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!

Fratting?

Is it considered fratting with the enemy if I hung out with the dog's owner?

I should give a quick update first about the chubby, gimp leg puppy though.  She is no longer tied up to the fence.  Apparently it was only for a day or two and lately she's been running around like before.  Hopefully they don't do it again, but they have put a makeshift collar on her made out of old plastic coated electrical wire.

After class today, I helped coach some of Joe's Tourism major students.  They are headed to Nanjing tomorrow to take part in a National Tour Guide Competition and have prepared these awesome speeches about various historical sties in China.  They were really sweet and I hope they win!

 Joe and I went to dinner at a restaurant across the street that I had never been to before.  We ordered so much food, including fish, eggplant, egg fried rice, and these strange cereal covered sweet potato balls.  I was feeling pretty guilty because I knew that Joe was treating me to dinner, but it turns out that the owner of the restaurant was his former student.  So we had a huge dinner for free and even got some leftovers to take home.  Sometimes I do love the whole Chinese 关系 ("relationship") concept.

My class fifteen is doing their "practical training" this week and are basically set up to say "Good morning/afternoon/evening" at the entrance of the Hotel Management building from morning to night.  They also have to bow at various doors and man a makeshift convenience store in the lobby.  We teachers have started to notice that each class is setting the bar higher and higher and I can only imagine what it's going to be like at the end of the semester.

This is my first class up to the challenge though and I am like a proud mama!  They have set up a cute little coffee lounge in the lobby (music was added a few weeks ago by another class).  I went to visit them this evening and bring them some snacks because I had way too much food from dinner.

On the way back, the dog ran towards me as always and I picked her up and brought her back to the shack she lives in.  After greeting the 阿姨 ("auntie") she invited me into her house and we sat down and chatted.  She showed me her collection of foreign bills and we ate oranges while talking about random subjects.  I was having a lot of issues understanding her husband (?) because of his accent so she ended up translating a lot for me.

And during this entire visit, her dog was sitting on my lap and not moving.  Then when I tried to leave, the dog tried to run after me and had to get chased back to her house.  Oh dear.  If she "mysteriously" disappears they will totally know it was me who stole her.

Oops.  Otherwise, I had a very busy, but normal day in China.  It is finally warming up and it was a solid 60 degrees today in the middle of the afternoon!

I promised myself I wouldn't, but I'm afraid I've fallen in love with a little dog here in China.  She lives on my campus and is owned by a grounds keeper woman who has a little hut on the school grounds.  Jenna and I met her as a puppy last term when she was just a little thing with a gimp leg and now she has grown into a full grown 15-lb dog with a gimp leg.

I really love animals and it's always such a comfort to me to play with one.  I've refused to give her an English name in my head but have all sorts of nicknames for her (1st Violation).  She waits for me when I'm walking past her home and runs to greet me to quickly roll over so I can give her a belly rub.  If I try to walk away, she gets up on her hind legs and asks me to carry her (2nd Violation).

I've been trying to resist, but I actually looked up how to bring a dog back to America last night (3rd Violation).  I know that I couldn't do it because firstly, she kind of has an owner and secondly, my mom would throw both of us out.

Chinese people have a very different view of keeping a pet than we do in the West.  Dog's aren't revered as "man's best friend" and most people are actually kind of scared of dogs, even the tiniest "punt" ones.  The woman that owns this dog has another huge German Shepherd who is actually kept in a cage all day and it breaks my heart.  I also think I might be the only one to love on this little dog!

Well, I walked to class this morning to play with her (4th Violation) and found her tied to a fence behind the house with a 6 foot long chain.  She just looked so sad that I want to buy a wire cutter and hide her in my apartment until I go back to America.  This really breaks my heart and I don't know if i I can talk to her owner!  So this is my latest dilemma and it's really been bothering me all day.  I miss my dog at home, Albert, and can't wait until I can actually get a dog of my own.