Adventures Abroad: Keeping myself busy!

It was a pretty interesting weekend! Since I admittedly do not have a life here, I've been doing whatever is thrown my way.

Friday night I went to dinner and to ice cream with this Chinese guy. It was a very interesting experience--he was a little too over enthused to know everything about America and he kept telling me how much he drinks and was making me go "beer for beer" with him. I taught him the word "hazing". After dinner, he showed me around a new mall (which had an H&M!) held my purse and my shopping bags (i could get used to this...).

The next day I met a new friend to check out the Shandong Muesum art festival to see what was there and send some pics to my mom. We ended up getting lost and went to a mountain scenic spot instead. Lots of stairs and climbing and random pictures with chinese people! And a nice view of (polluted) Jinan from the top.

Sunday the chinese principal of the school set up a little "play date" for me with a chinese family and their friends--they all went to high school together in Jinan and then all had kids at the same time so there were 4 students who are juniors in high school and 3 of their parents. They taught me about tea culture--the dad was very traditional and had so many tools and different kinds of tea...

It was like a wine tasting except with tea. He had me try 5 different kinds and kept asking me which i liked best and which one i didn't like. it was a little intense. We ate chestnuts with the tea and he told me that when chinese people are anxious, they drink tea (interesting chinese people turn to tea or traditional medicine, americans turn to pills and drugs).

The kids then played piano and sung for me (amazingly talented--my lack of talent in the music department is very embarrassing here) and then i taught them some american card games then we ate a HUGE meal. The host is supposed to put food on the guests' plate so they kept putting more and more food on my plate. It was a little awkward but i didn't want to be disrespectful so i kept eating and eating. They made chicken, beef, pork, fried chicken, green beans, lotus, broccoli, and a salad which was amazing. When i thought we were done they brought out the "specialty" dish which was homemade noodles with meat, potatoes, and onions. Afterwards i was so full I could not move! Guess what we did next? Drank tea!