This past week our family had the incredible blessing of a little get-away! We took off to a nearby city that was highly recommended as being a great vacation spot for families. We found a hotel that was near the beach and even had an outdoor swimming pool! Our team leaders here in Tianjin highly recommended that Kevin and I both take a break from classes and that our family try to head out of town for a few days as a way of getting in quality family time and also having a break from our normal routine here and the hustle and bustle of big city life. We gladly accepted their counsel, and had a great time relaxing and exploring more of China!
We even had the added blessing of my teacher, and closest friend here in China, join us for most of our time in Qing Dao (the place we were vacationing). Her family lives several hours by train from Qing Dao, and she was home visiting her parents during the summer break. So it was a pretty easy trip for her to come join us for our family adventure! The kids love having her along, and it was a great opportunity for me to spend more time with a dear friend, one who is newly like-minded on important things, as well!
The hotel we stayed in was a little off the beaten path, so we had our own stretch of "private" beach. The beach itself was really pretty, but had a huge amount of broken glass and other "hazardous materials" that made us all keep our shoes on the whole time. The 3 older kids' favorite part was going on adventures with Kevin, in which they would hike out on the rocks that jutted out into the ocean. Noah was pretty content just digging in the sand with his shovel and occasionally tasting a bite or two! The private beach part was a huge blessing, because just as we are in Tianjin, our family continued to be a spectacle wherever we went. Our "blonde beacons" shone brightly in every Chinese crowd--even those that we drew as people watched from the walkway above us as we played on the beach.
One of my favorite parts of the beach was the HUGE amount of brides who were there to take their wedding portrait photos. Our first day out to the water there was literally a line of brides waiting their turn to go out on the rocks to have their photos taken. And watching them pose was the best part. I don't think there was a single one who simply stood with a smile. Most of them had arms raised above their heads (see photo) or stood with their bodies and arms tilted kind of like an airplane! It was quite entertaining to watch!
Besides the beach, the kids had a ball at the swimming pool. There were obviously a huge number of foreigners vacationing there, because they even had music playing in English the entire time! I can't tell you how refreshing it was! We were even able to enjoy a western buffet breakfast each morning.
We took one day to go to Polar World--Qing Dao's version of Sea World. We were all surprised at how well it was put together, complete with dolphin and whale shows and even live polar bears and beluga whales! One thing that was a first--there was a portion of the park where you could pay a small fee and get a bottle with milk in it that was used to feed fish! There was a huge crowd around the shallow pool, all with bottles sticking into the top of the water where the fish were swarming around to drink! It was crazy! We found a secluded spot that was kind of like the park's reception area that had a window into the dolphin tank. I think the kids' favorite part was hanging out down there because of how much the dolphins were interacting with them! They would swim by and kind of stop where the kids were and you could even hear them "talking" with their dolphin squeaks. Really cool. My other favorite part was watching Kevin work his magic in order to get permission to leave the park entrance gate to go out and buy KFC for us to have for lunch. We didn't know when we entered one portion that you were unable to leave, and we had another hour and a half before the last show we wanted to watch but nothing except a few snacks to eat. Kevin was FINALLY able to convince the people working the gate (after being denied at the only other exit/entrance) that his kids weren't accustomed to the Chinese food inside (the only thing they were selling within the park gates), so he HAD to go out and get them chicken nuggets! After several calls to her boss, who we decided must be the GM or the owner of the whole park!, Kevin got the go-ahead to leave and still be able to re-enter! The whole scene was quite Chinese-ee, where everyone follows the rules to a "t". But hey, we got our KFC!!
A few other fun tidbits and major highlights. One was Kevin's language blunder--which happen very infrequently, especially compared to his wife's number of mistakes! At the pool, he got his tones wrong on one of his words and ended up asking for a "swimming cat" rather than a "swimming cap"! He got a few chuckles, but at least was understood. Another was my misunderstanding of a sign on one of the major roads when we were coming back from dinner in a taxi. The sign read "Qing Dao Party School". I thought it hilarious that some school was advertising itself so openly as a party school, assuming that academics were not being taken seriously, which is a huge shock considering the Chinese culture! Kevin explained to me, however, that it was more likely a statement on the school being aligned with the government here in China rather than a state of its social interaction. Oops! The third amusing thing is what we brought back as gifts for our Chinese friends here. (In China, when you go on trips, you are supposed to always bring back gifts for your closest friends. Usually, each region or province has food that it is famous for, so this is a very normal thing to bring back.) So the food that was recommended we bring was squid slices! So I went to the store and stocked up on dried squid slices, along with some shark slices (which I thought would be good for some of Kevin's baseball friends because of how "manly" the package looked with a shark on the front!) and other kind of dried fish slices. I'm so glad that they are tightly vacuum packed so I didn't have to worry about the smell escaping in our luggage and contaminating it all! Gotta love the cultural differences. Who knows, by the time we get back to the States I'll maybe be missing the squid slices of Qing Dao. . .
