As I turned over the next page on my lovely Tooting Bec Lido Calendar, it suddenly hit me that it's April. April!? Despite the past month and a half really dragging on at times, now it feels like time has flown by. I've managed to neglect my blog again recently, so this will be another manic summary post!

After I returned from Chinese New Year, I had the whole month of February ahead with absolutely no plans. As most of my Western friends were off travelling and lots of my Chinese friends still hadn't returned to Qingdao after the holidays, I became a bit of a hermit, to the extent that my short exchanges with the staff at the gym or in my local 7/11 were pretty much the only human interaction I had for two weeks. At first I didn't mind, and I passed the first week or so pretty happily. I read a lot, and actually finally got round to doing some Chinese work, which was satisfying. This routine soon got a little depressing though, and despite regular Skypes with friends back home, I did start to go slightly mad.

Thankfully, Helena arrived back from her travels at this point - it was awesome to see her again. It was great hearing all about her wonderful holidays in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Bali, although the downside was that, because she'd had such an brilliant time away, she was rather disappointed to be back in QD. I could sympathise with this; it was still bitterly cold, the pollution was quite bad and the prospect of lectures starting again in a few weeks wasn't helping our moods either. We allowed ourselves to wallow in post-holiday depression for a few days, before deciding that this was no good, and we ought to do something about it. So, we started creating a sort of Qingdao bucket list, full of little fun things we want to do before we leave. Most of them revolve around eating haha, but there are some cultural activities on there too! Here are a few we've done so far:

-Jimo's Hot Springs

Helena and I had been meaning to do this for a while - we're both hot springs fans, and it sounded like a lovely day trip out of the city. I recently made friends with a Chinese lady who was keen to come too and, conveniently, offered to drive us there and back.

The trip didn't start well. The first hot spring we tried (which actually looked like it might be quite good) wouldn't let Helena and me in because we weren't Chinese. Great. The next few we tried were all indoor springs, and while my Chinese friend didn't find this strange, Helena and I were mildly appalled at the thought of essentially having a bath in a small, sweaty room. In the end, we found one that had some outdoor springs - on the roof. They looked pretty grim, but at this point we didn't care.

Things got even better at this point- Helena had forgotten to bring a swimsuit, so she had to buy one. If you've ever been to China you'll know that ALL swimsuits on sale here are just horrendous. All of them. Embracing this, we decided to pick the most horrific one we could find, just for lols. So, Helena ended up in a ridiculous bumblebee swimming costume consisting of a bright yellow and black polka dot halter neck top and the most horrendous little yellow shorts to match. Brilliant.

As we lowered ourselves into the slightly dirty rooftop bath, we couldn't help but burst our laughing at the hilarity of the situation. We'd started the day with hopes of bathing naked in gorgeous mountainside springs like we'd both done in Japan - but instead, we'd ended up in a bathtub full of water we didn't even think was from a spring, on a rooftop with possibly the most depressing view one could imagine - smoggy construction sites.

Determined to make the best out of it, we had quite a nice splash about in the bath for an hour or so, while having a pretty interesting chat with my Chinese friend. However, the worst was yet to come! A mixture of not having eaten for 5 hours, having relatively low blood pressure/sugar, sitting in a tub of boiling water for an extended period of time and being on the rag meant that I ended up fainting. Thankfully I felt it coming, so positioned myself against a wall with Helena propping me up, but still, after my black out I couldn't see or hear anything for several minutes afterwards, which wasn't so fun.

Before heading back to Qingdao, we stopped off at a little restaurant for a late lunch, which ended up being the best part of the day - the food was fresh and delicious and the conversation good too. So, activity number one on our list was completely bizarre, generally disappointing, although somehow weirdly enjoyable too!

-Taiwanese Sweet Shop and banana splits at Kiwi Cafe

A Taiwanese pudding shop opened just across the road from my flat recently, so we thought we'd go along and try it out. We were hoping they'd serve a peanut pancake thing that Helena had in Taiwan and said was amaaaazing. They didn't, and our puddings were pretty grim. 2/10 for that one! Thankfully, our experience sampling the banana split at Kiwi Café the week before was far more successful - the chef there used to live in New Zealand and his food is always awesome. Highlight was the homemade mango and blueberry ice cream!

-Theatre Trip No. 1 - Guanyin with 1000 hands

On our list were two trips to Qingdao's Grant Theatre. First off, we saw a dance performance called 《千手观音》 which translates literally as "the thousand-hand Guanyin". Guanyin is the Bodhisattva of compassion or mercy, who can hear people's cries of suffering and tries to help them. The performance told a series of stories about Guanyin through a mixture of ballet and modern dance. The dancers were excellent, the costumes generally stunning and the group numbers were particularly effective and impressive. The climax of the show was the last scene - the 1000 hands scene - where 20 or more dancers stood in a line and moved their arms about with incredible timing and precision to create the effect of the dancer at the front having 1000 hands. Very enjoyable!

-Theatre Trip No. 2 - The murder of hanging garden

Our next theatre trip was to see a Chinese musical written by avant-garde director Meng Jinghui, who wanted to reinvent the musical genre for a Chinese audience. I was pretty excited about going to see this; I'm a huge musical fan, and I'd read that Meng Jinghui's scripts are always wacky and entertaining. We certainly weren't disappointed! The plot was about a real estate tycoon who goes missing, and whose body parts turn up spewing out of an ATM a few days later. His wife offers a reward for anyone who can provide information about her husband's disappearance - the reward is the couple's most luxurious property, an apartment called the 'hanging garden'. This offer causes three random groups of eccentric characters to confess to the murder, causing all sorts of chaos. It was completely mad and really fun to watch, and the songs were pretty catchy too. We only wish we could have understood more of the dialogue; in Chinese comedy it seems to be the done thing to speak INSANELY fast, which made it pretty hard for us to keep up with the already confusing plot! Still, another interesting experience - we were both really glad to have seen it.

-Hummus

I know this sounds weird, but you can't buy hummus here OKAY. However, what you can buy is tahini, and after Helena finally tracked down some chickpeas, we were good to go! The first batch was glorious, and I'm sure there will be many more delightful hummus-making sessions in the next few months. Don't worry, I won't blog about it every time…

I think those are all the activities we've ticked off so far! As for other things that have been happening… I was quite busy for 3 weeks teaching two students who were about to take their IELTs exam. I enjoyed it actually, and was good for the bank account too! My Director of Studies at Cambridge, Boping, also came to visit. Given that a) he can be scary, b) the last time I saw him was on the plane out to China and it was awkward and c) I'm thinking of changing courses next year, I wasn't really looking forward to seeing him at all. However, it ended up being quite nice - we ordered pizza and chatted for an hour or so about how our year abroads were going etc. Finally, I did some voice recording for an IELTs textbook, which was pretty fun… was a tad awkward that lots of the English was very, very wrong and I had to correct it as I went along. Still, was an easy way to earn some money, plus recording the dialogues with my friend Sam was just hilarious!

It's strange… because I'm more than halfway through my year abroad at this stage, I alternate between periods of being really frustrated and wanting time to rush past so I can go home NOW, to periods of really enjoying QD and wanting to make the most out of my time here. However, I'm confident that as the weather gets nicer, I'll find myself enjoying life here more and more. Today, I ditched classes and ended up going to a gorgeous bit of beach for a swim and a sunbathe and it was just bliss…I couldn't help but think of all my Cambridge friends frantically revising and feel pretty pleased to be several thousand miles away! xxxx