Jul 31 2010
The long haul.
Well its been an extremely amazing adventure. After Sweden, I was traveling to Norway, (although I didn’t like it much and soon returned to be with philip), Germany, Hungary, Czech, Slovakia, Austria, Poland and now I have flown half way across the world in China!!! 
I have to tell you, I am having a great time, but it is a lot dirtier than Canada of course. People seem to just throw garbage on the ground wherever they like. I could make a comment about all the asian people, but I think that’s a given.
However, I am staying in the city of Jinan with about 6 million people! This is like a small town to China. You can tell it is small town because they STARE at white people such as my self and usually yell WAIGUOREN!!! WAIGUOREN!!! (foreigners!!!) lol. Or they point, especially children and then they ask their mothers why the fuck we look like that lol!
But in general, we arrived a lot earlier than the other students so we are the only ones here. I am happy to be here, but the living conditions are not the best at all! We had our bathroom infested with bugs and it was not cleaned when we got it. We washed them out so we could use the bathroom and then the cleaning ladies said they couldn’t do anything about it because they had to see it 
. Ugh, but its only for a month so I can deal. Thank god for flipflops!
Other than that, we did some major exploring yesterday. We went to the Spring Market Square by taxi and made it pretty good. We wrote it down and attempted to pronounce it and they will say with a smile always, HAO HAO HAO! Lol, the taxi drivers are quite nice! (ps, omg, China wins for crazy driving…I need to upload a video, it goes beyond words, but there are no rules, there are no lines, and somehow there are no car accidents that I have seen. I have no idea how I haven’t DIED YET lol). I bought some converters and little cakes and stuff. I also bought a badminton racket at the Chinese walmart for like 80 cents Canadian. OMG. Awesome. Also, at the chinese walmart, they have animals you can buy to eat. You take them out with a fishnet yourself. THEY ARE TURTLES TO EAT. Does that not make you just queese? Maybe I should buy one as a pet and keep him while I am here LOL. Random I know. They also sell dried shrimp like candy. As you might guess I am having trouble eating here lol.
Other than that, I am just chilling till orientation starts on monday. Today, Sunday, is mostly just a review day as I have been having Swedish all around me for six months so my Chinese is a little lacking. So that is what I will do today and maybe go for a walk to buy a phone. Vi ses everyone!