Qingdao!!

It is 8:30am in beautiful Qingdao, and in a couple hours I will be piling onto a bus and heading off to Yantai, about 3 hours North. I was going to wait till I was back in Shenyang to write a new blog, but things have been so great lately and I have some quiet time right now so I figured I'd update real quick!

My 4 days in Qingdao have been amazing. China continues to amaze and surprise me by its contradictions and beauty, and just going outside can be an adventure in itself. I arrived in Qingdao 4 days ago after a 20-hour train ride a bit confused and overwhelmed by the train station. But, as always, luck was on my side and a nice Chinese couple who spoke some English offered to help me find my hostel. They actually ended up walking me to the door of my hostel, which was super nice because I am staying in a building that used to be an old observatory, so it's quite a walk to get to the top. It's also quite a view from the outside roof lounge. The hostel is awesome and clean and turned out to be a great way to meet other travelers (always a plus of traveling alone!)

My first night was spent eating a big Western meal at the hostel's restaurant because I was too tired to attempt the hike back down the steps into the city in search of food. It was great, and quite cheap compared to the price of Western food in Shenyang. I ended up meeting Greta this night, an 18-year old English girl from London who I ended up spending a lot of time with.

I awoke early the next morning and headed out on my own to explore the old town of Qingdao. The hostel is in a great location, and I soon found myself wandering around a cool market square filled with people. Not long after, I somehow ended up in a big, bustling fresh meat, vegetable, and fish market. These markets are always a pleasure to walk through in China because they are always full of people and interesting food items. After enjoying some random Chinese street food, I wandered back to the hostel for a quick rest, and ran into Greta. We decided to go exploring together, and jumped on the first bus we saw in search of some outside shopping markets. We actually found this weird, indoor market shopping area with random restaurants and people playing cool Chinese instruments. This place is hard to describe in words, but the ceiling was painted like a beautiful blue clouded sky, but it was dark and there were cool lights everywhere. It was odd because it was in the middle of the city and completely out of place. For dinner we decided to head back to the fresh market that I had been to earlier that day, and ate cheap delicious street food that consisted of some garlic-tasting bread, some unidentified fried green veggie balls that were delicious, and a "burrito" (which was actually a ton of vegetables with spicy seasoning stuffed inside what looks like a tortilla). Soo good, and so cheap. Later that evening back at the hostel, we met Isle, an awesome Chinese girl who speaks near perfect English, and ended up hanging out with her, playing cards and talking. It was a great first evening.

The next morning, the 3 of us decided to get up super early (5:45am), so that we could head about an hour and a half outside of the city to Lao Shan (which is a mountain). This day was amazing. The weather turned out to be great, and the scenery was beautiful. The mountain, which doesn't really look like a normal mountain, is right next to the sea, and hiking up to the top offered breathtaking views and a lot of funny moments. This mountain is famous because it is one of the places where Taoism was started, so we got to walk around a beautiful temple before climbing up hundreds of steps with thousands of Chinese tourists. There were many pictures taken (mostly of the two white girls with random Chinese people), and the start of a lot of inside jokes between me, Greta, and Isle. We ended up getting the bus back at around 3:00pm, completely exhausted. We treated outselves to a big Western meal at the hostel (which was a second for me!), and actually ended up going to bed pretty early this night.

Yesterday was our last full day together in Qingdao, and we decided to check out some local areas and see if we could find a good beach to hang out on. We ended up taking a ferry about 20 minutes to a place called Huang Dao. The beach that we were looking for ended up being a weird, really dirty rocky area overlooking the sea and a lot of industrial buildings. Not exactly what we expected, but this is China, and sometimes that happens! We still had a great time though, and found a nice little restaurant to eat lunch in. Our chicken and potato soup had chicken feet, weird organs, and even the whole head and neck of the chicken in it! It was awesome (don't worry, I didn't eat it, just played with it!) Last night was a great ending to my short time in Qingdao. We headed over to the business side of Qingdao (so different than the old town side), and went to this square with a cool red building that has some significant meanging that I still don't know (I should brush up on Chinese history, haha). This place overlooked the sea, and had a huge row of little seaside junk shops selling random jewelry and overpriced gifts. So great! The square was pretty crowded, and beautiful at night. They even had cotton candy, which was a nice treat for me! After walking a lot, we decided to head back to the hostel for our last night and had dinner at around 10:30pm. A good ending to a nice day.

So, now it's almost time to leave. Isle is already gone, and both me and Greta leave in a couple hours. I still have 3 more cities to see, and 6 more days to go before heading back to Shenyang (which I actually really miss!) This short trip is a good preview of the months to come when I start my real traveling through the Southern part of China, into Tibet, Nepal, India, and Thailand (if all goes as planned!)

I have been taking a ton of pictures, and shortly after I get back my new laptop should be arrving (yay!!) and I should be able to actually load the pictures onto my computer and post them online.

For now, I hope everyone is doing well, and I miss you all. I probably won't post again till I get back to Shenyang, so stay tuned for more!

To my Qingdao girls: I'm so glad I got to meet you both, and I wish you luck with everything you do! I know we'll see each other again eventually. Thanks for all the great memories packed in such a short amount of time! Keep in touch...Love you!