First Day in the City

 
The day after we got to Linyi, jet-lag proved to have control over my life and I found myself completely awake and ready to go at five in the morning. I tossed and turned and tried to go back to sleep, but it was no use. After a while, i grudgingly gave up trying to go back to sleep and decided to go out for a walk. It was a chilly morning, and a light fog hung over the city (edit: since writing this I have discovered that no, it was in fact not fog, but smog. Yes the lovely layer of pollution that is ever hanging over the city. Please continue.) It didn't take me long to realize that although the dorms had some pretty major setbacks, the neighborhood around them was one of a kind. There are to small roads going in either direction right in front of my dorm and in between the roads is a small field with massive, oddly shaped boulders scattered throughout it. some of the stones have writing carved into them, while others set themselves apart by being shaped like a funny looking head or a small animal (please do keep in mind that these stones weren't actually carved into shapes, it was just kind of like finding pictures in the clouds.)

If you continued to walk down the road you will eventually come to a small forest and inside of it is a small, old temple with two little ponds on either side of it. The temple is unused and unkempt and the walls are covered in graffiti. To me it was lonely, and it was beautiful, and I loved it there. Every morning and afternoon after my discovery I found myself there, enjoying the silence and the beauty of everything around me. After I discovered the temple, I just sat for a while before I decided that it was time to keep exploring.

After walking for a while longer, I ended up leaving the main road to explore a pretty little side-street. Trees rose up on either sides of the road, making a perfect path for me to follow. After following it for a while, I discovered something quite unexpected. Not far from the main road is a massive basketball court with 15 or 20 poles placed here and there around the cement clearing. to the right side of the court is a baseball field with a running track around it, and on the far side of the clearing is what look to me like a very strange playground. "I wonder what that is?" I thought to myself as I strolled over to take a closer look. It didn't take long for me to realize that it wasn't a playground at all, but instead a fully functional workout center. The equipment is made in the same style as a playground in America and is painted bright colors of purple and green. Instead of using weights for the equipment, each machine functions by using your own body weight against you.

By the time I was done exploring, it was already past noon and I was getting extremely hungry. But before I could eat, there was one extra thing that needed to be taken care of. I went back to the dorms and found Kristel and together we went to Liz's room (the Chinese girl who is sorta in charge of the dorms.) Our request was simple, so no more than five minutes later, Liz led us out of the dorm and into the city, and then about thirty minutes after that Kristel and I each had our own Chinese phone (complete with lucky numbers!) Naturally we got the cheapest ones in the store, since we're only here for three months, and we also happened to choose the same color (which made it rather hard to tell which was which until a couple of weeks later when Kristel broke her screen while mountain climbing.) Now more than ever we felt ready to take on whatever China had in store for us (especially since we could text now instead of having to write notes to each other saying "going out for a stroll, if I'm not back in an hour I've probably died" and whatnot.)

We finished up our day by going to the mall near our dorms for a delicious meal and a bit of shopping. Little did we realize as we ended our first day, that pretty soon we would have a whole new set of problems awaiting us.

Cleanliness is Next to Godliness

 
 Getting into that Car with the man from the airport was probably one of the stupidest things I've ever done. Lukily for both Kristel and myself, the man turned out to be exactly what he said, and instead of ending up in some slave trade, we found ourselves in a 3 star hotel. It didn't take long to check in and find our way to the room, bt when we did, it wasn't exactly like what we were expecting. The beds weren't made, there was half eaten food sitting on the counters, not to mention the dirty towels scattered across the floor. It was a complete and utter mess. We marched ourselves back down stairs and (very politely) demanded another room. Or at least we would have, had we not encountered a slight problem. You see, it didn't take long for us to realize that the lady at the front desk knew hardly any English. We probably used just about every word in the English dictionary that somehow relates to the word 'dirty' but it was no use. We eventually convinced her to follow us upstairs but when we showed her the room she was still confused. We pointed to the half-eaten noodles and empty cans of beer and she then told us how much we would have to pay for them.
 

  Let me just say one thing right now...going to another country when you can't understand a word of said country's language can be extremely stressful for both yourself, and the natives. Well long story short, we eventually got her to understand the situation, worked everything out, and got ourselves into a new, cleanish room and were able to enjoy a nice, overdue sleep. Well, at least, I would say that if it were true, but in reality the hotel was so noisy that we hardly got any sleep at all. I'm not sure why the hotel felt the need to keep janitors working at all hours, and I'm not sure why the janitors felt the need to turn their walkie talkies up loud enough to wake us up every time something was said, but oh well. The next day we took the bus back to the airport, waited at a cafe for four more hours, and then finally boarded our plane, (not before having a few major issues with our tickets of course.) Kristel and I both slept through the flight and soon we were in Linyi.

 David, the head of foreign affairs at the university came to meet us at the airport. David informed us (as we rode across town in a fancy little bus) that we would be staying in the old dorms which meant that we would have to take a bus to class everyday instead of just being able to walk. The news itself was kind of disappointing, but not nearly as disappointing as our actual rooms would be. When we arrived, a young Chinese girl came to greet us and right off the bat turned to Kristel and asked, "Would you like the quiet room, or the room with sunlight?" "Uh...the room with light I guess..." she replied, somewhat bemused by the question. And so it was decided, Kristel would get the room with light, and I would get the quiet one. This was perfectly fine with me of course, that is, until I actually saw my room. Let me put this kindly. I'd rather stay in that dirty hotel room than in the one i found myself in. Everything was absolutely nasty. The floor was dirty with bits of glass here and there, the bathroom was revolting, and the once white sheets on my bed had turned a horrible shade of yellow. And to top it all off, some of my walls were starting to mold, which I'm pretty sure was bad for my health. Kristel and I were horrified by what we saw. After David and the Chinese girl Liz left, we had a long talk about our living situation. We came to the decision that there were only two options before us: either we needed to give those rooms a complete overhaul, or we needed to change dorms, and fast.