We arrived at our new home on Saturday after a short one hour flight from Shanghai to Qingdao on Shandong Airlines. The weight of our bags finally came back to bite us as we had to pay 400 RMB, about $60, because our bags were overweight. They could have charged us more, so we had to count our blessings. Also, our flight was delayed about an hour due to fog in the Qingdao area. I guess with the proximity to the sea fog is fairly common around here this time of year.
In case you can't read that, it is a sign that says the airport is certified as a "Civilized Airport."
We were met by Fan, our contact at the Foreign Affairs Office at the university, and after a quick lunch we were brought to our apartment on the campus of the university, which is about an hour outside of the city of Qingdao. The place looked like it hadn't been touched too much since the last person moved out, and as a result it was quite dirty and the furniture was not arranged to our liking. The ceilings were high and the white walls were bare. It was cold both in temperature and appearance.
There is, however, quite a bit of space and with space comes potential. We have a decent sized living/dining room, a galley kitchen, a big bathroom, and two rooms that could serve as bedrooms (although only one has a bed.) We have already been to three different department stores (2 in the downtown Huangdao area, about 15 minutes away) and one in Qingdao when we went there to get some medical tests that are needed for our Foreign Expert cards. Each time we looked ridiculous with how much stuff we were buying. We have bought some blankets and a space heater for the cold (we technically have heating but it is not very effective), some dishes and cutlery, some lamps (otherwise we just have super bright fluorescent bulbs in each room), a drinking water dispenser (can't drink the water), and countless other daily necessities. We do have a washing machine, but no dryer, so we bought a laundry rack to hang our clothes on. It has been an adjustment to wait for a day before things are dry, so we basically do one load a day. I'll post a video tour of the apartment later.
Our main living area when we arrived, it looks different now.
Making breakfast the first morning.
The school itself is big. There are around 35,000 students but all of them are on vacation now for the Chinese New Year/Spring Festival holiday, so the place feels like a ghost town. We still haven't explored most of the campus except for the area around our building. Our apartment is near the outdoor basketball courts and track, so we plan on using those quite a bit. Also, there is a long road of different shops and food stalls inside the walls of the campus that is less than a 5 minute walk away. Those are all closed with the exception of 2 small grocery stores, so we'll get a better feel for how useful those will be when the students return. Mountains surround the campus on at least two sides, and apparently there is some decent hiking we'll have to check out.
Other than that we seem kind of in the middle of nowhere. There are big roads with 3 lanes of traffic each way on all sides of the campus, but the roads are almost always empty and we barely have to look both ways before crossing. Planning for the future I suppose. One of our neighbors mentioned that it is really nice and quiet if you can stand the isolation. I definitely did not expect to feel isolated while in China, and since we have each other I don't expect we'll ever feel too lonely. Also, the pace of life can only pick up from here since no students are around.
Yesterday we ventured into the town of Huangdao for the first time, which took about 30 minutes by bus and cost us 2 RMB each, or about $.30. Not bad. We took a cab back which probably took half the time but cost 20 RMB total (about $3.00). We decided that most times we go to town we'll take the bus one way and a cab the other. I feel okay about spending less than $4.00 for both of us to get to and from town. In town there is a Starbucks, Pizza Hut, and a few KFCs, but that is about all that is familiar. There are a few good department stores though and I did see a few karaoke places we might have to try out (I'm only kind of kidding). Almost anything we would ever need we could get there.
We have yet to try to get into Qingdao on our own, but that is definitely a priority. When we were in Qingdao for our medical tests we talked about how nice it would be to live in an exciting city like that, so we'll try to visit as much as possible. School doesn't start for over a week and a half so we'll probably go into Qingdao twice, and maybe stay the night one of the times.
Anyway, those are the first impressions. Keep in touch with us! If you want to Skype my Skype name is jordan.bloem and Megan's is meganwaugh44.
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