laoshan

yo folks,
this last weekedn i busted out of Qingdao, and went a whole hour away from where i live. But the thing is that it looks nothing like the city. I went to a place called Lao shan ( lao mountain). its famous and stuff. it is supposedly where taoism started, the scenery made some old guys invent some religion. here are the pictures. it was cool and far more scenic then your average Chinese city. they also had some mammoth sized spiders that scared the jesus out of me (was jesus ever in me?). There was also a kick ass beach there too, so overall a day well spent.

some pictures dude

howdy there, we are in the middle of some typhoon BS or something. Not really the end of the world..yet
but here are some random pictures from the shoreside of Qingdao. Its a rather nice area and has some cool stuff to see. like that big red thig for example. It is called the wind of may 5th or something like that. but it marks the day that the Boxer Rebellion started. That is when the chinese decided to expell all the foreigners from its country and go back into the dark ages.
other than that not much here. I put the photo that has the women leaning against the post because it is a funny story. I was taking a some pictures when i saw this lady in my photo and she was possing for her photo for like 10 minutes. I finally looked at who was taking her photo and it was some old lady who was looking threw her camera backwards! it was hillarious to watch them try and take a photo and she had no clue how to use the damn camera. she kept saying that it looks wrong. So i finally stopped laughing and decided to practice my chinese and tell them how to use the damn thing. I went up and said "ni hao ( hello)" and she looked at me then turned around and ingnored me for a minute. Then in proper chinese fashion shuved her camera into me hands and went and possed for me to take a picture, all the while not listening to a damn word i had said. People are just so amazing sometimes.

not all doom and gloom

here are some photos to appease the masses. just some random beach stuff and that kind of jazz.
the one i like the most is the kid giving the thumbs down. He was at the summer camp that i taught at, it sucked everyone hated it. Kids are really the great at telling you the truth.

trains, pains, and anurisms

sorry about the lack of posts. time is harder to come by these days than a chinese man over 5-5. HAHAHA. shit that was lame,
anyways. i do not really have the pictures you all have come to rely on, but i will give you a taste of what China can offer the stupid traveler.
So went to Bejing to sight see and all that before i came to Qingdao, and of course i waited till the last minute (3 days before) to buy train a ticket to Qingdao. The train takes about 7 hours and is a night train, so you really want to have decent seat. I asked for a good seat and they said they had none, but they did have the hard seats left. So i got that thinking that i was going to be spending the night on a bench all uncomfortable or something.
i got to the train about 20 minutes before it left, thinking that would be the prime to get a seat. What i did not realise was that i had no seat. the ticket i got reserved a SPACE on the train for me (if that much). So when i got there i saw that there was just a horde of people tryjng topush their way onto the train. I had two big ass bags with was pretty sure that this ride would suck, but i had no idea how much it would suck. So i got onto the train, this was accomplished by pushing shuving and being a dick. All my efforts got was a standing in a hallwall next to the toilet, So i obviously was not a big enough asshole. SO the train was packed to the brim, shoulder ot shoulder, and we headed off. Stupidly i assumed that people would get off the train at the next few stops and all would be well and in an hour or so i owuld be in a seat and counting sheep till Qingdao. HA!
After about 30 minutes the train stopped and i moved to the side to let all the people i was expecting to leave off the train. ABout 10 people started to push their way to the front of the car, not nearly what i thought. But the worse part was that 100 people were waiting to get on. So after these people some how managed to squeeze and squirm into the train we got going again. i thought this could not get any worse! HAHA, stupid me. Apparently all these people must have been in a rush to get to the train station, because all of them needed to piss once they got on, and i was luckily right by the bathroom doors. For about 25 minutes i endured the chinese politlely askeing to get by ( I.e Elbows to the groin and all major organs) great patience ( trying to open bathroom doors they goddamn know to be full, and then asking if someone is in their (to me for whatever reason) about 100 fucking times) and their great bathroom habits ( i.e shit everywhere, literally).
I dont want to bore you with how many times we stopped and how no one ever got off, but thats what happened 7 and a half hours. It was super bad because it was 4 am when most of this was happening, i was sweating the whole time, my buzz only lasted till the first stop, and the people were just fucking rude pigs. not that all chinese are rude, just every asshole on that train was.
but then to make matters worse the tracks were flooded and we had to stop at a train station outside of qingdao, and wait in the rain for a bus ( 1 and a half hours later it came). I also had no where to go, since we got to QIngdao at 7 am. So i chekced my luggage somewhere, and went to a coffe shop where i pretended to read a book ( horribly might i add) while i was actually face down init sleeping for an hour.
But now everthing is okay, that horror show is over. and i am a better person and all that bullshit i dont actually mean.
take home Lesson for the kids: dont buy the cheap ticket in china, just fly for christs sake.

sorry to rant, but it is a blog, i think thats what god intended these things for.

So I know I have been half assing this whole blog thing, but since no one has really been bothering me about it I figured that it was not a big deal.
So as you should know by now I am living in Qingdao now. Qingdao is on the northern coast of China. Its got the normal 3-5 million people living in the city. The city is supposed to be one of the prettiest cities in china, as far as big cities go. I would sort of agree with that. It has trees lining the streets and the beach is only 15 minutes away from my house. BUT again it’s China, so its not that clean. They are in the process of tearing up all the sidewalks and laying down new tiles for them. So the city looks like its in shambles. Also there are tons of people who sell seafood and other crap on the streets by where I live. They just kind of throw any meat scraps or leftovers onto the street and then leave. So it really can look quite gross and smells bad to boot. But I do like the city, it actually has stuff going on, unlike Shenzhen.
My new job is also better. They pay double what I got before and I work less! Also I am not just some foreigner monkey that they like to parade around. All I have to do is go into a class read some stuff from one of their books and TRY and get them to talk about it. Most of them are high school aged so they wont say anything. So basically I speak English for 50 minutes 3 or four times a day. One of my classes is about grammar I don’t know shit about that, so that will get bad before it gets better. But whatever.
Qingdao is also the city that Tsingtao beer comes from. They are both pronounced the same, one is just a German way of phonetic Chinese (makes no sense, no one uses it) and QIngdao is the proper way of saying the cities name. I arrived right about the time their annual beer festival started, and me being me, I cant turn down a chance to celebrate beer. So me and some people went to check out the festivities. It was actually kind of lame for a beer festival. It was more festival then BEER festival. But I have added some pictures for those who care. I think the fact that the average Chinese person gets wasted off of two beers really made the beer drinking odd. In about an hour most of the people were too drunk to do anything. Some of the more ruckus types got up on tables and danced shirtless. The worst/best part was that in a giant room of about 500 people I was the only foreigner so everyone wanted to ganbei me. Ganbei literally means “dry glass” ( I think you get the idea of what you have to do when someone says “dry glass”), so by the time we found a seat I hand ganbei’ed about 3 or four times. It just went down hill from there. But was fun never the less. Here are some pics, enjoy and try sending me some emails, I am bored as shit most of the time.
Oww I guess the pictures might need an intro. One of is beer ans squid legs, they go to gether so well! Not nearly as well as the monkey brains we ate with the next beer (joking, maybe). The others are of the people I went with. And the last is just a little cultural take on china. There was not parking close enough to suit the people who went to the festival so they just started to park where ever they damn well pleased. Like in the middle of the street.. on the wrong side. Awesome.