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.