Right - quick recount of past month and a half…

· Dad came to visit!

It may have been a short visit, but it was a lovely few days. Started off by making him take me out for Western food - such a treat seeing as I'd pretty much only been eating Chinese food for the past few months. The next day I took him to the rather brutal massage place I go to regularly - the masseuses and I had fun laughing at all the cries and groans of pain Dad was emitting at regular intervals! After a donkey sandwich for lunch, we hopped on the bus (Dad's first time on a Chinese bus despite having lived in China for a few years, oh dear...) and headed to the Beer Museum which had its good points (free beer tasting) and its bad (most of the museum hah). Continuing with the beer theme, later on we headed to Strong Ale Works, a microbrewery set up by this American guy in the old part of Qingdao. Random, I know, but really cool. Saul came to join us and we spent a happy hour or so sipping on some lovely ales (I chose the Coffee Stout, much to Dad's disgust) and chatting. Next day we had a leisurely brunch at the wonderful Kiwi Café, before taking a bus to Ba Da Guan, a very pretty old area of town - the leaves were just changing colour and the sun was out so it was a gorgeous sight. Then we took a long walk along the coast back to the central area, which was really enjoyable - especially watching all the soon-to-be-married couples looking awkward and cold in their horrifically tacky wedding outfits having their wedding photos taken on the beach. By the time we got back to the Marina and had sipped on an overpriced coffee it was already mid-afternoon and we were both pretty exhausted, so we headed back to my flat and watched an episode of Barchester Towers on DVD (lame I know… I asked him to bring over the most English DVDs he/Mum could think of!). At 7pm we headed to a local restaurant for dinner with around 10 or so of my Chinese friends. It was a bit of an odd bunch of people and the language barrier was tricky at times but generally I think people enjoyed themselves. Dad was leaving at around 5am the next morning, so after dinner was over we said a teary farewell, before parting ways again…

· Friends?

The whole making Chinese friends thing has proved far more difficult than we anticipated. It seems that once you make a friend you actually really like and have things in common with, they either b***** off (one of Helena's good friends is unfortunately going travelling for pretty much the rest of our time here) or they start to drive you slightly insane; sometimes because they're overly patronising ("Oh WOW, you can use chopsticks! You're SO CLEVER!"), sometimes because they're wayyyy too keen and message you all the time, sometimes because they hold views that are simply offensive and are hard for me to shrug off simply due to cultural differences, and sometimes because the only activity they want to do is KTV, which makes me want to shoot myself. It's not all bad though; I have met some absolutely awesome people. For example, I mentioned a few posts ago that I'd made a friend whose English name is William - he's very interesting and has a great sense of humour so I hang out with him a lot.

· Exams…lol

We had end of terms exams last week, which were pretty hilarious. The fact that they don't count for anything this year, combined with us all feeling pretty exhausted/unmotivated after a long, long term meant that none of us did any preparation, to the extent that we all got the giggles during our Tang Poetry exam as we were all so clueless. Oh well. As for how the Chinese is going in general… it's hard to tell. I definitely feel like my reading/listening/passive vocabulary has improved immensely, but I still feel like my speaking is pretty poop. Need to have a think next term about how to tackle this. But for now, I'm going to have some time off Chinese and come back after the holiday (hopefully) refreshed and re-motivated.

· Shanghai!

Straight after exams finished, I hopped on a plane and headed down to Shanghai to see the lovely Will and Kinga, who were there visiting Will's Dad. It was very nice to see some old friends and have a good catch up. On the Friday we went to Zhou Zhuang, one of the pretty (but rather touristy) little water villages near Shanghai/Suzhou. We wandered around, had some lunch and went on a boat ride, which we shared with two Chinese people who were absolutely hilarious; they found us so intriguing, and kept taking the piss out of me for being a third wheel (电灯泡)haha. We chilled for a bit when we got back to the flat, went on a quick trip to buy some Uncle Testu cheesecake (SO GOOD), and then headed out to Xintiandi for a lovely Italian meal with Will's Dad. We went for a quick drink in a really tiny, secret whisky bar afterwards which was pretty cool, before heading back to bed, as Will and Kinga were to leave early the next morning. After they set off the nexy day, I had lunch with a Chinese friend I'd met the year before when backpacking, which was quite fun, then met Hugh and Jasmine (two Churchill Chinese graduates) for coffee, so it was great to hear about what they're up to. All in all a fun trip!

The last few weeks have been a bit weird really. After the excitement of seeing Dad, I couldn't help but feel a bit down after he left, and although I've had Thailand to look forward to, I feel like I've spent the past few weeks just counting down the days until term ends, instead of really making the most of out life in Qingdao. This has also meant that every now and again I've had quite severe bouts of homesickness/really missing certain people. But generally I've been happy and doing well. Just think I need a holiday - some time to get away from China and take a break from the routine. So, on that note, I better wrap this up and get packing as I'M OFF TO THAILAND TODAY!! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in advance, and see you all in 2014! xxxxxx