Compared to Korea, I felt like Qingdao's bus riding process was slightly more difficult because there was no LED screen notifying people when different buses were arriving. However, like Korea, different bus stops only serviced certain bus routes, so looking for the correct bus stop actually was a pretty difficult task. The buses were also very cheap with non-air conditioned buses being 1 Yuan (or 0.15 USD), and air conditioned buses being 2 Yuan (or 0.30 USD).
Although I started my journey with two other friends, I continued my bus trip whereas they got off to go see something they had wanted to see; you can see them getting off in the picture to the right!
Although today was an "all-day" bus trip, I got off at random locations when I got hungry, thirsty, or just tired of sitting. Then, I would get on a different bus, and the process was repeated. While exploring, I tried these green-colored eggs that a lady was selling on the streets, and although I wouldn't really recommend it, it was worth the try. I walked around and had the chance to see a different part of the city. When I got back on the bus, although I blended in really well with the other Chinese people, I tried talking to some people (and once they heard my Chinese, they quickly realized that I was a foreigner) especially while we waited for the bus driver to come back when the bus arrived at the bus drivers' rest stop, and I often got up to let elders sit down, which was a nice chance to exchange smiles with random people.
At a location relatively close to our hotel, I got off to explore a mall called Book City, which was basically a huge book store. Wow, it was amazing, and there were tons of people looking around, reading, and buying books, and it made me slightly disappointed because stores like Barnes-and-Noble (around the area that I lived in Georgia) was often empty, and in the States, I often saw many book stores running out of business.
Aside from the extensive collection of books, I thought it was really interesting because this book store had many children employees. They wore aprons and had a small name tag (and I wanted to ask them why they were working at the bookstore, but I never got the chance) and were helping out at the cashier or going around organizing books. Very interesting, right?
I grabbed a seat on the floor of the first floor to read like so many other people in this particular book store. Because reading a Chinese book would have been very difficult (actually, I probably should've at least attempted to read a children's Chinese book, but I didn't), I chose to read the first English book I saw, which ended up being about the human body. While I was looking through the book, this man (whom I now call the "library man" because I forgot his name) came up to me (the picture to the left is a picture of him), and we began talking in Chinese. He asked me to teach him English words, so I did, and he asked me about my life. It was a little awkward, but this complete stranger sat next to me for nearly 2 hours showing me his family and talking about his own life. He wanted to buy me lunch, but I refused because it didn't feel right to go eat lunch with a complete stranger. After becoming WeChat friends with him, I told him I was leaving and quickly headed out.
Instead of heading back to the hotel, I stopped by Caffe Bene (a Korean cafe) to get mango shaved ice because the cafe was so close. After a couple spoons of the shaved ice, I saw the "library man" walk into the cafe, and although I looked away, he saw me, and he came and sat next to me with his peanut shaved ice (which is a dessert that is quite popular in most of Qingdao). He asked me to take a spoonful, so I did, and although I hadn't planned to, I ended up sitting at this cafe with this man for another hour.
Today was a very interesting day. Riding different buses around the city and courageously getting off at random locations helped me see and experience so much of Qingdao's environment. An "all-day" bus tour is totally something I would recommend! It's also a great way to use up tons of coins (because my wallet was exploding with Chinese coins!).
Day 56: Today was another exploring-filled day! However, instead of exploring alone, I went with a friend. I woke up a little late, so I missed breakfast, but we headed to the Ma Family Ramen restaurant to eat lunch. I ate 牛肉炒饭 (AKA niúròu chǎofàn / beef stir-fried rice), which was very simple but very good. It's a little random, but the first picture below is a picture of my hotel room (I realized that I never shared pictures of our room in Qingdao, but I'll make sure to take more!). More specifically, I wanted to make sure to show you the weird window between the room and the restroom, which unless you lowered the curtain, I could totally see what my roommate was doing in the restroom, weird right?
Anyways, after eating lunch, we rode got on the bus to head to 即墨路小商品市场 (AKA jímò lù xiǎoshāngpǐn shìchǎng / Jimo Road Small Commodities Market), which we read about online. It was apparently a "fakes market" in Qingdao, or in other words, where people sold fakes of famous brands. We weren't planning to buy anything, but we headed to the market.
It was slightly confusing getting there, but after asking random people on the streets, we finally found the market. When we explored around, all we saw were jade and wooden jewelry, which we weren't interested in, so we actually left the market pretty disappointed. However, after coming back from our trip today, we were looking online, and we found out that this market had both a second floor and a basement, which was where they sold the actual fake products! Man, we were so disappointed. Hopefully, we'll be able to stop by again before leaving China?
We took time at this market (when we didn't know about the second floor and the basement) looking at all the Korean coffee shops right in the middle of the market. Both being Korean, we were really proud to see "our people" successfully settled in another country, but we found it hilarious to read all of the signs that the coffee shops had put up that said "A coffee shop run by an actual Korean person." Seeing this really made me realize how large the Korean population (including all the Korean tourists) and how great the Korean influence in Qingdao was.
After our quick visit to the Jimo Road Market, we headed towards our second (and last) place that we had wanted to visit, or 时光印记活字印刷 (AKA shíguāng yìnjì huózì yìnshuā / Ancient Chinese Seal: Printing with Movable Type). However, not many people seemed to know about it, so it was difficult to find the location. We wandered around, and we actually decided to stop at another market called 劈柴院 (AKA pǐchái yuàn), which is another famous market really close to the Jimo Road Market, along the way. On the way to the market, we bought 酸奶 (AKA suānnǎi / sour milk), which we heard was a really popular snack in Qingdao.
Here are some pictures of 劈柴院! I initially took the first picture thinking it was a one of the entrance signs to the market, but my friend laughed and told me that I had taken a picture of the business sign for a eyeglass shop. Oops. This market is famous for its food, and likewise, I saw tons of food that look amazing. When you picked out something, they would recook it or reheat it up for you, which was nice, too.
The last picture below is a picture of one of the vendors, and he had a Korean flag on his sign, so we asked why, but he told us to guess and never ended up telling us. If you happen to visit this market, or more specifically this particular street vendor, please make sure to let me know if you find out the reason for the use of the Korean flag in his sign!
In this market, we also saw a large Korean tour group, and it really seemed like a lot of Korean people visited this market (and Qingdao) because a lot of the vendors could say short Korean phrases to us when we told them that we were both Korean. Again, I was able to see the huge Korean influence existing throughout Qingdao. On the larger road outside of the market, we saw a CoCo, so we stopped by to get a drink. Right next to the CoCo, there was a store that seemed to sell postcards and mail out postcards that we later learned was also the entrance to a hostel. It was so pretty inside the place, and I honestly think the atmosphere was really the reason we both ended up buying postcards.
After visiting 劈柴院, we restarted our search to find the century old letter printing store. However, we just couldn't find it. I had data on my phone, so we even pulled up a map, but we weren't able to find it, so we went into this dessert shop and asked. Aside from the desserts that looked amazing (that I wanted to take to Korea but couldn't because most of the desserts had to be refrigerated), the ladies who worked there were so nice and helped us realize that we were looking for the printing press with the wrong address, so after saying thank you, we headed out again.
After taking another bus, we finally arrived at this century old letterpress printing workshop! It was in this small alley that had a bunch of other cool things to explore, like an art museum and a horcrux store (yes, I'm pretty sure it's a Harry Potter related store). When we got to the store, we found that it was closed! We were late by about 2 hours I believe (I can't remember completely), and the workshop didn't open on weekends, so we decided to come back next week after classes were over. We were pleased we had found the workshop, but we were slightly disappointed that we didn't get to do anything, but, again, we comforted ourselves by saying that we could come back with my roommate when she came back from Beijing.
We didn't really eat dinner after coming back from our trip, so we went out and got a late night snack from this restaurant next to the hospital, which is right across the street from our hotel. It sold lots of other dishes, but I feel like it specialized in 串 (AKA chuàn / skewers). We ordered seasoned bread, chicken heart skewers, lamb skewers, "just meat" skewers (the menu only said "meat," so we didn't really know what the meat was), and seasoned eggplant, pretty large late night snack, right? Everything was so good, and I got to try a lot of new things, which I feel was good for building up my personality.
After eating, I went back to the hotel to do laundry, stayed up to do some work, and said good-bye to the first person leaving our program (due to visa problems).
Day 57: Today was a comparatively relaxing day. Our upcoming week of classes (or our last week of classes) sounded like it would be very tiring because we had two quizzes, a final presentation, all of our diary entries, and an essay due, so my friend and I headed to a cafe that was literally about a 100 steps away from the hotel. It was called 3G Cafe, and to be honest, I never even noticed it until my friend said it was really a cafe. We went in and walked into a kitchen where we were supposed to make our own drinks, and there was a safe box on the counter where you put in your money based on the drink you made. Isn't this weird? It was my first time in a cafe like this, so I laughed a lot. The interior of the cafe was designed to look like just a family house, and based on all the crosses and all the pictures of Jesus around the cafe, I was pretty sure the owner was Christian. Sitting at the cafe, my friend worked on her essay as I worked on my diary entries. It was a really quiet cafe (we were the only ones there), so we actually got lots of work done!
After working at this cafe, we met up with the other classmates who didn't travel to Beijing this weekend. We went to Marina City Mall (which is right near the ocean and is really close to the hotel) to ice skate because they have an ice skating rink in the basement of the mall! I hadn't ice skated in a long time, especially with people of my age (because I usually took my brother and younger cousin ice skating), so it was a lot of fun. We met little Chinese children who could ice skate so much better than us, so we had the chance to practice our Chinese while also, for those of us who couldn't skate, having the chance to learn how to ice skate. Although I refused, some of my classmates also had races around the rink with the children, which was fun to watch.
After ice skating, we were tired and hungry, so we went back to that Korean restaurant that we had seen on 4th of July, which I'm pretty sure I mentioned in an earlier post.
The walls were covered with pictures of the owner and different Korean celebrities, where most of the celebrities were celebrities from my parents' generation, but it was still cool to visit a restaurant that Korean celebrities had visited in Qingdao. It kind of felt weird?
We ordered 烤架 (AKA kǎo jià / bulgogi), 八达通爆炒 (AKA bādátōng bào chǎo / spicy octopus stir fry), and 不队炖菜 (AKA bùduì dùn cài / budae soup), which were all, in my opinion, very authentic and very delicious. Even all of the side dishes were delicious. It made me want to go back to Korea even more!
Day 58: Today was Sunday (my last Sunday in Qingdao/China), so I attended church. Again, I attended the Qingdao International Christian Fellowship, which had service in the Qingdao Crowne Plaza. I wasn't late today, so I had more time to take better pictures, so below you can see the entrance of the Crowne Plaza, a different angle of the worship hall, and the sign on the floor (B2) leading people to the church service.
I was actually really early, so I actually had the chance to talk to people. I also took pictures of the different slides that they had up before service started, and like I mentioned about the church in Shanghai, I found it interesting how this church also had the same exact slide about Chinese people not being able to attend this church's service.
The praise team members for this week were completely different, which isn't surprising in an international church where people are comparatively busier. However, the elders were back this week, so I was happy that I had the chance to listen to a sermon from the head elder before leaving Qingdao.
After church and on my way back to the hotel, I stopped by Tommy Boy Cafe to get a "Korean-style grapefruit smoothie," and I was surprised that I got a smoothie that definitely was not the color of a grapefruit. It also didn't taste like a grapefruit; it tasted like Korean citrus tea. They were also selling very cute mini donuts that I wanted to buy, but I wasn't hungry, so I decided to save them for a later time.
While walking back to the hotel, I saw this really pretty building being built, and it looked amazing against the clear blue Qingdao sky, which was completely different from the smoggy Shanghai sky, so I just had to take a picture!
When I got back to the hotel, I went up to my room, but I had to quickly come back down because our professor (with the help of one of our local tutors) had planned for four students to go on family tours. Two students went with one family, and two students went with another family. I had the chance to meet an eye doctor, and she showed us two different houses: her mother-in-law/father-in-law's apartment where she lived and her own mother/father's apartment. The first house seemed more like a traditional Chinese house, but because these people were on the wealthier end of Chinese society, the house was quite big (even if it was in an apartment) with many rooms and a large living room. The house had a lot of red-colored objects, a lot of china teacups, and a lot of small figurines of Buddha and Confucius. The grandma (a surgeon) and grandpa (a retired factory chief) at the house gave us so much fruit, bread, snacks, and expensive Beijing green tea. The second house was smaller, but it was in the area often referred to as "old Qingdao" (right next to 海洋大学 (AKA hǎiyáng dàxué / Ocean University)), so they lived in a German-style apartment, which was really cool. The grandma and grandpa, who were both professors at Ocean University, had lots of "good luck" objects and valuable stones and figurines displayed in their house that they really wanted us to see, and I enjoyed looking at all of their things. The grandma even gave both my classmate and I this "good luck" pouch to take with us. Like the first house, we also were given tons of fruit, bread, snacks, and powdered milk, and when we stopped eating, they both insisted that we keep eating. Man, today I really just ate all day during the home visits. I wanted to take pictures of their houses, but I thought it may be rude to go around taking pictures, and being completely honest, I had so much food in my hands and in my mouth that I had no hands to even take pictures.
After the home visits, our host 太太 (AKA tàitài / lady) took us to the hospital affiliated with Ocean University, which was where she worked. It was my first time visiting a hospital in China (which my professors had actually described as a place where one visits and gets even more sick), and as a student planning to attend medical school, personally, this short visit was a lot more fun and interesting than any of our business visits.
She also took us to different areas of "old Qingdao," some of which I'd visited and some of which I'd never visited. For example, we visited "Coffee Road" near Ocean University, where we visited this really pretty cafe to eat fruit and have drinks. We also talked about a lot of things where half of the conversation was in English and half was in Chinese. I also had the chance to ask our host about her life as a female doctor in China and choice in becoming a doctor, which I found very interesting to listen to!
We also visited Ocean University, which we surprisingly learned was the biggest university in China! I'd visited this university with the professors earlier to have dinner at the school restaurant, but by coming with this host 太太, we were able to see different areas of campus that we hadn't seen earlier, which was nice.
After we walked around and toured for awhile, her husband (a neurosurgeon) came to pick us up after his surgery. He also drove us around different places and stopped at popular attractions in Qingdao for us to take pictures. Our host 太太 took a lot of pictures of us, but I never got her phone number or her WeChat ID, so unfortunately, I only have my pictures.
However, I have a couple of group pictures that she took using my classmate's phone, which he sent me after the family visit! The left picture is of our host 太太, her daughter, and me! The right picture is of our host's daughter, my classmate, and me! Notice how my classmate is so tall that we're standing on a higher step, but he's still taller than us! Also, please ignore my messy hair. I wasn't aware that my hair was in such a terrible state.
After our relatively long tour of houses and "old Qingdao," we went to eat dinner at a restaurant that the surgeon grandma had reserved. She ordered tons of food, and after eating so much food all throughout the day, I sat down at the table already full, but the whole family told us to keep eating, so I feel like I stretched out my stomach a lot today!
After dinner, they dropped us off back at the hotel at 8:30 PM, or more than 6 hours after we had initially met. I felt tired and bloated, but I felt very happy about this family visit. It was an experience that definitely wasn't available to everyone studying in China, and I was very thankful that our professor was able to plan something like this visit.
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