Qingdao, China 2008

We had not been home from England long before we began to plan towards our Let's Start Talking trip to Qingdao, China. We were excited about the trip and apprehensive all at the same time. It was a new place for us, and we did not know quite what to expect. I kept a journal, as I did not feel free to blog while there---and, as it turned out, there would not have been time anyway! I am going to post my journal entries as if I had been sending them at the time. I think most of you will understand that I will not write much about our work there ( which was the reason for the trip), as blogs can travel world-wide. You will have to read between the lines on that one.

Day 1, Saturday, April 26, 2008
What a long day! Joan took us to the DFW Airport about 5:15 a.m. Going through baggage check and security were really quick and easy. Our bags were even under the 50 lb. limit. Our first flight was to San Francisco on United. After a short layover we were back on United to Beijing---a long flight of about 12 hours. Since it was our daytime, we read and watched movies. I read an entire Mary Higgins Clark book, and Ron finished a Readers' Digest! At Beijing we had to claim our luggage and then check it in with Air China. The Beijing Airport is new---built for the Olympics this summer---and beautiful, with pot plants and decorations everywhere. After going through customs, we saw huge Chinese murals made of carved wood. We were happy to see English words in addition to Chinese on most signs. I got to experience an Eastern style toilet (a hole in the floor) because the Western style one at the airport was out of order! Our flight on to Qingdao was only about 1 1/2 hour, so it seemed short. After claiming our luggage we searched the crowd for anyone who seemed to be looking for us. No one! Finally, after about 45 minutes, a nice young man offered us the use of his cell phone to call Sun Woo, the owner of the school where we would be doing our reading. Sun Woo was very apologetic, saying that he and David (the American worker in Qingdao) thought we were to arrive on Sunday instead of Saturday. Both of them had meetings going on, so he told us to take a taxi across town to the Shangri La Hotel, where he would pick us up. After arriving at the hotel, we waited over an hour for Sun Woo to arrive in another taxi, as neither he nor David own a car. We went directly to the apartment that we would be staying in for four weeks. It has 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, a kitchen, and a living room. Needless to say, we were ready for bed after being up for around 30 hours!
The first photos are of our apartment building. The next photo shows one of the building gates (it is actually the one next to ours) that you have to unlock to get into the apartments. Once inside there are stairways to seven floors of apartments. Our apartment is on the first floor.
The next photos show inside the apartment. (The kitchen is adequate, but small. At least the refrigerator is three times as big as the one we had in England! There is no oven, no garbage disposal, and no dishwasher!)