a pretty miserable experience. We watched part of a movie, napped, and then we went on a taxi ride along the coast. We were worried that it would rain the next day, so we wanted to make sure that Jamie got to see some of Weihai's famous beaches while it was dry.



Then we went downtown to eat pizza. After pizza we opted for the other club, "2046", and we only stayed long enough to see some Chinese rapper with cornrows, a trio of men break dancing (sort of) and some of the club's resident female dancers doing what they do best. There was some sort of festival going on during this time, so this particular club (much larger than 7)was packed full of folks. We called it an early evening and went back to Daguanghua to sleep.

The plan for the next morning involved checking in on our dresses and checking out a few more clothing shops. Jamie got a really nice coat for super cheap, and it came with a free comforter (which we are now using. Thanks). After that we headed to Licoshan, a mountain near our school that has a really nice restaurant at the base of it. They serve predominantly organic food, and the atmosphere is incredible. There is a courtyard that looks like it is straight out of a ninja movie.



As soon as we walked in, the owner of the place took hold of Rory's arm and escorted us a separate room to pick out our meal. We walked into a room full of meat and vegetables and dead, dried chickens hanging from the ceiling. We picked out vegetables and meat that we wanted and told the chef how we wanted it prepared. Pretty cool.

There was some kind of strange beast dead on the floor. We weren't quite sure what is was. We know that it is quite common to eat dogmeat over here (mostly at Korean restaurants, actually), but it didn't really look like a dog. Rory asked the man what is was. The owner told us that we didn't want to eat it, which we knew, but we just wanted to know what it was. The man grabbed Rory's bicep to indicate strength and pointed to the mountains. He told us in Chinese what the animal was, so we looked it up in our dictionary. It was a freaking wolf! Evidently, if you are really rich, you can eat some wolf meat and it's supposed to make you strong. That's big over here--if you drink baijo with penis in it, you'll be virile; if you eat noodles at the end of a meal, it signifies long life because noodles are long, etc. Everything means something.

As we were finishing our meal, a Chinese man came into our dining room. Each of us had seen him on three different occasions when we went to the bathroom. He came to our room to invite us to his room to drink with his boss. So we went, and even though our Chinese isn't the greatest, it's enough to sort of figure things out in a conversation. The boss was actually Taiwanese, and he wanted Jamie to be his pretend third wife, telling us he "ha[s] a wife in Taiwan and in China, and now he need[s] and American wife..." I think Jamie ended up dancing with him, too.

We left Licoshan and headed back to the downtown area to pick up our dresses. They were gorgeous.



The next day was the last day of the trip. Jamie's flight left at 10:50 in the morning, and appropriately, it was raining. We sat at the little airport restaurant, trying to keep it together while we waited for boarding to start for her flight, getting stared at by the other tables of people. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's really annoying. Little kids always have my permission to stare and gawk, but the wrong kind of staring from adults just makes me angry sometimes. But that's just one of those things you learn to deal with.

When it was time for her flight to leave and she had to check in, that's when I actually lost it. I mean, I could still see her on the other side of the glass, checking her luggage and everything, but that's when it hit me that she was leaving, and I didn't know when I got to see her again. When Jamie left last year, it was really hard on me. We have lived in different cities before; when she was in Texas my dad and I made plenty of trips down to visit her. But when she moved to Korea, the months after were really hellish for me. At the airport, it was the same feeling all over again. Granted, we're closer in proximity now than we were when she was in Texas, but it was still almost a year before I got to see her again. I cried the whole bus ride home. It was horrible.

But let's not end on a bad note. It was great to see her, and hopefully she can visit again around New Year's. We can get some more silk dresses made and get stuck in the snow on a bus. Yeah!