Happy Christmas Season! ^_^

Happy Christmas build-up season to you!

There are trees in the shopping centres, Starbucks have their special drinks out and the American next door has stopped complaining that "it's not Christmas till after Thanksgiving", are you psyched? HELLS BELLS am I!

Most exciting news recently is that we are moving from the lovely (massive rip-off) student accomodation in to a flat not far from here. Very excited, purely because I will be far away from the damn students on this corridor who have screaming matches at 4am and respond to all requests to shut up with "不好意思，不好意思" (Really sorry, really sorry), then shut the door and scream again *head-desk* Luckily I'm moving out and the knife I've been polishing for the past 3 days won't see any action ^^ The new flatmates are two Korean girls called Boram and Sara, both very nice, very friendly and very organised. Boram managed to chase down the owner of the flat (who was a bit peeved the estate agents hadn't fobbed her off), then took him all over the flat pointing out the broken bits and backing him in to a corner (literally) about the hot water etc. I like this girl.

Last weekend I followed Louise to 沂水 (Yishui), a small village by Chinese standards, a sizeable city by my quaint British ones. Lou goes with a teaching cohort, so they pack five of them in a mini-van, pay for a hotel, then spend all of Saturday teaching adults at the "Kellogs" factory there (it makes 5 differents brands, but is known as the Kellogs factory). I went with because Lou had described it as "the sticks" and I wanted to see something vaguely resembling countryside. The organisers were called Raymond and Edward and both had pretty damn good English. Alot of people (my focus being on those who say they can speak English) can't quite grasp the concept of conditional form and tenses so these guys were nice to talk to. The drive to Yishui was dusty and bland. The road out of Qingdao gave a good view of the surrounding areas, but even the fields lining a sluggish river were covered in a layer of dust. The only trees were very small, evergreen-types, but with no leaves.

When we got there it was dark, and the hotel staff started to sulk as soon as we handed over our passports and Raymond informed them, yes, they really did have to register us. The beds were the softest things I have lain on in China, though, heavenly <3

The next day the weather was freezing (as was breakfast, hot food isn't popular), and my plan, of course, was to walk around all day. This plan evaporated by about 11am, when I fled to the Kellogs factory to escape the winds. How manly am I.

Yishui has quite a big river running through it, which splits in to several directions. In typical style the river has been damned in several areas, meaning the lower areas are free to be farmed, with a good supply of ... really-not-fresh water. I walked upstream for a while, there was a nice park thing alongside with a bridge and big trees (photos below^^). The thing that hit me first is that there are no westerners (or, if there are, they're passing through). The weird thing about this was that I got fewer stares in Yishui than I do in Qingdao. People in Yishui seemed to glance, stare a bit, then move on with their lives, people in Qingdao glance, stare, gawp, point and then, if they're a shop-assistant, lose all faculties and forget what their job is.

Yishui's infrastructure is also primarily single or double floor buildings (as opposed to Qingdao's 20 floor giants). ALOT of Courtyard Houses (Yay!), though shops all looked and felt like they were made from shipping containers. The Courtyard House doesn't seem to be popular in China, all the people living in the Yishui ones were definitely lacking in cash. My friend, Candy (甜甜), is from the city and says the consensus in China atm is that flats are better quality and cleaner than Courtyard Houses. I can see that a Courtyard House (literally a courtyard with buildings leading off) might be extremely cold in winter, (no central heating) and when it rains (which it hardly does) it could be inconvenient getting from the kitchen to your bedroom, but there's something so much nicer about them. They actually look Chinese, they have Chinese culture. They're not just the West's stereotype of a Chinese house, but each home has a big gate, usually with luck (福) plastered all over it, then right behind that gate is a wall, so the visitor has to turn through a corridor before they reach the courtyard. This design was thought up to prevent evil spirits from entering the home. Compared to the cities where everyone lives in a flat and if you took away the written signs you could easily be in America...

Not gonna lie, the place was dilapidated. So brilliant as it was to see some ACTUAL Chinese culture, it was blazingly obvious that this place wasn't invovled with the government's current push for a cultured society. The power lines were propped up with sticks and logs (countryside repair) and there didn't seem to be any form of waste disposal. There were small streams crammed full of plastic bags, which were themselves full of god knows what. It wasn't a good smell and I can imagine in summer it must be worse...

I wandered downstream after stalking around the Courtyard House neighbourhood and ended up in a semi-formal rubbish dump, right after which was a collection of fields growing vegetables. There was also the remnants of what I hope was a party (otherwise it could have been a murder), with a bonfire and enough rainbow streamers to keep the LGBTerrifics happy.

Eventually the wind threatened to tear my face off, so I hid under a scarf and fled to the Kellogs factory, where I spent the rest of the afternoon staging phone calls with the students ("She doesn't follow the script! I don't understand!") and hiding vegetables around the room for Thanksgiving party games. Western festivals are very popular (apparently we're cool :S), so I got a lot of text messages from Chinese friends wishing me Happy Thanksgiving, but the look of confusion when you explain to them what Thanksgiving is is hilarious. Most of them ask "So, why do we celebrate it?" I don't know! I'm British! I don't know why a Chinese person is giving thanks the pilgrims survived the winter!

Finally been to Beer Street in Qingdao, although, it being winter, the stalls of beer and cheap food had all disappeared. Daisy was quite peeved, as it meant the only places left to eat were the expensive ones that had been modelled on German sea-front huts... I didn't say China was logical.

Right next to beer street there's a massive market called Taidong (台东), where all students go to get their clothes (and coathangers). I bought a hat ^_^ It's cute. ANYWAY! The market was most definitely epic, but as we;re currently booking Spring Festival flights and hostels I'm currently completely skint. Hopefully I'll have money in a month... before the winter clothes are taken away (me going to Vietnam on the 6th Jan).

The night kinda collapsed in to a party night (totally didn't plan that). We went to LPG (main expat bar in Qingdao), then went to a place called Bar 88, which had the most awesome steam-punk decor with victorian lights above every table. Only problem was, the techies had control of the lights and were using them as strobe -_- As awesome as the entire design was, it was definitely a rave situation and, as there was no dance floor save a small stage, it was a wee bit annoying to have a strobe going off when you're trying to drink.

Louise and I managed to get photographed several times by a guy hired by the bar, he didn't ask for money so I assume he's photographing the people having fun etc. After that a group of middle-aged, pervy men invited us over for a kinda apple infused with alcohol drink, not very strong, but they kept making us ganbei it. As in down it. One of them kept grouping my butt and hissing in my ear, but thankfully Daisy rejoined us and I stood between Lou and her whilst they took the brunt of the groping ^^ In the end I feigned an asthma attack as a polite way of saying "We're going now, let go of my butt."

Weirdly, all of the clubs/bars we went to last night ALL had a pole... as in a pole-dancing pole. As fun as this can be, all of them also had paid dancers, in various stages of nudity, harassing said pole, or gyrating against a guy who thought he was Rain or some other Korean rapper. It seems modern China expects bars, booze and girls with the best push-up bras imaginable. When you're drunk, it's amusing, when you're sober, it's vaguely disconcerting.

Happy Christmas Season! *dances*