Qingdao: Round 2

Sometimes in life strange things happen...

I don't really know many people on my course in Edinburgh for several reasons-mostly because I have never bothered to make the effort to speak to them. So I am not really in touch with them.

So when my Korean flatmates walked through the door on Friday, closely followed by such an Edinburgh classmate, I was rather flabbergasted!

It turns out that Sara, my Korean flatmate, was on the bus on the way back from the airport (she'd been home to Korea for the holidays) when a ginger haired girl overhead her say she was an Ocean student and accosted her saying she was new in Qingdao and had no idea where to go or anything but the one thing she did know was that there were two English girls from Edinburgh there and Sara went "oh I have two English girls" and brought her back to see. When she walked through the door I stared at her, certain I recognised her from Edinburgh but couldn't believe it would be her, and she stared at me trying to make sure it was me as I had glasses on and I have my new fringe. But after a few seconds we realised we were thinking the same thing and thus ensued 10 minutes of "what on earth are you doing here!". Her name is Reina (which I hadn't known) and as she does Chinese and Business, she'd been in Dublin for 6 months and was now in China for half a year, which explained why she was new. She'd heard we were here, had rejected Dalian, and thus had decided on Qingdao.

What are the odds though- of her and Sara being on the same bus and then talking!

So I had a new playmate and on Saturday we went exploring in the old part of Qingdao. It hadn't been as nice a day as the one before but we had a lovely time wandering around some decrepit old German buildings. We went into the Protestant Church, which I hadn't been in before, and the Governor's Mansion. The mansion had a lovely collection of artefacts from days gone by, including old cameras and hand wound calculators, as well as some nice furniture-made in Stuttgart- and curtains. Reina and I agreed we wouldn't mind living there. And indeed as it was turned into a guesthouse after the revolution, luminaries such as Ho Chi Minh and Mao himself stayed there.

We also walked down Zhanqiao pier (thing you see on Tsingtao beer bottles) and took pictures of the bay.

One feature of the day was that we had rather psychotic bus drivers. I wondered if they had competitions to see if they could finish a route the fastest because one guy didn't bother stopping at every stop but rather shouted back to see if anyone wanted to get off. And he drove like a maniac. The one on the way back kept trying to overtake other buses and not succeeding.

And then a few drinks in LPG with Daisy and the guy who lives next to Reina, Julian. He's from Germany and while we were sat there another German came round wondering if we were German. He was collecting them for some reason. Daisy has a hurt foot because not only was a telly dropped on it, but a motorbike ran over it. Did she anger God or something?

Went and got a manicure this morning- £1.50 oh yeahhh. Hopefully they'll stay nice until Wednesday. Although I might need to get some more teaching work if I am going to keep getting my nails done...

Glad to be back in Qingdao- it is a nice place :)