Home Inn (Linyi Jinqueshan Road)

... time, I thought that this is a form of torture used in some coercion methodologies, and I would definitely go crazy if confined to hear this music for more than my allotted time on the bus. Crazy. Absolutely crazy.

I jumped in the first cab I saw when I got off at the highway exit. “Henan University, south gate, old campus.” When the man let me out, I gave him an extra kuai, which is not much, but no one is expected to tip here. “That is for not taking the long route,” I told him.

... of the five sacred mountains in China, Taishan. It has a total 6000+ steps, but we only climbed 3000! Still it was a workout, but the view from the top was awesome!
Then we went to Qufu, which is only about a 1.5 hour bus ride away. Qufu is Confucious' hometown, so we visited everything Confucious! We saw Confucious temple, then Confucious burial forest, and his mansion (he didn't actually ...

... his teachings are taking fresh root in China today. The majority of devotees around Qufu are middle aged or elderly, suggesting that the comeback of Confucianism is more likely a re-emergence of beliefs never effectively squashed by the communists. Chinese scholars are making careful statements reaffirming the significance of Confucius historical role and suggestion that the progressive ...

... out of their way to help you.

On the way back, Mum recognised a dumpling restaurant near my house, so we jumped off the bus and made it home about an hour or so earlier than if we had gone all the way back to the central station. How Mum managed to recognise the place even though unable to read any of the signs when I could not, despite living there for six months and being able to read Chinese is a) really embarrassing and b) a sign of how terribly vague I have become!

... Finally we were off...or so we thought. After about 15 minutes we stopped on the side of the road to pick up 4 more people. Suprisingly they fit, it was crowded but they made it. Then we stopped at a gas station, only to find out that there was no gas. No gas at a gas station, interesting. So we had to stop again. Finally we thought we were on our way. Only to stop about an hour later on the side of the highway. There we picked up a box. The box was about 5x3x3. One would think that it ...

... of the air conditioned van, thats my kind of travel. Soon we stopped and saw this huge lake. Si Yue told us that the lake has a lot of salt in it so you can float (its like the dead sea but not as cool) so we changed into bathing suits and unsteadly stepped into a gross looking pond. Miraculously we could float. Our translator, Apple, has never learned to swim so she basically flipped out. Although you could stand in ...

So here in Chna people have a lot of trouble saying Miriam, so I have been telling everyone that they can just call me Mimi. Our new translator arrived two days ago and he has been having trouble saying my name, so I said he can just call me Mimi. He laughed and told me he couldn't do that. Turns out Mimi in Chinese means breasts. So, basically I have been telling everyone my ...

... Lian. It means beautiful lotus flower...and it almost sounds like Miriam. The director wrote out a nice sentence for me and signed it so I can hang it on the wall. It was a lot of fun to practice the script, although it is really hard to make it look as beautiful as they do. Last night after dinner we went to the park across the street. It still suprises me how active it is. There were tons of families, couples and children, walking, roller skating ...

... about 25 cents (any requests?) The jogs in the park are nice. People mainly just stare at us everywhere we go. This morning, however, Holly and I saw a fellow american running. He smiled at us, confused as not having been smiled at in over a week, we both gave a dumb smile back. I have started to get used to being stared at...our policy so far is stare back. Life is pretty similar, no ...

... two rising high school seniors and a brother and sister, 21 and 18. we had a great group and all got along really well. two nights ago we got on a night train to weifang, and arrived here at 5am. we got into the hotel and went right to sleep. the train was not very comfortable so none of us has slept. around noon we got up and walked around the city. across the street from the hotel is a huge park were we spent some time. this morning sandy ...