Qingdao

August 4, 2011

Yesterday we had a lazy day in the house. We both stayed in our pajamas until 5 pm when we decided we would go out. We went back to the night market to see if we could find some gifts for our generous friends. We got on the bus like sardines, and stood most of the way into town. I just got a seat when we decided we should get off the bus now. It was a little bit of a guess game for us, as we couldn’t remember exactly where we had been. The buildings in this area are artistically painted though, and we could see those. Turns out, most people got off the bus here. As we walked into the shopping area, we saw a market but it didn’t look right at all. Of course, neither of us had paid full attention when we were with Chris and were a little lost. Our first mission was a Pizza joint and a bank for Kalyn. We found the Pizza Hut (hooray!) and waited for a table. Kalyn’s bank was right across the street but we forgot to go after dinner. Pizza Hut was delicious but expensive. We had a stuffed crust pizza and it was amazing. I am sure Kalyn is paying for it today (she isn’t supposed to eat gluten, but she really wanted pizza). We wandered some more after dinner and found the actual market we were looking for which made us very happy. However, we didn’t find any gifts. There were mostly clothes, underwear and shoes. We will have to keep looking today. At about 9:30 we decided we had had enough and it was time to go home. We went back to the bus stop we had got off at, and found a stop across the street. We could see that the bus was still running the way we had come, so it seemed like a good sign. After 20 minutes and no bus, I asked someone in broken Mandarin if the bus 125 came here. She nodded and pointed down. Seemed like a yes to me. We waited longer, and more and more people got on the buses that were coming. We asked someone else. They said no 125 here and pointed at their watch. I figured that meant that it was too late for the 125. We asked some people selling fruit and they pointed to the other side of the road. I got on a 125 and pointed to where Chris had given us some Chinese writing that is somewhere near home. He shook his head. I asked what is “where is the” and he shrugged his shoulders. I tried with the next bus to the same answer. A young man saw me getting on and off buses and asked where we were trying to go. Of course, we don’t actually have an address for where we live, so we were trying to come up with landmarks. We told him the name of the beach that is nearby. He wanted it to be the holiday resort, but that is far away from us. We told him we lived above a police station near this beach, and he was like the government building? No, I don’t think that’s it either. We showed him the couple of symbols Chris had given us, but that also gave no help. Finally I was like we live across the street from Beer Festival. This he seemed to know. He had his iPhone out on the map page, but we don’t know much. He told us that beer fest took place in this section and asked if we could get home from there. We said yes. He typed where we were going into Kalyn’s phone as I don’t know how to type in Chinese in mine and gave us his number in case we needed more help. We went back and got in a taxi. The driver seemed to understand and off we went. However, he stopped somewhere and we were so lost. We called Chris, but she didn’t answer. We called Leo and his friends answered and don’t know where Leo’s parents live. We were going to pay the driver and get out while we tried to figure out where we lived, but he wouldn’t take the money until we were where we were supposed to be. That was very sweet of him, but he kept the meter running! I texted Chris that we need help (we had already talked to her once) and continued to call her. Finally she answered and she talked to the driver. We were actually very close to home, but not in a place we knew about. It only took about 2 minutes for us to be back at the top of the driveway. Guess we lied when we said that we could find our way home from beer fest! But, we couldn’t even see the sight from where we were parked, or we probably could have. We are fairly annoyed with our hosts for never giving us an address or anything in Chinese for us to get home with. But, I suppose it is as much our fault as theirs. If we didn’t do things at night, we could have taken the bus. We got home and the internet connection had died (I don’t know anything about dial up) so we are currently internet less as well. That just made us curse Leo a little more, which is unfair.

Today we are going to a famous temple, and to the beach as it is a brighter cloudy than we have seen in a while. I think we are going to buy Kalyn’s train ticket back to Yangzhou as well as they are nearby and she knows what she wants to do whereas I am hanging out until I hear from Sophie. Today we will conquer the world without help! Leo says he is home tonight, we are not sure if that means here or his parents’ house, but it will be nice to have him around!

August 5, 2011

It feels like ages since I wrote last, but it was only yesterday morning.

Yesterday, we were heading for the temple, but saw this cool building on the street, so we got off the bus to go investigate. This is what I love about travel – you can stick to the plan, or if you can find something cool along the way. The building that caught our eyes was like a tunnel that was all lit up at 2 pm on a Thursday. We got off a fair ways away from it, but we made it back. By this time, we were really hungry and so we strolled quickly through this building which was like a market on a search for a cheap restaurant, ideally that was gluten free. On the other side, we found Beer Street. Beer Street got its name because the Tsingtao brewery was on this street and then restaurants nearby started selling only the Tsingtao beer. They claim Beer Street to be the birth of beer culture. Beer Street however, only sells seafood and beer, so it wasn’t much help to us. We kept walking in search of food and landed on Wedding Street. Here every exit off the sidewalk has an arch full of flowers over it, and every shop sells wedding dresses and tuxes. We found a KFC and ate there. Turns out we were really close to the shopping area we had spent so much time in during the previous days. We didn’t want to go there again. We just wandered at will, and essentially went down Seafood Street, Pet Street and Fruit Street. We found a little park and watched people play Chinese Rummy for a bit, and it had those metal exercise machines in it, so we watched people on that as well. We tried to exercise with them, but it was either us, or the fact that we were taking pictures that scared them all away. One man was like an acrobat and kept standing on his head and doing crazy swings off the monkey bar like things. It was so cool. We found a store that is essentially a framing store that sells some original art, and bought our gifts here. Chris gets a gorgeous picture of some cherry blossoms on a scroll and Leo and his family get an awesome waterfall picture also on a scroll. Kalyn liked it all so much that she bought three more paintings. They put them on the scrolls for us as we watched (I think only because we spent 400 Yuan!) and we went home with 5 boxes of art. I really like them all though. I liked Kalyn’s pictures before she got them on the scroll and even more once they were on it. It felt like the whole picture changed! We wandered through Beer Street on our way back because now it was getting dark and the whole place was lit up and much more active than it was at two in the afternoon. It was pretty cool, even for a nondrinker. We got on a bus (with seats available!) and came home with no real adventures.

Today Chris took us to the temple which we were heading to yesterday. I am not sure we would have found it on our own, but we may have. We met Chris at Wal-Mart (in the shopping area) and she took us for a dumpling lunch. I am not quite sure where we miss-communicated, but there were three kinds of dumplings and two of them were fish, even though I said I didn’t eat fish or seafood (since seafood ended up in the plate the last time she ordered). I said I would eat any meat, but nothing fish or seafood. One platter of dumplings was a mixture – meat, vegetable and fish/seafood, but I tried two different ones and got seafood both times. One platter was a famous Qingdao fish dumpling which Kalyn said wasn’t too fish like (where as the ones I tried from the other platter were). I stuck with the veggie dumplings that were also ordered. They were pretty good. I think they were cucumber and egg dumplings. We also had ordered a plate of broccoli and Kalyn wanted soup. We ordered what Kalyn and I thought was a bowl of soup for her, but it could have fed ten I am sure! We ended up taking most of the dumplings home. We threw the fish dumplings out once we were almost home as it was a good 6 hours later and Kalyn wasn’t sure she wanted to eat fish that had been in a backpack that long. After lunch we headed for the train station. Kalyn has decided to go back to Yangzhou on Monday, so I am hoping to be able to head back to Sophie around that time as well. The train station looked crazy busy, so we detoured to the beach (a block away). We took some pictures and killed some time, and went back to the train station. The line was long and the building was hot. I decided I was going to go sit against the wall when the line got squishy. Soon Kalyn was sitting next to me, and Chris was waiting in line with the money to buy the ticket. We weren’t standing in the English Speaking Line anyways, so Kalyn wasn’t going to be of much use! I ended up napping because it was so hot, and we were there over an hour. After successfully getting a ticket, we set off for the temple. When we drove by it on the bus, I felt incredibly disappointed. It looked packed and touristic. The bus didn’t have a stop nearby, so we ended up walking back a little ways. We took what we thought was a road back and ended up having to climb fences. I am not sure how Chris felt about this, but she did it with us. The temple was actually pretty cool. The main temple is for the Heaven Queen who also protects people in the sea and rescues people from shipwrecks. The people who work there make sure you pay your respects and don’t let you in until you have bowed appropriately, which I found really fun. There was a temple for the Dragon King that was much smaller than the Heaven Queen. There was also a temple for the zodiac signs (the Chinese signs). Kalyn and I both had our picture taken with our sign, but Chris doesn’t believe in the signs so she didn’t want her picture taken with the statue for her year. We left the temple and parted ways. Kalyn and I had the longest bus trip ever to get home. I ended up standing the whole way, and about half way, major pushing and shoving to get on the bus started. I thought we would never get here. I literally had to shove people to get off the bus. I was saying loudly, “I am getting off” but I am sure that meant nothing to anyone! At any rate, the shovey white girls got off the bus. We wanted to take a taxi to the supermarket but the taxi that stopped for us refused to read the mandarin from our phrase book for supermarket, and he drove away. It was only about 2 blocks so we walked it, but we just wanted to rest for a minute. We decided we would stop at KFC and have a coffee drink before we went shopping. Then we saw a McDonalds and thought they would have more selection for drinks. Turns out, you need a McCafe for coffee drinks in China and this was just a McDonalds. Kalyn was like Eff this, and ordered a meal (we were going to come home) so I followed her lead. I can’t believe how much American fast food I am eating here! China is going to kill me, it allows me to give into my every urge and when I am hot and tired, and my urges come more frequently! We bought some food and pointed the taxi driver home. Now it’s 8:30 pm and we both feel ready for bed. It’s been a crazy time here in Qingdao.

Leo is supposed to be off work tonight, so we are hoping to spend some time with him in the next couple of days. We want to climb Lanshaloren (or something) mountain, which is the mountain he lives near. We also want to have a BBQ on the beach. We want all this to happen with both Chris and Leo. We also want to have dinner with Chris’ family if we can. She says they don’t speak English but we want to thank them for all the advice they have given Chris to give to us. And, I will admit it; we want to have dinner in a Chinese house! Sophie should be back in China tomorrow, so I will be able to make plans with her then. I might have to stay an extra couple of days here in Qingdao once Kalyn leaves, but that’s ok. There are plenty of places to go and China is mostly a friendly place. I haven’t been harassed in any way, although people do stare at us. We have taken to staring back, making a face if we can keep it straight.

It’s been a pretty sweet couple of days that’s for sure. Adventures are good for the soul, and coming out in tact is good for the spirit!