May Day 2009

We had the day off yesterday. Don suggested we get out and do a bit of shopping. Unfortunately, we forgot that going shopping seems to be THE favourite pastime here.

Before we got on a packed bus, we saw this at the gate of our neighbourhood.



















Apparently, May Day 2009 was an auspicious day to get married. We found out later from Yoshi that it was his friend's wedding. We think that this is a rather unusual sight even for the locals because they were taking advantage of the photo op too. We think, because we didn't stay around to see, that the horses were for the groom and his attendants. The sedan chair would have been for the bride.

So back to our adventure downtown. We crammed ourselves into a bus and then quickly found ourselves in a traffic jam. Anyone who is claustrophobic would not have enjoyed our bus ride. Thankfully, there was a breeze yesterday!

We saw a couple of more wedding parties along the way. The entire bus, including me, tried to get a glimpse of the brides in the back of the fancy black cars. Sadly, they were always tinted so the most I saw was a shoulder.

When we got downtown, we stopped for a bit of brunch before we headed into the crowd. We found a nice quiet KFC and found a seat by the window. Here was our entertainment as we ate. There was a kid's birthday party upstairs. We were just in time for the "get them all wound up" outside part. A KFC employee led the kids through some dances and then gave them a treat. As the kids were lining up, they spotted Don in the window. When we both whipped out our cellphones to take a photo, one of them posed for Don. They were very cute, a bit uncoordinated but cute!

We headed over to Wal-mart afterwards. We made our way through the main square which was packed full of people. There were also big groups of tourists following their leaders holding their "follow me" flags. Then there was the sea of cellphone vendors. It seemed like everyone needed a new phone.

Here are some souvenirs from Wal-mart.























On our way back, we took a cab home instead of cramming ourselves back into a bus. We had a better experience with a Jinan cab driver this time. We told him and showed him (my little piece of paper with our address written in Chinese) where we wanted to go. We headed off in the right direction but was quickly stuck in traffic. He said something and after checking that he wasn't on the cellphone, we realized he was talking to me. I told him I didn't understand in Mandarin and that was met by a laugh. We then proceeded to have a conversation that neither party quite understood. Then, at a traffic light when we were stopped he passed this piece of paper over the cage. Oh yeah, the taxi drivers are normally protected by a steel or plastic cage. WE laughed when we saw it because he thought it would help us to understand what he was trying to say. He said something else and I finally understood that he wanted to go on the overhead road that would cost more money but would avoid the traffic. We told him ok. When we got home, I checked what I could of his message on my electronic dictionary and confirmed that I understood him well enough.





We spent the rest of the day napping until it was time to go to BBQ because the Internet was very very slow. Judging by the text messages we got from the students, they were all bored and so were probably surfing the Internet.

So that was our May Day. J :)