Saturday, June 9

It was a picture perfect day in Qingdao—sunny, breezy, warm, no fog.  Absolutely lovely.  We had a date at the beach today, a picnic with the school staff to celebrate the end of a successful year.  First, though, we skyped Elinor’s birthday party!  Julia chortled over ‘spying’ on the girls who were eating design-your-own-hotdogs-and- ice-cream sundaes; Julia found the whole experience enthralling.  It was nice to catch glimpses of our backyard, blurry and faded though they were, and to see Elinor and the other sweet, American girls.  Kind of an odd activity, and one that gave Julia a pang or two about not being physically present.  However, she spent an hour watching and occasionally chatting with various girls, and it seemed to give her a helpful blast of home.  We stopped because she ‘got bored,’ so that’s pretty healthy!

And then we were inspired to invite Sunny to go to the beach picnic with us.  The plan was made to meet Sunny and her mother and baby brother at the beach; Alex and Maci should be there too as they are children of staff members—it will be a gathering of the 2^nd grade class!

Off to start the busy day!

We took a taxi with Luwan, from upstairs; she is the wife of the math teacher (American from Vermont) and is from Thailand.  We have had several nice chats; she is a friendly person and a great cook.  The taxi driver thought we wanted to go to Number 1 Beach, and took us a long way through town and up and down the mountain.  When we got near to Zheng Shan Park, I realized we were going the wrong way—I was proud of myself for recognizing where we were!  We eventually got it straightened out—Luwan speaks only a bit of Chinese and didn’t know the name of our destination, Number Three Beach.  In the process, we drove past Number 1 Beach, which is in “Old Town” where the Germans lived in the late 1890s; it was a lovely quick view—definitely a place we need to return to.

Finally, we found Number 3 Beach, from which we could see the dome of the school, as it is a short 15 minute walk from there.  The beach was a bit bigger than we thought; we had to call Maggie to locate the group on the sand.  We knew we had the spot when we saw Alex digging away; Julia flung her things aside and joined him.  They were right at the top of the beach; I tried to encourage them toward wet sand, as that is more responsive than very dry sand.  We dug a bit—there was glass and bits of trash.  Not a pretty beach! But the little cove was lovely and the view of the city fabulous.  The sky was high and light in a way it hasn’t been often in our 5 weeks. 

We found Alex!

A view of the beach - and skyline right across the way

Julia jumping in to help Alex dig

Soon both Maci and Sunny arrived, and they moved down to the tide line, where the sand was wet.  All you really need at the beach is a hole, in truth.  They worked on the hole for a good hour; Sunny and Alex were in charge of bringing water up from the sea to fill it (!), while Maci, Julia and Ryoki dug.  Eventually they began a trench to the sea; for every 5 feet they dug, the tide went out another 10 feet!  The tide is quite shallow there, so it went out in great chunks of beach.  By the time we left, it had gone out a good 120 meters (or, 131 yards--see how international I’ve become).  The beach left bare was wonderful, all ridgy with scattered shells.  There was something particularly pleasurable in walking far out toward the water across yards and yards of exposed beach. 

The kids came in briefly for hamburgers, chips, fruit salad, and water, and then all ended up down in the water with a ball; Maci’s 12 year old brother joined, and Charlie, the 9 year old son of the school’s owner.  They had a wonderful time doing the simplest thing with a ball and 8 kids for a good hour, maybe more.  And notable about the experience was the lack of argument; thrower throws ball, catcher ‘wins’ ball, becomes thrower.  No one needed to assert any more control than that. 

Beach lunch!

No beach trip is complete without burying a friend

Ready to play!

Everyone loved this game!

It was a great day for Julia and Sunny; Sunny had the good taste to tell her mother that yesterday, the birthday party, was ‘the best day.’ And mother—Wei Wei—was explicitly complimentary to me on several occasions during the day.  The Chinese are admiring of good parenting, even as they feel somewhat unable to achieve it themselves.  They are caught right now between the traditional ways and the opportunities the 21st century and a more open society have brought to them.  They have individualized their parenting in ways that their parents would never have done, but they don’t know how to both dote on their children and elicit reasonable behavior from them.  Hence, the spoiled child syndrome many find in Chinese children.  I expect that Wei Wei didn’t feel comfortable sending Sunny with us, which is why she came to the beach and brought the 3 year old brother.  Once she was there, though, she quickly sized me up as ‘a good mother,’ which was a nice compliment!  At the end of the day, she proclaimed it the second ‘best day,’ and the girls would clearly have stayed playing for hours more!  They tried to execute some kind of play date; we put it off until tomorrow and/or Monday. 

Happy friends at the end of a good beach day

So, a double win for Julia:  a simply perfect beach day, and a new friend.  She looked completely happy and comfortable all day, with this group of kids.  The long term benefits of these 2 months have to be extensive, right?  She is encountering different people, developing social skills under ‘pressure,’ navigating the physical details of a hectic urban world…and on and on. 

After a thorough showering—what might be in that sea water?  And Sabrina told me a perfectly awful story about ‘some kind of shell’ that has something in it that eats skin if it gets into one’s system.  Her neighbor had a leg amputated because of it!!—we went back to the neighborhood restaurant we tried on Thursday for take out.  I had the brilliant idea of ordering Julia two orders of rice, for a grand total of 64 cents.  I looked in my two phrase books for rice, and found a helpful phrase for cooked rice (rather than raw, as I first found).  Then I thought, I should order something besides 4 yuan of rice! So I tried to find snow peas, or broccoli.  Neither book had those words (one is a travelers’ dictionary, for crying out loud!).  So I was somewhat flummoxed as to further options.  However, just as we reached the restaurant, I discovered a short list of restaurant words—still no broccoli! But peanut chicken sounded tasty—no, they didn’t have that.  Then I landed on sesame rice balls—we would both like those flavors.  And yes, they had that; order was submitted, for a grand total of 24 yuan!  They recognized us of course; it was the same group of wait staff.  They were eager to be helpful, which has been so typical of this experience here.  I had the brilliant thought to ask for a menu so that I could get Mia and Sabrina to translate for me; then we can order what we know they have!  The staff clearly thought that was brilliant as well; I’ve had a good day!

The food came, we all djay jenned one another (djay jenn—good bye) and as we walked home, I took a sesame rice ball from the plastic bag and had a big bite:  it was REVOLTING!! I threw them away!  The outside was fried, golden, but not crispy. And the inside was gelatinous (read, gluey) rice paste with some terrible flavor.  I shudder to think of it again, and need a cherry to cleanse my palate again!  Sadly, this reconfirms my thought that we aren’t, currently, cut out to eat Chinese!  I see lots of tasty looking things on people’s plates in the restaurant, though!  Maybe Mia can identify something that I will more surely think we’d like.    And, Julia loved her sticky rice with soy sauce, and the 11 cherries I required she eat.  Topped off with a tiny carton of Haagen Daz ice cream.  What a good day!