GLP's tour of campus

I've been a little obsessive about this dog in the recent months and play with her almost every day. 

I fear she has somewhat imprinted on me because whenever I pass her home she runs towards me and won't let me move too far without playing with her.  She does this by jumping all over my feet, rendering me unable to walk too far without tripping on her or, worse, stepping on her. 

No food there, little fox!  

The other day I wanted to take pictures of campus in the sprummer and the little dog hopped around with me the entire way, so this is more of her tour of campus than mine. 

This is one right past the classroom buildings and where the students' dorms start.  There is another larger block of dorms on the East side of campus, but I live in the very farthest building to the West of campus. 

You can clearly see her gimp leg in this photo and she kind of hops around on the functioning three.  This is the entrance to Building B, where most of my classes are taught.  The groundskeeper man who is in charge of giving me the computer keys for each classroom actually laughs at me on Tuesdays because I end up visiting him three times in one day.  I don't mind though, because it is the closest academic building to my dorms!

This is one of the main roads on campus and the one I shuffle down to leave and go to my bus stop. 

This is a random statue on campus.  I have no idea what relevance dolphins have to hotel management, Qingdao, or my students.  Maybe it is a happy reminder about the abundant population and successful reproduction program of the Chinese river dolphin!

After hopping around campus, little fox was tired so she decided to take a rest under the shade of a tree.  Behind her, you can see the library and the pedestrian walkway that runs through campus.  There is nothing like seeing thousands of students during passing period walking along this pathway.  It's even more incredible when it's raining and they all have pastel colored umbrellas (they seem to only make umbrellas in pastels here).  This is also right across the main gate to campus so I left and took the bus into downtown Qingdao. 

It takes me about an hour by bus to get into downtown Qingdao, about 20km away.  I take two buses: one into LiCun, and one from there downtown.  The first one is a kind of crappier looking bus with no A/C, lots of dust, an engine in the front that the driver has to poke with a stick sometimes, and some seats with no actual seats.  I ride this for about 20 minutes and then switch over to a much nicer bus to take into town, but one that still does not have A/C. 

I wish I could take pictures of all the things I see on my bus ride into town.  I see shacks, factories, construction sites, piles of rubble (where the local government has demolished the shacks and wants to build high-rises), high rises under construction, empty high-rises, and lots of day laborers with hand-painted signs advertising what kind of work they can do.  Unfortunately I cannot and these things will just have to be in my mind on my journey back to America. 

On a slightly less sentimental note, I seem to have caught some sort of infection and my lymph nodes/ glands are all swollen as of yesterday.  This has been a great health week over here because on Monday I am pretty sure that I ate a giant clump of MSG at lunch.  I felt dizzy, tingly, and light-headed and spent a lot of my day totally out of my mind.  It might have been a sort of migraine as a result of my MSG overdose.  So thanks, China.  Let the China-rage begin!