June 11, 2009

Yesterday was such a great day and by far one of the most memorable days I have had so far in China. We had our language class in the morning, then we went to the markets to eat lunch by our campus with Tio (the Communications professor) while having a class discussion. After our lunch, Tio had set up conversation partners for us to meet and form times to get together with them twice a week to help them with their English and they would help us with our Chinese. Turns out I get paired up with the Dean of the Liberal Arts Department who is the professor of the Chinese conversation students. At first I wanted somebody closer to my age but I am so glad that I was paired up with him because he is such an interesting man and so nice as well. His English was actually pretty good so we talked for an hour and a half getting to know one another. I learned that he is a Dean here at Ocean University, teaches ancient Chinese writing and during the week he switches off days to either run the mountain behind our campus, swim laps in the ocean or play ping pong! Apparently he is a champion ping pong player in Qingdao!! I am looking forward to getting to know him better and someday I will show him my ping pong skills :) thank you mom and dad for the ping pong table at the ranch! Professor Huang Ya Ping will be impressed!

To continue on with the day, Tio then took us to our next scheduled event which was meeting China Youth League…basically they are an organization that forms international students with a host family! We will not be staying with the families because we are living on campus…it was just a chance for us to see the traditional Chinese home and family life. We were all split up into groups so I was with two other girls from our study abroad program and were paired up with Jaime. Jaime is her American name she is 19 years old and has just graduated high school. We arrived to her house, sat down on their wooden couch and there on the table was a buffet of fruit. Jaime said she had bought it all just for us! We talked with her for about 2 hours, while her mother brought in even more fruit and hot green tea. I knew the tradition of the Chinese being very hospitable to guests but I was so blown away by how genuine they really were at making sure we felt at home. We were already full from all of the food so far but next it was time to make traditional Chinese dumplings! Jaime’s mom and aunt soon brought out the dough, the pork and the beef and taught us how to prepare them. It took about 20 minutes to make the dumplings but they were soon steamed in water and I kid you not, hundreds were placed in front of us to eat. Plate after plate, they kept bringing them out! The dumplings were delicious but I can’t remember the last time I was that full from food haha. While we were eating, Jaime’s mom and aunt also entertained us with their Tai Chi skills which were fun to watch. :) As you can tell it was a pretty neat experience. We exchanged numbers with Jaime too and will meet up with her sometime again this summer.

That is all for now but I will post more information after this weekend to Qufu. We will be visiting the Confucius’ temple, tomb and home and will also climb Mount Taishan (Mount Tia- one of the 5 sacred mountains in China. 1,440 meters high/6,000 steps to the top!)

-Alison