Why is there always a line?!

Saturday evening I tutored Helen, a 14-year old girl who is the daughter of my program director's friend.  I'm still not sure if private tutoring is allowed, but I'll take it since they pay me and it came from the director herself.  More about this story later, it's actually quite funny.

Wan Sheng Jie (万圣节）

Halloween in China is when the Americans all get dressed up and go to expat bars to pay for overpriced alcohol and/or cover charges.  This being said, it is a lot of fun.  When I was in Beijing, we forked over 100RMB for tickets to a sold-out warehouse rave party downtown.  It was a blast and I don't know if I'll eve be able to have a better Halloween.

This being said, my expectations were pretty high and I just had to get over myself and realize that I wouldn't be able to replicate the Beijing experience at all.  Costume shopping proved to be difficult but I managed to throw together the Chinglish version of an 80's costume, complete with bright purple tights, a horrible purple scrunchie, and my own Chucks.

It was a fun night overall and the other teachers and I had a good time dancing and drinking those overpriced Tsingtaos.  I actually said "真的吗？！" ("Really?!?!") to the bartender when he said my small bottle of Tsingtao was 30RMB.

Sunday Adventures

The other teachers and I stay at a hostel when we go out in the city over the weekend because it is only 25RMB for a bed there and it is about 45RMB to take a cab back to our school.  Plus, this way we can wake up on Sunday and do more adventuring downtown before taking a bus back to our school.

Sunday morning I got up and walked down the alley from the hostel to get a yummy 包子 for breakfast and the lady let me take a picture of her.

I like her veggie and egg baozi's a lot and she also does a pretty great youtiao (fried dough).  I enjoy walking around alley markets because there is always so many things to look at, like live seafood, fresh vegetables, and made-to-order food.

I also walked over to the Old German Cathedral, that was built in the early 20th century by the Germans (Qingdao was a German colony until the Sino-Japanese war), destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and rebuilt in the 80's.  I also attended Catholic Mass in Korean, complete with drum performance right after communion.  It was an interesting experience!

I also went to TaiDong, a shopping center in Qingdao and bought some things, mainly at Wal-Mart, funnily enough.  Jenna was with me and we had a conversation like this:

Jenna: You know what shopping in China is like?  Black Friday.
Me: Or preparing for the zombie apocalypse.
Jenna: Yeah, you know, there's people pushing and shoving... terrible lines... and even worse service.
Me: Yeah, it is pretty much Black Friday every day.  Why are we here again?

This is a picture of Tai Dong street from the escalator (yeah, not kidding) bridge that connects it to the other side of the street.   There are just so many people in China it never fails to amaze me.  I forget that there are 1.3 billion people in this country and they have to be somewhere.  This means more of everything: hair cutters (at least 2 on each block), mini-marts (probably 3 on each block), cell phone stores (5 on each block), restaurants (oh man...), and shoe repair men/ ladies who etch sparkles on your cell phone (everywhere).  I don't think I will ever get used to the sheer numbers of people here. 

As you can see, I have a proxy server that allows me to post to my blog, finally.  I no longer have to pay Matt in Chinese jiao (10 cents) and day old rice to post for me.