Yantai, China: July 31, 2008

It’s high time someone looked into claims that they make or believe the ones others make.

I’m referring, of course, to this bedbug thing. First of all, I’m of the inclination that there were never any bed bugs at all. The reasons why it was assumed we had cases of them:

• The others say they could feel them jumping on them
• The problem persisted until the sheets were changed/areas around the bed were sprayed with Raid
• The others tried to tell me that bed bugs are invisible to the naked eye and therefore couldn’t find the individuals

My reasons for disbelieving their convictions:

• Bed bugs can’t jump, fly, hop, or do anything other than crawl, bite, and make more bedbugs. I think you would feel something crawling on you and be able to tell it apart from something hopping on you.
• Bed bugs are notorious to get rid of. According to the Pest Control Site of Canada, sprays are not enough, and there’s a whole procedure they have to go through. With our hotel only spraying and changing the sheets resulting in no more problems, it seems unlikely it could be any sort of infestation.
• The guy who tried to tell me bed bugs are invisible is wrong. At hatching they’re about the size of a poppy seed and adults are 1/4inch unfed and significantly larger after a blood meal.
• It is also true that they don’t like light and it’s hard to find the actual bugs, but their evidence can be found if you know where to look. I have looked, and so far, all I’ve found are splatted mosquitoes on the walls.

*I have come to these conclusions from many official pest control websites*

Therefore, I do not believe any of us have had bed bugs at any point, or if we did, such a minor case it’s not worth mentioning (which seems unlikely given their nature). This is not to rule out something since we were bitten by something at least once and Jeronimo might still be. I just don’t think they were bed bugs.

Moving on to other observations, Mulan is just as an amazingly awesome excellent bundle of movie package in Chinese as in English. It’s great to be able to just understand some of the speech without subtitles (cause it’s translated weird anyway). Some parts in the Chinese version are a lot funnier than the English version just because of the way the language works. It’s fantabulous. One instance would include the moment when Mulan tells her mom, “I’m here!” [to get ready for the matchmaker interview]. In the English version, it’s just another line; in Chinese, the way those three words are delivered is hilarious.

Yantai, China: July 29, 2008

Remember how I said that the strange daily rain in Beijing was man-made?

http://en.beijing2008.cn/ceremonies/headlines/n214485376.shtml

Welcome to the world; we are our own gods and leave ourselves bereft of anyone to pray to.

Yantai, China: July 28, 2008

I think we must have eaten something bad last night. Today found me throwing up in the wee hours of the morning, a different student with a bad stomach ache, and another needing to frequent the bathroom all day. I thought I was sick the first week when I was here. Nope, that was just a little bit of discomfort and inconvenience. Today was a sleep-in-until-2pm-don’t-leave-bed-until-dinner day. On the bright side, I spent my time in bed productively and watched Wally-E, a super cute movie. Who knew robot love could be so awesome?

Yantai, China: July 27, 2008

Wee! Yet another fun weekend come and almost gone. I’ll start with Friday since Friday is a very good place to start.

After our test I followed my typical Friday pattern. Walk back to the dorm, go on the computer for an hour or two, tell myself I’ll sleep for an hour and end up sleeping for 4, wake up and walk dazedly into someone’s room where I listen to what plans have been concocted for that evening. Adam always seems to catch me right as I’m stumbling out of the room and usually remarks on how awake I am right after I nearly crash into a wall.

We went out to a KTV place with all our professors and later dragged them to our usual club hang out. KTV is a karaoke chain that lines the streets in every Chinese city we’ve been to (all two of them). It’s almost like a hotel, with private rooms you rent out and you can order food and drinks, etc. There’s a TV screen where the words scroll across along with random pictures to the songs your singing. Most of them involved some scantly clad woman leaning against a railing looking forlorn. Or dogs. There was quite a few of people petting dogs. Which is strange when you’re singing Country Road or songs by the Beatles. Some of the songs were hard for us to sing since they would scroll the words in Chinese characters…most of us could go “ni!” once in a while with those kinds of songs.

It was a lot of fun, probably because one or two people were really into it and our professors were so cute. Two of them did a duet to a song (that we now have the first 2 lines imbedded in our minds and break out into whenever we hear the words in normal conversation-“No problem! Really no problem!”) and were actually quite good. I’d gained a reputation for singing several weeks ago since I find it fun to take sentences and fit them to any tune. It generally comes out garbled and mostly in gibberish, but that does not detract from my amusement.

They didn’t want to go to the club and we all but dragged them with us. None of them are really the party animal type. Some of them had never been dancing before! Not that I’ve been really either; maybe 8 or 9 times, at least half of which have been during this summer.

We also got there really early, maybe 10 o’clock, so there was no body dancing yet. Waiting for other people to start would have taken too long and our teachers’ little interest that there was would have been utterly killed, so we owned the dance floor for the first half hour. Myself, Jeronimo, and Adam got the party started and again dragged our teachers on to the dance floor. They would try to escape every once in a while but we’d catch them before they got too far. Of course, a few were painfully awkward at first but eventually found their stride and after an hour they were the ones dragging us back to the floor when we took a break. It was probably the best Friday night of the entire summer.

The next day we all got on a bus (which still is quite scary and even in sleep I feel slightly nervous when the bus jerks or sways violently) and headed to a place called Penglaige. I don’t believe it has an English translation but if you were to look up the place where the Eight Immortals flew/jumped(?) into the sea, you could probably find it online.

It’s a very picturesque place, with sea cliffs and turquoise blue ocean complete the city right on the coast. There’s also the hundreds of peddlers since it is a tourist destination. We weren’t there too long but we did hike up to a pavilion where you could overlook the entire coast side and tie red ribbons to the railings for luck and wishes. Lazy people had the option of taking a gondola up (which I really would have loved to do instead but our headmaster was all gung-ho about the climbing).

There were a bunch of motor boats zipping up and down the shore, which at first I thought was probably a huge pollution factor. But then we got to ride on one and I stopped caring completely. They were taking people up to the famous part of the cliff where it was said the Immortals flew/jumped into the sea and a dragon could be seen snaking around the wall. I didn’t see either, but the cliffs were pretty cool.

I believe after that I took another nap. I’ve been taking naps all the time now, it’s a bad habit to get into since once I get back to school I’ll have no more time to take naps. Then we had dinner and hung out in someone’s room until about midnight playing chess, chatting, and listening to music. At midnight we decided that a trip to the beach was in order.

Perhaps I should mention one area in which Chinese and American dorms differ…Chinese dorms lock at night. As in, past 10:30-11ish you cannot leave or get back into the dorm. We were lucky since there were ladies that lived there who could let us in if we rang some dinger. Regular Chinese students just can’t be out past 10:30. This might explain why the nightlife in China seems to be a little lacking-all the people who are young enough to actually enjoy life are stuck inside. Not that I’m saying people over college age can’t enjoy life…they just don’t go to dance clubs or bars.

You can also imagine that since we went out somewhere every weekend and wouldn’t come back until 1 or 2 in the morning, we were not very popular with these ladies. Nonetheless, we woke up one of the ladies to let us out and went to the beach to play cards. I left after an hour but some others stayed and I found out the next day went swimming in the water. It seems that the water had glowing algae of some sort. As cool as we think that is, we’re a little cautious in assuming that that algae is supposed to naturally glow, given state of environmental standards here…

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. :/

Yantai, China: July 18, 2008

Had a test today. I think it went very well. I’m never the first one to walk out of a test, most especially not a Chinese test so it was a rare and unlikely to happen again pleasant feeling.

In fact, it almost compensates for the fact that I have bed bugs. This morning I woke up and had little bites on my left arm. But only in one spot; a bit strange. Two other classmates have had a minor issue with it not so long ago, so I guess it’s my turn. It doesn’t freak me out at all even, though I used to think it would if it ever happened. I’m actually just a little insulted that they would bite me. Insulted! I would have expected maybe some horrification or disgust, but no. Just insulted. I told the women about it downstairs and I wish I knew what they told me. I’m pretty sure they said they’d change out the mattress and sheets later today. No big deal. Quite honestly, if I had to choose, I’d much rather have the bed bugs than the mosquitoes since their bites don’t hurt or itch and they don’t transmit any diseases (the only bloodsucker that can say that aside from vampires. But I guess if you turned into a monster when something bit you that could qualify as disease…).

Gamble JUST knocked a fly unconscious with her pillow. Literally as I’m typing. Not killed, knocked unconscious. Last night a giant, biggest housefly/horse fly I’ve ever seen fly in through our window as I was disposing of the body of a mosquito. It’s been flying up in the ceiling ever since and decided to land on her bed. She grabbed her pillow and wacked it twice, which only made it stumble around onto one of my sandals. Then we threw him out the window too. Maybe he’ll drown. Cause you know, it’s raining again.

Yantai, China: July 16, 2008

It’s hard to believe I’ve been here one month and only have another 3 weeks to go. Time has really flown by, but in one of the good ways.

I’ve adjusted more to the food than I thought, or at least the eating practices. I like eating with wooden chopsticks more than forks or spoons now and if we have to eat at a place that gives us plastic chopsticks or worse, metal ones, the looks of distain are never ending. Environmental friendliness is a good thing, and I know Asia’s bamboo forests take a heavy hit with all the disposable wooden chopsticks manufactured from them, but plastic is just too hard to eat with. It hardly picks up the food and metal ones are even worse. I have secured my own 3 pairs of wooden chopsticks so I don’t have to use forks all the time when I go home.

Hot tea is served at every meal instead of any sort of water (or any cold beverage. The Chinese are really adamant about not eating cold stuff with food-it makes you sick) I think my soda addicted classmates have gotten used to the warm Pepsi by now. It bothers me no longer though. We went to a Korean restaurant for lunch yesterday and they served chilled water with the meal. I couldn’t drink it. Then I realized that I made my own tea in a thermos when I ate instant noodles in the room. Now I have to find a cheap but sturdy teapot so I can continue to drink proper loose leaf tea. The idea of tea bags has become abhorrent to me. Thank you China for ruining my ability to drink liquids like a normal American, haha.

I love my Korean friends, but I’m afraid I just don’t like their food. Maybe if I wasn’t fretting over the fact I can’t drink anything but tea at meals or eat with metal chopsticks (seriously hard to do, and all Korean restaurants seem to use metal chopsticks…) it’d be easier to like. But who knows…I’ll just have to go to Korea and find out the right way. It’s probably Chinesified Korean food I’ve been eating anyhoo.

Usually when I keep journals I mention a topic more often than others because it makes a big impression on me. This has almost always been food. And while I can say that the food is definitely a new experience (and I can now almost read a Chinese menu-something I’m rather proud of) Yantai has shown me the power of rain and what happens when a campus isn’t designed to drain. The walkways are all vaguely like trenches and when it rains, it rains really hard (and can do it all day long), so that the sidewalks can have ankle deep water covering them. It’s no wonder the mosquitoes are more numerous than ants.

That last statement is actually a lie; I’ve seen a lot of ants here lately. I think they must have sprayed for bugs because there are a lot of large bug (cicada, grasshopper, beetles) corpses that just kinda dropped off the trees and the ants are carrying away their carcasses. I’d look at them longer but other people stare at me even more when I’m looking at dead bugs than when I’m just walking back to the dorm.

There are also HUGE spiders here. No exaggeration we found one in a web that was about the size of a ping pong ball both in depth and diameter. I tried to take a picture of it but the size of it isn’t really captured appropriately. We’d see these giant webs that looked like they’d been vacated only to realize days later that the spiders just come out at night. There is also some version of silk tunnel spiders in all the bushes. They build a little canopy of silk in their part of the bush and live there. I counted about 20 on a single small bush one day. It’s all rather fascinating. Once, when I was walking back with my teacher he asked me if I like spiders, since I was looking at a bunch of them again. I said yes and he said Chinese people like them too cause they taste good. -_-;