busy.bee

Hey all. Sorry I haven't updated in a thousand years. I've been really busy lately! Let's see. The last thing I really mentioned was my trip to Qingdao, which was really fun. I stayed at a slew of hotels and hostels with about 25 of the California kids. Our main goal was to hit up Beerfest, which ended up being really boring, and the beer was way too expensive to even enjoy a few. So we all left and ended up hanging out at the Old Church Youth Hostel, which was absolutely amazingly well decorated and very chill. Here's a picture of Kevin and I in front of the large gate to Beerfest. Yes, that is a mermaid sitting on the globe. And yes, she's toasting a pint of beer. Awesome.

Post-Qingdao: There haven't been any other really huge events other than my professor Natalie, coming from Beloit for the Jinan seminar, which involved us basically having an entire week off of our regular chinese classes, but basically spending the entire day out with the Beloit group, exploring Jinan and updating Natalie on the things we've done and how far we've progressed on our individual semester-long projects. Mine is on Jinan's Baotu Springs; moreover, my project concerns the cross-section of the population of Jinan's perception of Baotu Spring's historical worth and the current-day water issues concerning the springs. So... it's a pretty hefty project. It

 probably doesn't make much sense now, but it'll come together really well, I think. I'm working on getting a "yearly" pass to the Baotu Springs (I guess I just need a small 1" photo and pay for a laminated card or something like that) which will make doing my research alot easier... rather than forking over 40yuan everytime I need to enter! 

Besides all that and the other Chinese schoolwork, things are going well. I'm pretty sad today because the California kids left this morning and I had to say goodbye to Kevin. The past few hours have been pretty rough, but I'll deal with it slowly. Midterms are coming up sometime next month so I've got to get around to making up some study guides. Outside of school, Jinan is still fun- the weather has just now started to get "cold" (aka SWEATSHIRT WEATHER). Yeah, it's pretty great. The sun is shining, and today has been exceptionally clear. I've got my window open and I'm listening to the sound of the wind rustling through the trees... I'm blogging... and eventually I'll get around to my Beloit translation homework. Haha. Bye guys.