This is Where I Would Quote My 7th Grade Teacher - But She Doesn't Want To Be Quoted. Wimp.

I knew this trip would be a success when I saw the vocab words they handed out before we got on the overnight train from BeiJing to QingDao. We were all very excited to see that we would buy dark beer in QingDao - it's quite hard to find in BeiJing.

We got off of the train, and went to a Chinese/English pre-K. We had not started drinking yet - but it was 9 am, so the day was still young.
The kids were very excited to see us. I really liked the one with the weird animal on his head. I appreciate his fashion sense.
I haven't ridden in about 8 weeks. Times were getting desperate, until I saw my faithful steed, named "Plastic Kohe"...this is were I was preparing for my canter pirouette. Plastic Kohe was not too thrilled.
Group shot with the Kiddos. The drinking started about 1/2 hour after this photo was taken.
Posing with statues, as per family tradition. I had been drinking for a while.
Holler to BaBa!
It shows that I had been drinking for hours.


Maybe this kid had been drinking, too. He seemed very happy.The next day, we went to the beach. I'm on the far left.
We saw this dog. When we asked his owner what his name was (the dogs) he said "Animals don't get names." We tried stealing the dog. No luck.
Then we visited a wig factory. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.
We also saw a park. It's name is LaoShan. That means Old Mountain. Who said that names have to be original?
No park visit is complete without me posing where I shouldn't be.

Overall, Qingdao was a lot of fun. We got to eat a lot of seafood (with minimal GI distress!!) and the beer was pretty good. (No, IES did not pay for any of our drinks, thanks very much.) I was happy, as always, to get out of the city and into fresh(er) air. I would love to come back in 5 years - I'm sure the city will be totally different. Not sure if it will be positive change...but it will be a vacation destination for sure.