Trial Run

We are preparing for our first independent trip here in China. We're heading to Qingdao, the site of the yachting events for the Olympics. Our plans are to go and check it out and return before the students all head home. They are just finishing their school year and will head home next weekend. In the same way that the whole country of China is on the move during Chinese New Year, all the students head home for the summer holidays. We don't want to get stuck in the crush.

With William's help yesterday, we got our train tickets. We opted for the fast train that will get us there in half the time (two and a half hours). We will attempt this all on our own even though he offered to take us to the train station tomorrow. It may not sound like much but since we've found the language barrier much more of a factor here than in Mexico, it's a bit daunting.

So we're packing up all of our travel guides and phrase books. Funny enough, while we had them in Mexico, we rarely needed them as much as we will here. I am all ready to write out Chinese characters too, in case our pronunciation is impenetrable. I'll have little slips of paper made up for the taxi driver with "train station" written out in Chinese. Along with the books, we will definitely be bringing along the electronic dictionary / translator. I have deciphered enough of the instructions to figure out how to get it to say phrases I enter. So if necessary, IT can tell the ticket agent we want to buy tickets. Then as the last resort, we'll have our students on speedcall!

We've booked a room online at a nice hostel so we know we have a place to stay. The town, because of the Olympics, will be a nice, safe place to start getting our feet wet... should be enough English spoken there. At the very least, they won't be staring at Don as much. I know he'll enjoy that for a change. I've already located Starbucks (plural!!) there. Get me in there and I'll be pointing and grunting for a tall Americano!

Stay tuned for more. J