Part two of Friday fun post.

This was a pretty view on the path toward the pagoda. There were people selling cool things all along the path. Most of them tried to get our attention to sell us things. For the most part we just looked at their goods, smiled, and then kept walking. 

View from one of the lower levels of the pagoda.

On our way to finding the pagoda, we got a little bit lost. There was no direct route, so we walked around trying to find a way up. As we were doing so, a group of Chinese teenagers came over to see what we were doing. They excitedly took pictures with the foreigners and then decided to go with us to find the pagoda. Thus we made our first Chinese friends. We wound up spending the next five hours hanging out with them all around the city.

Qingdao has some interesting architecture.

Our Chinese 朋友.

The view from the pagoda (which was really a tourist trap that we paid 10 kuai to get into) was well worth the money.

 

 

After leaving the pagoda, we were walking along the street and came across a movie set. They were in the process of filming right on the street. Apparently the guy in black in the chair is famous in China. I think is name is He Bin.

So, that was exciting even if the scene they were filming was not. We got to witness 20 exciting seconds of a take in which two people push a cart up a hill. 

After leaving the movie set, we made our way to Zhong Shan Park. It's a big park with an amusement park within it. 

We rode this exhilarating and nauseating carnival ride. I should have gotten a shot with it in the air. It looks much less scary when it isn't moving. 

Afterward we walked around the park. We came across this statue. I have no idea who it is, but apparently he was a great man...

My friends were confused about why I took this picture. They asked me if the English was wrong and I tried to explain to them that it wasn't wrong, just amusing. I've got some other funny sign pictures that I will eventually put into a post about funny signs/bad English translations. 

Our group split in half and we were escorted back to campus via bus by three of the girls. The one on the left met up with us later in the day. 

They loved taking pictures with us. 

We later realized that this group of friends we made was going back to the town they live in the following day and that they weren't actually from Qingdao. We exchanged contact information and Maeve and I have been talking to some of them online. 

Chinese people are extremely friendly. I've made friends with a cashier at a book store. I befriended a girl who randomly came over and talked to me because I smiled at her. Between the people and the food (I spent less than 50 cents American on a delicious dinner tonight), there is more than reason enough to want to stay here forever (don't worry Mom, I'm coming home even if I don't want to).