Confucius' Dream Performance

To end day 1 of crazy Qufu tourism, the school bought us all tickets to see "Confucius' Dream." It's a dance performance that features "ideas" and "quotes" from the teachings of Confucius and promotes "world peace." So...basically it was a dance performance with loud music, bright lights, lots of fog machine action, and some pretty hilarious translations of Confucius displayed on giant TV screens on either side of the stage. Maybe not the best dance performance I've ever seen...but definitely and experience. P.S. not pictured bellow: all the little kids buy these glowing pretend sword things and wave them around (hilarious), AND they all run amuck at the front of the stage...props to the dancers who were able to perform while little 3 and 4 year olds gawked at them from 5 inches away and mimicked the dancing!

Here we are entering the "Confucius Dream"

CONFUCIUS woo woo!

Sword dancing is cool

These ladies had on some seriously cool shoes...ancient chinese high-heels = CRAZY!

SLEEVES!

The Chinese acrobats were the best...those are plates spinning ontop of long sticks! and in the back, not pictured, were two girls spinning tables on their feet!

This one was entitled something about the "maiden and the cowboy"....he looked like no cowboy i've ever seen...

Then everyone in the world became friends and loved eachother because they accepted the teachings of Confucius...that's what it said, but then the dance was all firey and red and violent...so i'm not really sure what they were going for here...

In the end, because of Confucius' dream of world peace...the world became a great sea of flowers...uh huh, riiiight

Foreigners and Confucius

Confucius Forest:
In the afternoon of our first day of crazy Qufu tourism...we visited the Confucius Forest. It was really quite beautiful...and QUIET! for a moment I almost forgot I was in China...and then we stumbled upon Confucius' tomb, or more accurately we found it by following the stream of German tourists and loud megaphones and swarming groups of Chinese tourists. I don't think I'll ever fully understand the appropriateness of megaphones in historical places...but nevertheless it was quite nice. When we wandered away from the tomb, we found some nice, peaceful areas where there were lots of trees and a "river" aka algae filled water way with a cute little bridge. If we had journeyed on, we would have found the animal statues...but we were really tired so we decided to catch them next time. It was nice though to see some nature...of VT i miss you.

Crazy truck of brush that almost hit us!

mmmm algae...i dared everyone to touch it...no one took me up on it...they said i'd have to pay the hospital bills! :)

chillin' on the bridge...Clayton is that a smile...in a picture? your face didn't malfunction yaaay!

Me above the slimey water...while being a little disgusting, it is actually quite pretty...in a weird way...It is said that this mythical beast could shoot flames from its underarms....yeah, i think that if i could have a super power i would definitely want the ability to shoot flames from my armpits!

resemblance anyone?

Tomb of Confucius

This is a very authentic, ancient tomb/sign to prevent smoking in the Confucius Forest... :)

Confucious Mansion: Day one of foreigners take on Confucius...morning...we visited the Temple and the Mansion. Too bad Clatyon, Jeff, and I visited these two only about 3 or 4 weeks ago with our students. But it was free...and fun...and i took a "few" more pictures.

large, strange flower in the garden at the Confucius Mansion

rocks!...there was also a sign nearby that stated: "Don't climb at will fory our safety!" hmmmmm fory you say, well in that case!

Cyndie, Li Li, Lisa, and Traci at the Temple pretending to be the statue with it's tongue sticking out. Li Li is the 5 year old daughter of our Russian coworker...and she's SUPER cute!! :)

Beer Street in Qingdao

Qingdao is known for its "delicious" beer called Tsingtao (the old way of spelling Qingdao). So....the street that also has the brewery has LOTS of little bars (mostly outdoor) and lots of neon lights! One night...there were also people dressed in these ridiculous air-filled animal outfits walking around. People would hug them and take their pictures. We convinced both Clayton and jeff to hug the chicken! They may or may not have been the animals of the chinese zodiac...
Also pictured here is a cool beer sculpture, and the Qingdao TV tower which is quite famous and could be seen on our walk back to the hotel from "beer street."

First Day Qingdao

We arrived in Qingdao on Saturday night, after a trip on a VERY crowded train. It actually wasn't that bad...Clayton's students who were traveling with us said that they were "lucky" because they were with us, and because we were foreigners people gave us their seats! We felt bad taking the seats, but not bad enough to refuse them and stand for 6hrs! :)
The first full day in Qingdao was full of wandering...we walked down to Beach 1, around the main shopping streets, saw a European-style Church, walked around some neighborhoods, got yelled at by a very angry small child (seriously, he ran after us screaming at me and Clayton...and he was maybe 5 years old!), got lost in a residential area, found the tall building with the dome roof (no idea what it was, but it was really neat!), walked down to a park with a boardwalk on the beach, took lots of pictures on the rocks, saw one of those awesome cars with 3-wheels, and went to dinner at a nearby Muslim restaurant (they LOVED Clayton because they liked Cananda...they were also not Chinese, but from Kazakhstan). All in all, it was a good day in Qingdao, the weather was beautiful with a nice sea breeze!