The grapevine is a wonderful if not inconvenient thing at times! It is probably best that we discovered this little treasure trove so late as I would have gone broke making purchases and then had no way to get them all home.

Katie had been told by Kelly who had been taken by Charlotte who had been taken by Daria who had been brought by someone to this little painting school downtown.  They produced originals as well as reproductions of contemporary as well as traditional works of art. It sounded too good to pass up so we got verbal directions to a side street without any specific address.

Can I just say if you ever have to find a little place with no address,  only verbal instructions to go by, in a foreign country in which you really don’t speak the language, Katie and Thomas are the two to go with. They can find anything. We hopped on the bus, Thomas found the stop and we began looking in window fronts for what we wanted. We soon found a small school but when we walked in a children’s calligraphy class was in session. The teacher soon directed us further down the street. He didn’t speak English but between the three of us we are getting quite good at charades. We discovered this was an annex of the school but we were looking for the main building.

Just a sampling of what we browsed through

We soon found the main part and headed in. Again as it was Saturday classes were in full swing. Drawing classes downstairs, with still life, and calligraphy classes upstairs. We met the director who turned out to be the contact Kelly had mentioned.

She happily took us on a tour then led us back to the annex to look at paintings.

I was a little shocked when she started pulling out manila envelops with folded paintings. Katie saw my hesitation but reminded me that Kelly said their mounting jobs were phenomenal and all imperfections would vanish in the mounted work. We hungrily sorted through works with Xiong explaining their origins.

Some were originals by local artists or professors others were replicas of the great masters. Katie and I started forming piles of possibles. Prices ranged from ¥10 – ¥80 for the paintings with a flat ¥30 mounting fee.

I soon found two pieces I just couldn’t live without and three small flower pieces that I thought would be a beautiful gift. I arranged to pick up the mounted works the Saturday before I was to leave for America.

(3 graces/Lady with Blue / Flowers)

Second choice was still beautiful!

When I went to pick them up I unwisely  agreed to browse through their new works with Katie. I fell in love with yet another piece and agreed to purchase if they could rush mount it before I left on Tuesday. Xiong said she could and I hastily agreed.

I returned Monday afternoon to pick it up, to find a rather distraught Xiong. She told me she had written something down for me to read as she wanted to make sure I understood it all. She had had to send the piece to a friend to be mounted that weekend because he husband had been out of town. It was mounted and ready to go when her friends shop had been broken into and robbed. My piece along with others and cash had been stolen. There had been two Cherry Blossom works and so she quickly mounted the other and had it mounted to give to me. She felt awful and apologized profusely. She gave me this piece free of charge with an additional flower painting.

Second Choice was still beautiful although that first piece was AMAZING! So now I have no excuse for empty walls. I mean really with the prices hoovering around $12 for portable art lookout next semester.

or should I say Macgyver DVD player

Katie and Thomas came over for lunch and Thomas began tinkering with my DVD player as he promised. It had broken a few months ago and since I so generously got a screwdriver for  Christmas he promised to take a look at it for me.

Here’s what I had to begin with:

1 DVD player with a power problem

1 DVD player that just didn’t work

1 DVD player with a driver problem

and 2  kind friends who had an abundance of patience and apparently a free afternoon.

So as I slaved away giving finals in my office listening to stuttering English Katie and Thomas slaved away in the living room operating like two experienced surgeons. Between finals I snuck a look and wide eyed I tried to take in the scene before me. Three disassembled DVD players with neat piles of screws, cables and fuses.

The Beginning

In the end a miracle was accomplished and a rather unorthodox player was born. So now lets go through the steps.

1. Remove top cover

2. Remove magnetic disc centering holding bar

3.Insert desire disc for viewing pleasure

At least it works.

4.Replace magnetic disc centering holding bar, making sure sides are flush with base, and the magnet is unobstructedly engaged with sub magnet.

5. Press the close button to engage the driver making sure Step 4 was completed properly without an unidentifiable rattling noise accompanying the spinning.  (the loading dock is not functioning but this step is necessary to trick the player into loading the inserted DVD)

6. Replace cover. (to prevent a second layer of dust settling on the inside although it might seem pointless after the layer of dust that accumulated while completing steps 1-5)

7. Pray the TV is on the right channel or take another 10min figureing out which key to hit on the Chinese remote!

8. Enjoy your film, while keeping your fingers crossed, that none of the parts shift as they are no longer mounted in place.

I’ve been to Qingdao countless times yet I always see the same thing: Train Station, Bus 304, University, Church, Bus 5, Jimo, Bus 202.

Since we had arrived on Friday for Christmas we decided to take advantage of a full Saturday. After a restful night surprisingly at the Hostel, we took the bus to the University and met up with Victoria for my favorite and day at a museum!

Victoria had already been and gave great reviews, she warned it was a provincial museum so don’t get lofty expectations she said but she had been presently surprised. For a provincial museum it blew my socks off.

It was huge from the outside but that is the Chinese way, empress with shear size to compensate for quality.

I must admit I was impressed with the translation someone who actually studied English seemed to have translated.

Wouldn't be a real museum without a controversial piece or two. These are Japanese and still claimed by them from what I was able to gather.

Chinese also love their dioramas. This one depicts a historical battle victory in which the besieged city tied bayonets to the herds horns and lit their tails on fire. Letting the rampaging beasts lose on the surrounding army.

It was such a pleasure going through the museum with fellow Art History buffs - Katie and Victoria.

I was quite impressed with their selection of artifacts.

There was also the history section which had the life size dioramas, just couldn't resist the photo op.

Of course the end of the museum had the triumphant liberation of China and the birth of Modern China.

Thomas wandered into a side exhibit that turned out to be a print making center. We all did our Chinese zodiac.

Christmas Day…humm…lets just say it was an adventure.

My first Christmas waking up to an empty house. I didn’t want to get out of bed as there just didn’t seem like any point. The usual hustle and bustle of Christmas morning was not there nor did I have the pleasure of looking forward to it. I finally dragged myself out of bed and over to the computer excited for my Christmas call home. I finally made it through but to my disappointment, as it was still Christmas Eve in the States, everyone seemed busy and some where not even home to chat. I did an unusually short call with and become rather childishly disgruntled by the whole thing.

I finally just turned my attention to the afternoon and weekend in Qingdao! One frustration of living alone is the fact that I have to remember to prepare the house for a trip. Mom thank you for all you do! I hate coming home to a dirty house which means the morning before a trip the usual list includes: laundry, dishes, trash, sweep, organize and close and lock up.

Christmas morning!

A few students dropped by to give me Christmas cards and Wendy dropped off a gift. I sat down and try to recreate a little Christmas opening my gift and reading cards. By 11 I was headed out the door to meet up with the  Gang at the train station.

Katie and Thomas invited a new friend along to join our foreign group for Christmas, no one should spend Christmas alone. The train was crowded as usual. The plan was to have a big familial Christmas dinner then hand out blankets to the homeless. [Last Christmas Victoria had experienced her coldest day in China and was horrified to see homeless people sleeping on the streets under nothing but a sheet of plastic. This year she vowed to correct this and purchased blankets to hand out to the homeless. We Weifangians were happy to help deliver the purchased blankets.]

Americans and Canadians

We arrived and headed to THE DINER for Christmas dinner. We were a merry party! There were about 28 of us in all, and the table next to us was all foreigners too! You felt like you were back in the states. It was interesting to be able to eavesdrop again, to be fair both tables were doing it because we were commenting on each other’s conversations. THE DINER had a wonderfully scrumptious Christmas menu but it was just out of my price range so I settled on a lamb sandwich. Not as good as their steak sandwich but NOT Chinese in the least so I’ll take it. Some days I just don’t want Chinese, Christmas is one of them.

After dinner the hostel hunt began. Thank heaven for Katie and her prepared self or we would have being sleeping on the sidewalk accepting blankets from Victoria. This Christmas was the coldest day in Qingdao and it even beat out last Christmas Victoria said. The BYU teachers headed back to the university and told us they would call when they were going to head out to deliver blankets. The Walk: we decided to forgo the bus and just go for a cab wrong idea. There was no cabs to be found and we were forced to keep walking to keep warm we finally ducked into a hotel and asked the door man to find us a cab. We soon realized we had headed in the opposite direction of the hostel. The doorman returned empty handed explaining there were just no cabs to be found on a night such as this! Oh just keep piling on the frustrations. We were all froze and our brief stay in the hotel lobby only seem to half thaw us. Working from a small google map we found a bus that would take us west and hoped for the best. We got off hoping the map was spacial correct, wrong again. After what seemed like eternity in the cold we found the hostel at the top of a hill. Katie had been unable to book a hostel online due to technical difficulties on the website, “Welcome to China”. Big Brother Hostel’s, yes no lie on the name, dorms were all booked and they only had a 4 person room at 200Y. That is hotel prices by the way and no way were we going to pay hotel prices for hostel accommodations. By the way the dorms had been 25Y so you understand our hesitation here.  Prepared Katie had a back up plan, we ventured out into the cold and by some miracle were able to find a cab within 5min. Mind you we were a double fare but hey we were out of the cold and sardines are toasty when they are packed together. I don’t know if the first passenger was fully aware of what he agreed to when the taxi driver accepted us. Somehow we were able to cram 6 people and all our luggage and bedding into a small cab not using the trunk.

Hostel Lobby

We finally made it to the next hostel when I realized I didn’t have everything that I needed to check in. At that point we were near the train station and I just figured I would catch a train back to Weifang if I had to. The Receptionist was kind enough to let me slide with numbers and a Driver’s License. She was even kind enough to give us member prices and we settled in for the evening. Victoria called and said there were no homeless people out so we would not be venturing out either. We dropped off the bags and headed down to the lobby to chat.

All decked out for Christmas

Okay this is were I go off on hostels! I LOVED THIS PLACE. The rooms were clean and warm once the heater got going, the lobby was phenomenal and the help well I don’t have enough glowing words in my vocabulary to cover how amazing they were. Their English was excellent (boy does that sound snobby) and they were extremely accommodating. We threw ourselves into the center lounging area and were soon joined by a British guy who had been sitting at the other end.

His name was Lew, he took a hiatus from school to study Martial Arts for a year in China. He is a drama major with a growing resume. We all had a lovely chat for the rest of the evening. It is always nice when you can sit and have a stimulating conversation at a normal speed with a normal vocabulary, excepting of course the occasional translation hiccups between British and English. We turned in around 11.

Christmas was an adventure or to be more honest was one adventure after another. But the company and accommodations at the end made it all worth it!

Okay this place is palatial. Here it is.

View of the apartment from the nook to the left of the door.

Living Room, first door on the right. Look at that couch!!

I love the fact that my shower no longer drenches my toilet or vanity!!

Last door on the right, James was kind enough to get me that far table for extra counter space. No excuse not to cook now.

Last door on the left. Kelly's room to be!

(The Office waiting for it to be clean before I take that picture.)

My new bedroom, yes I brought my comforter. First door on the left.

So Apartment 202 is my new home. The size sure makes me feel alone at times but Kelly will soon fill it! I still hesitate and start to knock when I get to the door thinking it is Dantzelle’s house or I skip the second floor altogether.

I can’t believe I can now say I’ve had my own place, and have moved on to my second. I’m not going to lie I’m thrilled I’m getting Kelly as a room mate soon. Not sure I could say that line with too many people, lets face it I’m not a sharer and LOVE my personal space.

So mixed feelings about leaving 401, I came to love the small cozy feeling. It was a perfect fit for a single person and once the radiators were turned on I can happily add cozy to the list of outstanding qualities. I remember my first Lego dream mansion and thinking wow, way to many rooms to clean. I guess it never hit me as a kid once you get a house with that many rooms you usually can afford the maid to clean it. But lets face it I would rather take the loft, clean myself and spend the extra cash on traveling. So goodbye small apartment, with one hour Saturday Cleaning Sessions.

Some things I will miss…

• the free daily, mandatory stair work out.
• quick and easy cleaning.
• the security that comes from knowing if anyone makes it to the fourth floor window three other apartments have most likely been robbed and the cops are on their way.
• (doubt this one is true but is a white lie I kept telling myself) you are above the heavy dust levels.
• No one can look into your apartment, unless they are 300 yards away and by then the view is fuzzy.
• the view of down town Weifang, lit up on a clear night.

No worries I will soon have a list of what I love about living in my new apartment.

So the final round of pictures, wipe a tear.

One last glance around the apartment, with all my stuff out it just doesn't feel the same.

I'm not sorry to leave the chairs in exchange for a couch.

Stripped clean. The bedding went to a student living down in the office, long story.

There is just something so sad about darkened rooms...

would anyone like their number?

Merry Maids of China

I should have taken before and after shots or at least the process. Katie and Thomas through insanity, is my only guess, agree to help me clean and move in.  The came over around 11am and stuck it out til the bitter end at 7pm. Those two can clean an apartment like professionals. They are so organized and thorough. By the end of the day we figured he could count half a year done for home-teaching.  

They dusted, swept, scrubbed, mopped, wiped down, sprayed down and cleaned out. It was such a relief, I was able to pack, arrange, transfer and move. Yes, my list was a lot easier for that I apologized profusely. I know I will never be able to repay Thomas fully for scrubbing the bathroom floor. Really could I please find a guy that is able oh and willing to do that.

By the end we had taken out 3 loads of garbage, done 6 loads of laundry:bedding, rags and towels and moved just about every piece of furniture in the apartment.

The topper of the day though had to be beating the rug. Katie and I took the rug outside and threw it over some exercise equipment across the courtyard. (I promise to add pictures later) Both of us where in short sleeves, and flip-flops from cleaning indoors. We were quite a sight to be seen beating a rug outside with a broom in 30* weather. Of course 3 different students passed and asked what I was doing, I would have figured that was obvious but hey when the Americans do something it is always a spectacle. Thomas came out to join us and we all took turns whacking that thing. Boy is beating a rug therapeutic. I love that scene in the new Sense and Sensibility when Eleanor takes a good whack at the rug, really it helps.

Once all the cleaning was done I told them their slave hours were over but they still offered to remain and help move the last of my things down. Troopers to the end. Thanks to them it was all done by 7.

Unfortunately, the customary doughnuts and take out pizza was unavailable for the moving crew but we were able to settle for McDonald’s after a long day. I felt truly pathetic repaying they entire day with a Big Mac but that was as good as it got.

So here is another THANK YOU, to Katie and Thomas, I could not have done it without you.

Thank goodness my Home-teacher is in town because it’s moving time. I know it’s only two floors down but its the mental moving that is killing me right now. I was hoping not to move for another few weeks but due to some unforeseen circumstances its just best I move this weekend. So tomorrow it is. So fam and friends, who skype you will no longer have to suffer a dirty room as a background. I will have an office in my new place. I feel like I’m moving into a mansion going down stairs.

I’m moving into Adam and Dantzelle’s old place. It’s a 3 bed 1 bath! Of course I will do a full tour once I’m moved in and everything is clean. That second part is the key there.  But it will be deep cleaned before Winter break. I want everything ready for when Kelly moves in!

So many new things wait! Oh, just thinking about a couch makes me want to melt. I am going to be sad to leave this apartment. I’ve grown quite attached. My first real place, not to shabby. And to be perfectly honest I’m going to miss the free mandatory daily workout going up four floors.  Not that I’m complaining about moving to the second floor.

Wednesdays are always horrible days for me. They are my busiest. The first change I make next semester is my Children’s night class. I’m putting my foot down and refuse to do it on the night of my craziest day. A full day of classes and then a night class just about does me in.

I woke this morning in a slight depression no real reason but I just can’t seem to shake the funk. Thank goodness tomorrow is Thursday and I get to see the rest of the gang for lunch. Okay if I can just make it through the afternoon and then the evening things will brighten.

Well off to class.

Adam and Dantzelle have left Weifang. I am left alone at the school. My circle of Western friends has begun to shrink. Over the next month and a half that circle will continue to shrink. I cling to two rays of sunshine, I will always have Katie and Thomas across town and Kelly will join me in the Spring!

I can hardly believe it is already December, and half way through at that. I feel like I got here last month some days, others I feel the 3 months 2 weeks 5 days and 15hours. I am so grateful I had the opportunity to meet Adam and Dantzelle and all their help in adjusting to life in China. I think it safe and only honest to admit I couldn’t have adjusted so quickly without them. I will feel their absence but am grateful for their time.

Best of luck you two, with all your future travels. The memories we’ve shared will always be dear and thank goodness when all else fails I can call you when I need someone to understand life in China.