Week 3

Another week, another set of stories to share. I almost want to say that this week has been my best in China, but each week has been good in such different ways, so I'll avoid making a firm statement.

The week started off fairly busy. Chris was sick the first two days, so that meant I had to teach everything (except for Chinese class). It was a lot of fun, and I think it was good for the students to get to know me better.

On Wednesday, I went with the 7,8,9's for a run for their phys. ed. class (which Chris teaches). I really enjoyed it, so I'm going to try to go to all of the future runs (the students run whenever the weather isn't good enough to play a sport). On Thursday I went out for bike ride along Goldensands Beach with the boarding students, with only one student falling off his bike!

Aside from those specifics, the school week had a lot of other cool bits to it. I gave out my first test (with the first optional remake test being given on this comming Monday), we organized the curriculum for the 7,8,9,10's for next year, I got to meet a lot of the student's parents (and they clapped enthusiastically for me -- I liked that!), and as always, I had fun playing with the kids at lunch.

My kids have been really enjoying science class, which is great since they ranked it as their 3rd least liked course (out of 8), before I arrived. I've mostly been inventing experiments/demonstrations and the such for our unit on particles, density and pressure. Most of them involved plastic bottles, including one where they had to make a vacuum by using water and a balloon to evacuate a water bottle (if you're interested, we can do it together sometime -- it's fun!). Anyway, they got pretty wet doing it, and it was great fun.

By the time Friday rolled around, I was ready for a weekend of adventure. I headed down to Qingdao with my friend and co-worker Jo (a Canadian), who has an apartment there. In Qingdao, we met up with Jo's friend Kendra (an American), who is likely one of the most energetic people I've met. Here's a picture of the three of us:

Jo's on the right, Kendra's on the left, and I'm the guy in the middle. We went to a variety of bars, with my favourite being a dance club with few expatriates in it. Unlike in Canada, they played more than 3 dance songs in a row (well all the songs they played were dance). Already, I'm fitting in better in China than with [my opinionated view of] musically backwards Canada. Here's Kendra singing after being pulled up onto stage by a dude named Glenn (to the right of her):

Some bars were less good. We went to a ridiculously expensive one where expats converge (yuk! blarg!) and it just wasn't that great. Here's one expat showing off his moves:

By the end of the night, I had realized what we had done wrong. We should have exclusively drank in the taxi cabs between the bars, and avoided the high prices inside. We ended the evening with a trip to a favourite street-meat "platform" of Kendra and Jo's. We ate most of it, except one thing that Kendra bagged.

The next morning I went for a hike with Sam (he's an American), the husband of a teacher (she's American too) at the Qingdao campus. This is where we picked to go:

It was steep, but not at all a tough climb. It was so un-tough that we tried to go up some pretty step parts off the trail. Some parts were extremely freaky, but we got through them (or turned back from them) all successfully. Eventually we got to the top, where I took this beautiful photo:

So that's of course Sam. I also found this cryptic message:

While we were up there, we found a group belaying down the side of a cliff. They asked us if we were interested; Sam was, I declined and went to the bottom to take this picture:

Okay, well of course I soon realized that I erred in refusing the offer, so I too went down the cliff.

Afterwards, we did some rock climbing. I'll just give you a barrage of pictures:

Eventually we were on our way, to our next stop, which was this curious opening in the rock face:

Inside the passage it was impossible to see, and we had no flashlight, so I periodically took pictures with my camera to see what was coming up.

As the above shot shows, even with the flash, we couldn't see far into the passage, but we did find some cool stuff, like this narrow slit that was built to look at Qingdao's shore:

That's pretty much all there is to say about that adventure. By the time I got back to the streets of Qingdao, I was feeling pretty Qingdaoed-out. I decided to take a bus (which was an accomplishment for me, though I had a map and several friendly assisting strangers) to the ferry terminal to take me back home to Huangdao.

While I was waiting in line for the ferry, some Chinese dude came up to me and said "hello." This is not that uncommon, so I pleasantly answered his questions, though I was annoyed that I would probably have to talk to this guy for the 45 minute ferry ride. Turns out, the guy knows a bunch of teachers at the school, and he was a really fun guy to talk to. We talked about all sorts of things, from his hatred of the Japanese (this is pretty much taught in Chinese schools), to the taboo topic of politics in China, to the likelihood that my next/first/only wife will be Chinese. His name was Ford, and I'm pretty sure I won't be forgetting it.

When I got the Jusco (the mall outside of my building complex) I felt back at home. I went to the grocery store and decided to treat myself to a tasty meal. I got a dragon fruit, a cold dish that I can't remember the name of, and some Laoshan Vanilla Cola. (this all cost about 2 dollars Canadian).

Next week should be pretty calm, though I might be heading back for more Qingdao action during the weekend. The real thrill of next week is that a Chinese teacher at my school has agreed to do a language trade with me (though her English is eons beyond my Chinese). I'll let you know soon how it goes.