If you are my Facebook friend (and if you're not why not?) you might recall a post I put up a few weeks ago, "Real life phone call I had just now: Hi Michelle. We are taking you and Chad to Qingdao tomorrow. We will be there at 10am to pick you up. We will be gone till Sunday afternoon. Bring your passport." 

Now I will tell you the story of that adventure.

Remember that well off family that has taken a liking to us? They are the ones who called. We have found that we never get a lot of information from them, but that they have a plan for the day!

We ended up going to a “school” which was also a teahouse. I guess that is where Louis, our tutee, has Saturday classes. We hung out there for a bit and saw this pretty awesome tea service area. I thought one of us took a picture, but we didn't. It was this HUGE piece of wood that had electricity and water piped up through it so you can make tea for yourself and others. It was also very intricately carved.

After that we went to get lunch. Lunch was at this random restaurant and was a bowl of noodles and broth. We have found that most meals in China are bowls of noodles with broth. We probably have that at least three times a week (in fact that was Chad's dinner tonight).

After that we got into a car. We honestly weren't sure what the plan was, were we going to drive there? Take a train? Take a bus? After getting in the car and watching my little blue dot head outside of our city, Weifang, I realized we would be driving there. I honestly never thought we would be driving there. I figured we'd take a train.

During the drive we found out that they go to Qingdao (pronounced 'ching- dao') like every other weekend. It was pretty funny because when we got to the outskirts of the city, we got boxed in by 2 slow cars so Louis' dad (still don't know his name...) sighed and said, “Welcome to Qingdao...” and when we got there Jennifer (Louis' mom) did a funny little dance. What makes all of that funny is that both his parents speak very little English so when they do it is always pretty funny!

If you look closely you can see the Olympic rings as you drive into Qingdao

When we got to Qingdao we went to a huge sporting complex. We had no idea why. The problem with traveling with a 13 year old who speaks English and his parents who don't is that he either A) doesn't know/ care what the plan is or B) knows the plan but doesn't think about the fact that he might want to translate it to the 2 non Chinese speaking people in the group.

Chad was pretty excited to see a mountain

Come to find out there was a speed skating competition and Louis had a friend who was participating.


So fast they're blurs.


These little kids were AMPED to see Americans. We told them we didn't know Chinese and they didn't believe us! They kept poking at us and repeating some unknown questions until Jennifer shoo-ed them away

After that we got back into the car and took a trip into town a bit more.We figured out that we were heading to dinner. That was a fun adventure. Everything you've heard about drivers in China is true. The way we have come to understand it is that you only focus on what is in front of you. So if you need to find a restaurant in a city, you just swerve around a street until you see it. Then you cut into the parking lot as quick as possible not worrying about oncoming traffic or the people behind you (it's their job to make sure they don't hit you) and that's that.

Upon walking into the restaurant we were greeted by what you'll see below. It was pretty crazy, but Qingdao is a beach side town so it was all really fresh fish. But it's kinda weird to walk right by what you're about to eat for dinner. Sorry they're all so blurry, but I had no idea if it was rude to take pictures or not and I couldn't not so I had to do it super quick.



Yes, these are large, metal bowls of fish and other assorted sea...things...


Dinner was one of those marathon and not a sprint kind of events. I have been told it is a custom here to order too much food that there should leftovers because then you know everyone has had enough to eat. This is hard for us because we both come from "clean your plate" and "there are starving kids in Africa" families. But the picture below is just me trying to show how big the spread was!

Can you see that there are layers and layers of food there? This is the end of the meal too so most people were pretty full at this point.

We wanted to get a picture of the group so here it is. Jennifer is in Black on the left, then it's here Sister  in law, Her SIL's son and Jim one of Louis' friends

This is Louis' Dad

These are some of Jennifer's friends who live in Qingdao and her daughter. I gave her the English name Ali. I name everyone here after someone I know in the US so I can remember their name

This is Louis our tutee. He is the one on the right.

After dinner it was time for a rest. I like that the Chinese here think that you need to rest after every meal. They brought us to a nice hotel and said goodbye for the evening. Oh, and it was like 8:00 pm. Because I like nice hotels I took pictures of it...

They had robes!! I love good hotel robes and these were good hotel robes.

The room was a pretty good size

It's been awhile since we've been in an enclosed shower

Don't worry the bed looks nicer than it was. It was still a hard mattress under a feather mattressey pad thing.

You can kinda see the window here. It had huge stripes through it, but since it just faced some random stores and apartments it wasn't a huge loss.
The hotel offered a free breakfast buffet for people who stayed there so we went down to that. It defintlely had Chinese "breakfast" food like noodles and stuff but it also had a lot of eggs and random fruit and veggies so it was nice. Most importantly it had...

BUTTER!! TOAST WITH BUTTER!!! I thought about trying to steal it...

It was a pretty miserable day on Sunday, but they wanted us to still see the coast since that is what Qingdao is famous for.




Pretty sure that is Chad running to the ocean (edit: It is. But don't judge, I was running weird because I was carrying an umbrella and did not want to get sand in my shoes)



Most of the group checking out the water. It was raining pretty hard at this point.

We need to work on our picture faces...
See? Also do you see my bangs?? That's how windy it was!

Random pirate ship????

Some guy carving in the sand (edit: That 'some guy' is Louis, the kid we came with)




Pretty sure Louis' dad, in typical dad fashion, was ready to leave much sooner than everyone else. Like he threw a few rocks in the ocean and then looked longing back at the car.

Part of the city, those high rises are built right up to the beach.



His cousin however... not interested in leaving or holding his own umbrella so his mom had to do double duty even though he did not really even do anything. Kids.

After the beach we went to check out the docks. Here at the docks is where the 2008 Olympic sailing events took place... well not at the docks, in the water near the docks, but you know what I mean.


Chad and Louis' cousin (which he called his little brother which was VERY confusing to us) got to be good friends 



The Qingdao group minus Chad

This is a large torch from the olympics, BTW


Random statue on the beach. They told us what it represented and it was pretty cool, but I totally forgot. Probably why I should blog sooner rather than later about this stuff. Also, Louis' dad was pretty insistent that we take a picture of this- strange considering he was not at all into pictures of anything else- but he stopped the car in the middle of a busy intersection and rolled down the windows so that we could see better and take a picture.
After wandering around the docks for a little bit we went into a mall and had lunch and did a little shopping. I don't know if you noticed, but Louis is like super tall. Not like Asian super tall, but human super tall, so his mom took him to Uniqlo (my heaven) and wanted to buy him pants since Uniqlo makes clothes that fit bigger people.It made me realize how your perspective on price changes. When we were in the US and making okay money shopping at Uniqlo wasn't no thing... it was pretty inexpensive for most things in the store. Now we are in China and together we pull in $1000 a month. It's not bad money here, especially because we don't pay rent or utilities or things like that, but what used to see as cheap clothes in the US now seem quite expensive. A cardigan at Uniqlo was about 200RMB, but the other day I bought a cardigan in my city for like 34RMB. So the Uniqlo cardi seemed insanely expensive. I did say to Chad that I can't wait for the day when I can go shopping and not think about how it's buying the sweater or eating that week. I had it back in my single care free full time employment days... and sometimes I get really selfish and miss it That day is many many years into the future though... (edit: Before I get panicked communication, dont' stress. We are not to the point where we have to decide if we are getting food or clothes. I think what Michelle means is I encourage her to decide where to put our disposable income. If she wants to buy more clothes that is fine, but we probably won't go out to a nice dinner that week AKA I won't treat her to McDonald's that week. We will still eat fine, just not always fancy. She never has to decide whether to buy a 'cardi' to keep warm or eat tomorrow)

After the mall we began the long trek back to Weifang. There was crazy bad traffic so it took a lot longer than the 2 hours there. It was like 3.5, but it was a fun trip. (Edit: Yeah, says the woman who slept most of the way. A fun trip it was not. Qingdao was fun. The drive back to Weifang was lame. Period)

These were awesome. It might look like it's a police man, but it's not, you just think it is. It was actually a cardboard cutout on the highway telling you to slow down. Which we did not. Until the highway was empty and dry. We only sped when it was crowded and wet. I don't know that I will ever understand these drivers.