One month is the amount of time away from home that it takes people to get over the excitement of being in a foreign, stimulating place, and begin to recreate home. For some on our trip, that means enjoying the box of American food that their parents shipped to them at a cost of more than $200. For others it means maintaining their condescending attitude toward Chinese people, food and culture, which is quite sad.

For me…well, I got myself into some deep deep shit, which, if handled the wrong way could have had Chinese mobsters giving me a beating in some dark alley. I extricated myself, and most everything is ok now.

I think I adapt. I think I could get used to China and make it my home for a while…maybe a year or 2. I haven’t checked my myspace in several weeks, which is quite satisfying. I broke down and got a cell phone…a RAZR V3i, the newest one…it has iTunes. Hopefully I’ll be able to sell it for more in the States. I started eating my jar of gnutella that I brought along, but I’m going give it to one of our students who is in the hospital (burst appendix). She’d surely enjoy it more, Chinese hospitals are definitely not American hospitals.

It is also our last day in Weihai. We depart for Jinan tomorrow. The only description we’ve heard of Jinan is that it is dirty and overcrowded. I think most of us thought that of Weihai when we first arrived, maybe that’s was just our initial perception of China. Now we realize that Weihai is quite possibly one of the most beautiful cities in China, and has been given such an award.

Outside today, the weather is the clearest it has been so far. It’s beautiful. Imangine a Chinese Santa Barbara, but with snow in the winter. Right now it’s t-shirt and shorts weather. I’m going to make the most of the day. See ya.

Yesterday we went to “Dennis‘s” (English name) birthday gathering. They cooked us lots and lots of food, had cake, and we taught them how to play the card game “bullshit”. Dennis gave Matt and me samples of his calligraphy–he won a college calligraphy contest that placed him 2nd in all of China.

Recruiting. Various clubs were out and about recruiting freshman. The chess club, astronomy club, anime club, business club, calligraphy club, foreign language club….

Our view. Our hotel/dorm is located right on the beach. This has been the view out our window for the past 3 weeks. Sad to see it go.

Clubs: So after 3 weeks of being in Weihai, we finally found the nightlife. A nice Korean student and her importing-exporting baller boyfriend took us out the past 2 nights to some clubs. One is called 2046 and is themed after the Wong Kar Wai movie. The clubs are all really well done, tons of cool lights, gracious hosts oddly dressed in 18th century dresses, scantilly clad go go dancers, lasers, live performances, hip hop and house music, free light sticks…it’s a lot of fun. It’s a tad expensive, beers are 25 yuan ($3) and drinks about 45 yuan ($6), which is U.S. bar/club price. Chinese equivalent is like going out and paying $20 for a beer, $35 for a bad mixed drink. The first night, maybe because Jugal and Natalie were getting super scandalous on the go go stage, and giving the club a club feel, a server brought over 20 free beers, fresh fruit and snacks. Mandatory street cart/stick food afterwards.

The Zoo: Yesterday we went to Lands End and the Weihai Zoo. I went to the San Diego Zoo several months ago, which is supposed to be one of the best in the U.S. The Weihai Zoo completely owns the SD Zoo. The whole zoo is spead over maybe 10x the area, around a large mountain.

The #1 attraction is being able to feed a live chicken or duck to the lions, tigers or wolves…your choice…$6 for a chicken, $12 for a duck. Check the video below. In stead of seeing animals in their cages, you are on an elevated walkway above the animals, and they roam around beneath you. There’s much more interaction with the animals. The animals have about 4 times more space to roam around as their cages are much larger than in the U.S. They had everything except gorillas and pandas (probably too expensive and rare?). Awesome zoo.

YESSSSS I found out how to imbed Youtube!!! It’s a little harder than it looks.
(had to remove vid, it was breaking word press…)
Feeding a live chicken to a tiger….hahahahahhahahahahhaha.

(had to remove vid, it was breaking word press…)

At the Weihai Zoo, bears have learned to beg in order to get food thrown to them by Zoo-goers

Weihai Zoo. People walk through the zoo as animals roam free beneath.

Monkey? Weihai Zoo, China.

Weihai Zoo, China. I really liked this picture. Monkeys in their cages behind glass.

2046, Weihai, China.

I’ve taken to riding my bike in random directions in order to find interesting stuff. Today I stumbed upon a Coffee Shop called Cite Coffee. It’s 25 yuan for a coffee, which is about $2 USD, but it’s in terms of relative price it’s like buying a $25 coffee in the U.S. The place has excellent service, really nice decor, rare bathroom amenities like soap and paper towels and it offers some relief from the constant overstimulation of China. I took Rie, a fellow student back this evening, and she was stoked. They even had live piano music. I’m definitely going back. (See pic below).

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Freshman Orientation. It takes on a whole new meaning in China. As blogged about before, Freshman are required to do marching and obedience drills for the first 15 days of school. In squads, they march back and forth and perform physical obedience maneuvers, like linking arms, holding one foot out in front for several seconds, then stepping foward.

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Cite Coffee. Just a quick snapshot, so I wouldn’t attract attetion and get kicked out. It’s my new haven.

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Power Plant. I accidentally rode to this coal power plant yesterday. Directly behind me, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people living in a very large apartment complex. The stench of coal is very present. I believe the large smoke stacks are cooling towers.

I went on a little bike ride and adventurously ran into a bunch of cool stuff. 1) Weihai Sports Complex which houses a track. Some vendors rent space beneath the beachers and run shops in the arena. Imagine SBC Park but with furniture stores beneath the bleachers. 2) Weihai Community Bank Gym. There was what looked to be a high school wrestling match going on. Same thing as in the U.S., just shouting and cheering in Mandarin. 3) Very scary coal power plant.  You can basically walk into the complex, but I didn’t out of fear of death by pollution. 4) Harbing Institute of Technology, another univeristy in weihai.

I bumped into some of our students going to dinner, decided to join.  In the area on campus where we got food, there is a small laundry shop called the Gagamel Washeteria.  They machine wash clothes for a small fee, maybe 1 burrito per load.  They’re also the only place I’ve seen that has diet coke, or “coke light” in China.  You get a free diet coke with every 2 loads.  One of the owners, a guy my age speaks a bit of English.  After hanging out for a while and trying to make do with my limited knowledge of Mandarin and his limited knowledge of English, 6 of them invited another photographer and me out to shabu shabu (in Japanese).  We had a great dinner with goose, lamb, duck wings, chicken feet, and other goodness, cooked at the table in a really good broth.  Now we owe them big time.

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High school wrestling match,Weihai, China.

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Making the equivalent of a Chinese pita wrap.

My thoughts and blog posts seem a bit disorganized, so I’m going to try to topicize my posts…

Laundry: Almost all university students wash their clothes by hand, then air dry them on their balconies (balcony, not in the luxuroius sense). The dorms don’t have hot water, so I assume clothes must be washed all with cold. Hot water is availibe for showering in a large shower building, with perhaps 300 showers spread over several floors, or from a hot water dispenser room, where one call fill a large thermos-type canister. I did my laundry in our hotel bathroom sink with Tide bar soap, and it’s slowly air drying in our highly air conditioned room. Oh yeah, showers only happen every couple days since there’s no hot water in the dorms.

Food: cafeteria: I ate in the cafeteria without a student friend to show me the ropes. The largest dining room is 3 stories tall (see photo below) with food court-like counters on each floor. A broken elevator or staircase connects the 3 floors. To buy food, you can put money on a dining commons debit card, and a machine at each food court counter debits your when you grab your dish. They have most common Chinese dishes–noodle, tofu, rice, breads, veggies and meats. There are no drinks…most students bring a nalgene type bottle of water or tea. If you’re a baller, you can buy a drink or fruit for a couple outside of the cafeteria. I still can’t find the napkin or paper towel dispenser, and none of the students had napkins. Ironically, on one side of the dining hall, there are about 20 sinks with 1 container of soap so that you can wash your hands. Again, no paper towel…it hasn’t been introduced to China yet. It’s about 4 yuan per meal (50 cents). The food is ok…about the same quality as U.S. collge dining commons food–you’d get tired of it after a month. When you’re done, you can just leave your dishes on the table (and whatever mess you may have made…It’s ok to put bones, unwanted food or gum directly on the table) and a bus woman comes by eventually and cleans off the table. It’s an ok solution to getting fed, but maybe only a couple times a week.

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Not enough time to post….need more time…

Went to Liugong Island, the historical disneyland theme park of Weihai.  Even rode the gondola.  Paid too much for stuff.

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Freshman univsersity students are required to do 15 days of quasi military service upon their matriculation.  Cool fatigues, going to try to get some.   

Fu u Chu, kinda like the campus student store, only completely opposite.

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The roots.