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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.

BaBa's Back!!!!

(That's a screen capture of my father and me talking)
My father has been in Burma for the last 2 weeks, cycling with friends, and he came back this morning.

So I wanted to say WELCOME HOME BABA!!!

Will update on Qingdao tomorrow....

Procrastinating+Weekend Travel Plans

So tomorrow we have our midterm. Which means that last night we watched Nip/Tuck and today I will be studying/sleeping/shopping. Those things not in the right order, by the way.

After tomorrow's midterm, we (18 of us) will be leaving to go to Qingdao, home of Qingdao beer. Olympic sailing also took place in Qingdao...but I'm going for the beer.

OK, Rewind:

At IES we have our 2 week long trip, then 2 long weekends as well. The first long weekend, they pay for our travel costs and plan our trips(that is this weekend). We had 5 places to choose from ranging from cool (Qingdao) to awful (everything else). So why didn't everyone sign up to go to Qingdao, you might ask?

Well - everyone wanted to go to Qingdao, and the intelligent way to go about choosing who would go would've been a lottery. But of course IES isn't that logical, so what they do instead is post 5 sign up sheets and have people literally run down the hall when classes let out, and sign their names. Think of it like running of the bulls, but in a more narrow hall and the bulls are your classmates.

Moral of the story: I run fast.

So I will be gone, from Thusrday evening to Monday morning, hopefully drinking lots and lots of beer.

It's that time again: There's a Hare in My Dish! and other food pictures...

This is the best crab I have ever had. It was so good, infact, I called my mother to gloat about it. While I was eating it. It was retaliation for her in-depth email about her birthday meal, which included some insane number of courses, and mentions of foie gras. No lie though, this crab was probably on par with whatever she ate that night. However, they didn't have any crab crackers to open the legs with...try cracking crab with chopsticks. Just try.
This is chau'r - pieces of goat and fat on a skewer. I really, really dislike chau'r - much to the surprise of others. (Chua'r is one of the most popular foods for IES kids.) Why don't I like chau'r? Interesting fact about me: I dislike the taste of goat and sheep. And please, as much as I love fat, I try not to eat cooked gobs of it off a metal rod.
Who goes to China to eat donuts? Me. Actually - I didn't set out to find them - the donuts found me. And sadly, were mediocre.
Sausage! My favorite snack ever. The sausages are cooked, then schmeared with hot sauce. A better, more deadly snack will be hard to find.
Eel! (For Amberle - it's her favorite)
And then the namesake of the post: this is a picture of the bunny dish that I ordered. No, I did not order it on purpose. Moral of the story: While I like bunny meat, I don't like bunny feet.
(hehehe)

The "Real" Beijing

So a couple of weeks ago, I took this picture:
Why yes, that is a baby sleeping in the trunk of a bicycle. Can I say trunk? Whatever; the cart like thing being pulled by the bike. Anyway, it was weird and kinda cute, so I took a photo of it. Now, this baby was being closely watched by his mother, who was selling fruit next to him, so it wasn't like child abuse or anything of the sort.

Flash forward to today:
Emily, Melissa, their Chinese roommates and I went to one of the shopping markets today. Before going to the market, Emily had to stop at the bank. En route, she turns around (I was talking to Emily's roommate) and says "Take that photo! It's like the one you took a couple of weeks ago!" I saw what she was talking about: it was a father sitting on the side of the road, cradling his child. Immediately, I recognized that he was begging for money, in an indirect way. Emily was skepitcal. We came close to them, and saw the sign in front of them, asking for money. We walked on to the bank.

Emily got her money out of the ATM, and we started to walk back, past the beggar and his son, to go to the bus stop. When we passed them, I gave the man 20 kuai. This immediately lead to a discussion between Emily, Melissa and I.

I never give money to homeless people in America. I donate my time to charities, and that's it. Why? Because I feel like in America we have the social systems in place for people to get help. In China, these systems (such as Welfare or homeless shelters) don't really exist. So, my feeling is, if the case seems legit (obvious handicap, parents+kids) I'll give them some money. I don't know why I do it - other than I feel bad.

By luck I was born to my parents; I could've been born to this man, sitting on the side of the street.

I guess I'm bringing this up because it just bugged me and made me sad. China has such a juxtaposition between the haves and haves-not. And by being a Westerner in China, I am even more attuned to how really wealthy I (being a member of my family) am. The BeiWai area doesn't have poor people in it, really. This was the first time I've seen a beggar here in about 2 months. But nonetheless, it was sad to see a man craddling his child, sitting on a sidewalk.

And no, for those who are curious, I didn't take that photo.

W-A-T-E-R!

I had a Hellen Keller moment yesterday: someone spoke to me in Chinese, and I understood. Like, I really really understood. (This was like when Hellen Keller got that signing water meant actual water. Anyone get the reference? Anyone?)

Anyway, I finally have internet in my room, but in order to get the internet, I had to go to another building and talk to the tech people. And I did it! I totally understood what was going on! It was AMAZING.

Can I bust out my Chinese all the time now? No. But I am understanding more and more what is going around me.

Yesterday, my roommate was in the room (surprise!). While she was in the room, I was skyping with my friend, Sarah (if any of you have Skype, drop me a comment and I'll give you my username and we can chat!) and talking in Chinese.

Sarah: Whoa! You actually speak Chinese!!
Me: I hate you, do you know that?!