Lamb heads, pigs feet, hanging meat and more....

Saturday, Julia and I decided that we are going to be adventurous and try to get lost in Qingdao! We succeded! The only rule was that we must go somewhere that we didn't know and we could only stay on the same bus for 4 stops unless it made a right hand turn.... pretty random rules, but it worked!

We did go to one place that I had been to previously- Little Fish Mountain- which is a pagoda at the top of a hill that gives a great view of the city. We bought some great postcards and then made our way to the next bus stop...

we stayed on the bus for awhile until we saw a market. We got off at the next stop which was at another market. We saw all kinds of things (lamb heads, pigs feet, hanging carcasses...etc), but no white people, which was the goal- and no english speaking people! It was great! I even found a pointesetta there to add to our apartment... still need to find a tree! I even saw strawberries at one of the markets, but when the laoban (owner) saw how excited I was about them he upped the price to 20 kuai (about 2.00) per jin... so I said "tai gui le!" (too expensive!), Julia's favorite expression, and walked away.

On the way out of the market we saw a HUGE Buddha so we took a few pics with the statue and then tried to find our way back... it took us a little longer than expected, but with the help of my wonderful TA, Diana, we were able to find a bus that would take us back home where we quickly changed and went back the way we came to play another game on american football. Afterwards, we went to a chinese restaurant for dinner, filled with lots of chinese speaking, only a little that I was able to understand without having it translated, but it was fun to try to figure out what they were discussing. Julia even learned how to count to 10, hand signals and all! All in all it was a fabulous weekend!
2 days til THAILAND.... more later!