While eating my snack, my roommate, friend, and I went to a cafe called Maan Coffee, which is another Korean coffee shop chain. Like I keep mentioning, I see so many Korean related things here in Qingdao that sometimes it feels like I'm in Korea! After ordering my grapefruit lemonade (which actually turned out to be correct; they used a real grapefruit), they gave me a teddy bear to take to my seat, so they could serve me my drink based on the color of my teddy bear, which I thought was really cute and interesting.
This cafe was definitely not like 3G Cafe because loud music was playing and lots of people went and in and out of the cafe. As a result, except my roommate, my friend and I didn't really get much work done here. We ended up watching Korean TV, listening to music, or playing games.
Doesn't my drink look good? It's the right color (unlike what most of China's cafes seem to consider as grapefruit)!
Even after doing nothing, my friend and I felt hungry, so we went to go pick out food for dinner. The cafe had so many good things to try that if I had the time and money, I would've tried everything!
I got a cranberry chicken sandwich. Doesn't it look delicious?
My friend got a chicken wrap, and my roommate got a mushroom panini. Everything looks good, right?
While working, I realized that one of my earbuds had disappeared, and I assumed that it had rolled under the sofa in the cafe, so my friend and I ran through "Operation: Rescue the Bud," where she turned on her phone flashlight, and I took pictures with flash underneath the sofa, so I could locate where the earbud went. Luckily, I found it, and no worries, I made sure to clean it extra well and really make sure to sanitize it! Below are some of the pictures we took of underneath the sofa.
Day 60: After class, we headed to the Qingdao Beer Museum, or the Tsingtao Brewery. In terms of just some basic facts about Tsingdao, it is China's second largest brewery, and the German played a major role in the founding of the company (although I believe Germany has little or no power in the company currently). To get to the bus stop to go to this museum, we took a shortcut through the 青岛市立医院 (AKA qīngdǎo shìlì yīyuàn / Qingdao Municipal Hospital), which was right across the street from our hotel. After my home visit, it was my second time visiting a hospital in China, and this hospital really just looked like a shopping mall, and I found it interesting how the hospital had palm trees in the lobby. On the bus, one of my classmates gave up his seat for an older woman (you can see him standing in the middle picture), and a Chinese man complemented him, and we all watched our classmate have a conversation with the Chinese man.
Here are some pictures of the Qingdao Beer Museum!
We had ear pieces to listen to the tour guide so that she didn't have to yell, and the ear pieces (I felt) made us look like secret agents!
We walked through the "old" or traditional brewery and packaging of the Tsingtao Brewery.
Then, we walked into the modern packaging area of the brewery, and in this area, I was able to see so much beer being produced and getting packaged to be sent around the world.
Yes, that is a fountain of beer. What I found interesting was that the faucet wasn't attached to the wall, so for the longest time, I tried to find where the beer was coming out from. In the left picture you can see a frame of Tsingtao Beer in South Korea, but to be honest, I don't think I've ever seen this beer in Korea (where my other Korean friends said the same thing), so we learned something new!
During the middle of the tour, the museum handed out free peanuts and fresh beer. I don't drink, so I gave my cup of beer to a friend, but everyone said it was really good.
My favorite part was the "Drunken House" near the end of the tour. It was basically a severely slanted room that demonstrated what it felt like to be drunk. Like mentioned above, I don't drink, so obviously, I've never been drunk, so this house was very interesting to me. It felt terrible, and I left relatively quickly, but it was definitely an interesting experience.
At the end of the tour, the museum gave out another cup of fresh beer (that I gave to another friend), and the museum gave visitors the chance to buy more fresh beer (which our professor did). I walked around and went to go buy a sausage with my friend, and it was really, really good.
Here's my cup of beer that I didn't drink!
The gift shop was my second favorite place in the tour! There were a lot of really cute items, like the cartoon shot glasses. I saw beer coffee, alcoholic chocolate, beer bread, peanuts to eat alongside beer, and more. I ended up buying the mini plastic crates filled with beer shaped chocolate (which wasn't alcoholic) because it was so cute.
After our tour of the museum that most of my classmates were really pleased with, some classmates chose to go back to the hotel, and some classmates (including me) went to the Qingdao Cultural Market with our professor. I'd already coincidentally visited this market at an earlier time, but since it happened coincidentally, I chose to follow along to see if other stores were open at the mark and to study Qingdao's roads. Before getting to the cultural market, we went through Tianmu Market, where people sold dried and packaged food, clothes, and other small souvenirs. The market had a roof, but the ceiling was painted like the sky, and the whole design of the market reminded me of an Asian amusement park.
When we finally got to the Qingdao Cultural Market, we looked around through different stores that sold paintings, wooden furniture, calligraphy sets, and other cultural and antique items. It was interesting, but I had already been to this market, so it wasn't as fun as the first time. While looking around, I saw this cute carving of the sun that reminded me of the sun from Teletubbies, so I took a picture! Isn't it cute?
After our visit, we went to eat 火锅 (AKA huǒguō / hotpot) at a place called 海底捞 (hǎidǐ lāo), which I learned was a famous hot pot chain throughout China because we had gone to one in Shanghai, too. The waitresses and waiters at this Qingdao chain were so awesome. I felt like the service was even better than when we ate hot pot in Shanghai. This hot pot restaurant also offers free manicures for customers, so our professor signed my friend, my roommate, and me up (because we had arrived the earliest!). Because we came the earliest, we technically had eaten the most, so when we got full, a lady came and told us to follow her to get our nails done. I chose to get all of my nails painted black to make my skin look lighter (because I've gotten extremely tan during the course of this trip), but because it was my first time with black nails, I admit, I was scared to look at my nails the whole night.
Day 61: Today was our last day of class in both Qingdao and China. It honestly felt really weird. We had our final presentations, which were basically summary points for our final paper in our Sustainability in China class. I talked about plastics, others talked about the greenhouse effect, others talked about special mineral resources in China, and many other topics were also presented. Although most of these topics sound like something we would learn in middle school, the fact that we were presenting facts and our thoughts in a completely different language like Chinese really showed me how much everyone's Chinese skills had improved while in China. After class, our hotel had another power outage (we had one last night, too), but it didn't last very long, so we were fine.
Although we had our last class today, we still technically had our final papers to turn in by Sunday, so I saw many of my classmates working on the essays. My roommate, friend, and I chose to go back to 3G Cafe to work on our essays and eat lunch. We made a slight mistake and ordered two plates of beef water dumplings, which was a lot, but we finished it! I don't think we were as productive at this cafe today though because we were full, we were excited about the last day of class, and we technically didn't have much time to spend at the cafe because we still had tutoring today.
Today was also the last day of tutoring, and because we weren't allowed to get our final papers checked by our tutors and we didn't have any work to do with our tutors today, most students practiced their Chinese listening and speaking skills by having conversations with their tutors. My friend and I had the same tutor, so instead of staying for just my 30 minutes with my tutor, I ended up staying a whole hour with my tutor because my friend wanted me to stay even after my session was over. The three of us talked about a variety of things, exchanged WeChat IDs, and took selfies. Actually, a lot of students were taking selfies with their tutors as you can see in my pictures below! I feel like I was closer to my Qingdao tutor than my Shanghai tutor, and I learned a lot more from my Qingdao tutor, so I feel like I'll actually really miss her. Hopefully, we can keep in touch through WeChat!
After tutoring, four other students (which included my roommate and friend) went to visit Chinese families, and when they came back, I enjoyed listening to what they did at their respective houses.
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