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.
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