Sam's Blog

Almost three weeks in.

It is nearing the end of my third week in Qingdao. I feel like I have been here for so much longer! That amount of things I have done/seen/been a part of in such a short period of time has been crazy. This weekend my class and I are going to climb LaoShan, It is one of the more famous mountains around Qingdao. However, I heard the climbing experience is a tad different… Chinese mountains have stairs. You basically stairmaster you way to the top. So, that should be interesting! I am also going to try to get the beach sometime this weekend and play some frisbee and cook some food! I have one week left in the dorms and then I move on to my host family. I pray they have a real toilet. This whole squat toilet thing is getting kind of old. If you haven’t seen one, simply google images it. We have become regulars at this restaurant that we don’t know the name of, but the staff is really friendly and the even know some of our favorite dishes now. Other than that not much new has happened, class is hard, China is crazy. O! I did get lost on a run in Qingdao, had to ask this kind old lady for directions back to the campus, so that was exciting. But yea, will try to update again soon.

-Sam Wilson

New pictures are up

To get to the new ones just click on the old link near the bottom of the page. Added descriptions this time. All is well, have a test tomorrow so I must study. Indoor soccer with the Chinese today. 

-Sam

China keeps a person busy.

Sorry for the really delayed post! China and my classes have kept me really busy the last week or so, I have hardly had any time to do anything other than study, sleep, and lots of class. I have been doing some really toursity things for most of my class activities so far; however, I did get to China’s knockoff brand market and haggle for goods. CAN YOU SAY 3 DOLLAR RAYBANS. (so fake though) I went to the night market last night, ate some crazy food had scorpion on a stick…wasn’t to bad actually. I have found a regular street soccer game that I am playing in here. At nights we have been going out to dinner, and meeting random Chinese people and practicing our speaking skills. Last weekend, a friend we met took us to an english/irish pub a little bit from campus, because I told how much I liked Flogging Mollys (look them up). So we stayed out late hanging with crazy locals and jamming to crazy Irish music, goooooood night. I have a speaking test tomorrow that shouldn’t be that bad, and this weekend it is off to the Tsingtao headquarters/brewing factory located here in Qingdao. Should be grand!

-Sam 

Link to Photos

Zongzi!

Today I got a nice little wake up call from my teacher around 9 am this morning to come downtown to make Zongzi, which is the rice thing that they eat during the dragon boat festival. All is well so far, I haggled for the first time in Chinese, helped a friend buy a pair of knock off raybans for about 25 kuai, which is about 4 american dollars. I will try to get pictures up but I have been really lazy though…

-Sam

First night and day

I have sucessfully made it to China. The flights went very smoothly, no luggage was lost which was a plus. I got to Qindao late that night around midnight, so we didn’t to much but try to recover from jetlag. The next day my new teachers zhang laoshi and wang laoshi took us on a shopping trip to haggle for cell phones and buy little stuff. My first class doesnt start until tuesday because of the dragon boat festivle this weekend(wiki it). Last night my friends and I went to a chinese bar called viviba, where we got our groove on. Not much is going on today, kind of a lazy saturday will start studying for class soon I guess. Pictures will be up soon.

-Sam