Yantai, China: July 21, 2008

Last weekend was pretty neat. On Saturday we went out to breakfast together at a local restaurant, not one of my favorites sadly, and then went on an hour bus ride. We arrived a scenic little garden looking complex, which turned out to be Castel Chateau, Yantai’s vineyard. We took a tour of the factory, my favorite part being the cellar. Not only was it super comfortable/borderline cold down there, but the barrels of wine were fascinating. Like something out of a classic novella (I would use the word “novel” there, but I think novella sounds cooler. Hopefully it also means the same thing as novel).

We also got free samples of their red and white wine. I like the white wine a lot better, but it certainly didn’t taste like any white wine I’ve ever had. Almost like red wine in a white wine’s body/appearance. We as a whole are not impressed with Chinese wines. Of course, this could partially be due to the fact that most of us have been to some of the most prominent wine countries (France, Spain, Italy) and those are hard to top… so we’re snobs. If I were going to Germany, I’d probably have that same right with beer. Oh well, at least that can’t be ruined for me too soon.

Tones are very important. I knew this, I know this, but for people who don’t, you should. For instance, while I was trying to explain that I’d seen an Internet bar across the street, I managed to call one of my professor a bastard (only the word for it in Chinese is a lot more serious than in English). Lucky for me, they all find this highly entertaining.

Our class assignment today was to go out to the market and buy a present for two of our other professors. My partner and I ended up buying a huge black bag since her old one was a little broken. We made them open it while we were still there since the Chinese don’t tend to open their presents right away in front of their guests. We covered that thoroughly in class and discussed the differences between our cultures.

My other two class mates gave our only guy professor a stuffed bunny. It’s an inside joke since we all called him “Old Rabbit”. I have no idea why, but we do. They wanted to get him a boy rabbit since he’s a guy, which they did. Later we were informed that in China, giving a guy a rabbit implies that you think he’s gay ( I didn’t catch if the gender was important or just the species). Oi! I was rather glad we ended up with a person we could have get something simple, like a purse/bag.

I also find two things of interest today. The first being the best ice cream ever-vanilla oatmeal. They eat strange ice cream here but this is really good. The other ones we’ve tried so far have only been so so.

There was also a lime green spider hanging in its web today. I really wanted to take a picture of it, since I’ve never seen a neon lime green spider (but only on its abdomen) like it before, but it got washed away in the downpour that happened later that afternoon. :/