on beaching in China

This past weekend was our group trip to the Zhoushan islands. It's a bunch of islands together but the one we went to was the most popular, also called the "Jamaica" of China. I've never been to Jamaica, but I feel like it's probably a lot nicer than Zhoushan. ok so Friday they canceled two of our classes and had us take our tests on Thursday so that we could leave Friday morning. We left around 10:30 and drove for about four hours. This was the one trip that all of our Chinese roommates were allowed to go on, and they had planned a bunch of games for us to play along the way. Well the games were not a hit with the American students, because it involved a plastic blowup lamb being passed around and if it landed on you when the music stopped then you had to do something embarrassing like sing a song or make scary faces. Most of us wanted to just sleep since we had just finished a long week of classes. Once the games ended, the ride was pretty uneventful. We did go over the longest bridge in the world - 35 kilometers - that connects the Shanghai area to Zhe Jiang province, so that was cool. After we drove four hours we got to Ningbo, where we got on a ferry boat to take us to the cluster of islands. The ferry was nasty and crowded and the water was super dirty and polluted. We rode the boat for like an hour then drove for another hour or two until we got to our hotel. All of our rooms overlooked the ocean which was really nice. Here's a view of our hotel from the beach.

They gave us an hour before we got back on the bus to go to a fishing town for dinner. Fishing village in my mind is a rural village with fishing shacks on the side of the ocean, lots of tiny stands with seafood and poor kids running around. This place was basically a small city. The friends I was with don't really like seafood, and on the way to the town our tour guide had told us to be careful with the seafood because we might get laduzi (diarrhea). Oh gee, can't wait. So we hung back from the rest of the group and quick darted into Winner Pizza when they weren't looking. A lot of times people give us a hard time if we decide to eat Western, so we were trying to avoid the judgment this time. Winner Pizza ended up being a great choice - good pizza and excellent waffle fries. After we ate we met up with another friend walked around for a bit. We wandered into a mostly empty bar and with an entirely empty stage, so we took that as an invitation to get on the stage and dance. The people in the bar loved it and we convinced some of them to join in with us. After 20 minutes we had to meet up with the rest of our group so we headed out. Once we got back to the hotel we hung out on the patio playing Uno until late.

Saturday morning I woke up to this view out my window. I love how there's the sand and the water and then these beautiful mountains. It was definitely a different kind of beach than I've ever been to. The group met at 9:30 to head to the beach. We got out of the bus and it started raining: awesome. First we had to go to this little building and get our VIP beach passes made. They to take a picture of each of us before they could issue our passes. It was quite a hassle. Finally we made it through the gate, walked the 10 minutes past the vendors, and got onto the beach. On the way we bought innertubes for $1.50 which ended up being the best purchase of the day. Since it was raining, we obviously weren't going to tan, and the sand was wet, we just went far out in the ocean with our tubes and floated and talked. There are basically no waves so we could go out further than all the Chinese people dare to go. (Most Chinese people can't swim). After an hour or so of floating Melissa and I went and got our one Chinese friend who wanted me to teach him to swim. We spent the next 30 minutes trying to teach him how to tread water, do the doggie paddle, and float. He was really nervous and tense so it was kind of difficult, but eventually he caught on. It's really hard trying to teach someone to swim in Chinese! But we had a good time. Then we headed back to the hotel to eat lunch. The food was pretty good I thought- rice, eggplant, kongpao chicken, french fries, shrimp, green vegetables, etc. They actually brought us two of every dish because the tour guide calculated the number of people incorrectly. After lunch we decided we wanted to head back to the beach because it looked like the sun might come out.

We walked back down and as we were walking the sun did come out! We were so excited we were practically jumping up and down. We ended up having almost an hour of good sunshine before it got really cloudy again. But in that hour we laid out and I ended up getting burned. Laying out in China is not as relaxing as the U.S. though. Chinese people don't really give you space and people kept kicking their soccer balls over to our heads and hitting us. Some people would just walk up, stare, and take pictures/videos. The beach was so incredibly crowded and loud, people were smoking and throwing their cigarette butts and trash in the water. Some kids don't wear bathing suits and some adults just swim in their clothes. Chinese men wear speedos, and the whole experience is just not as enjoyable as relaxing on the beach at home. I was getting really fed up with the crowd and noise and people trying to sell me watermelon so we got our floats and went back into the water. I think it was probably because the tide was coming in, but the nice clean water from the morning was gone and was filled with brown algae plant things. And it wasn't like a chunk here or there, it was a you get out of the water and look like a furry bear covered in brown crap over your entire body. Pretty disgusting, but being in that for an hour was better than the crowd on the sand. We got out of the water around 4 and had our fill of the beach so we headed back to the hotel. We showered and relaxed for a couple of hours before we met with the group to go barbeque.

We got to the gate of the beach and stood there for an hour waiting to go in to have our cookout. Then they said there was some sort of problem, so we got on the bus and were going to try another place on the island to cookout. In the mean time it started lightning so the weather was looking less than desirable for a cookout. Finally they decided to can the cookout idea, move it to Sunday's lunch, and have dinner in the hotel. All of this took an hour and 40 minutes, so it was almost 8:00 by the time dinner was going to be served. My friends and I were not too excited about having the hotel food, since it would more than likely be the same as lunch. So we got a hotel service car to drive us 20 minutes to the town's McDonalds, wait for us while we got take out, and drive us back. All of us are pretty ready to come back to the States and sometimes we just can't handle another Chinese meal. We brought our food back to the hotel and then hung out in our rooms all night talking. It was really fun.

Sunday morning we had the option of riding a boat or sleeping in. Hmm that's a tough choice...NOT. We've been on like 13 boat rides this summer and I've had my fill. So I slept in and it felt great. Then we met to go have our cookout. I was a little skeptical on how it would be, but it ended up being a lot of fun. We had little firepits and cement tables and stools for all of us, and then we just grabbed the food we wanted to cook and threw it on. We had potatoes, corn on the cob, hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken legs (those were mainly for the Chinese), onions, green peppers, and s'mores!! Everything was SOO good and we all ate a ton. It was kind of funny that everything was kind of all cooking at the same time, as you can see us roasting our marshmallows over all the other food. We had a really good time, and I'm actually glad we ended up doing it in the daytime because we could see the ocean too.

After we finished eating we were dying of heat from both the humidity and also all of the smoke and heat from the fire, so we walked back to the ocean to take some pictures. We ended up laughing so much and getting some really great pictures - it was a great end to our time at the beach. We then headed back to the hotel, gathered our stuff, and got on the bus. We boarded the buses at 1, didn't leave until 1:30. Less than an hour later we were sitting in traffic. All of the cars and buses were also waiting to get on the ferry to take us back to the mainland. We sat in traffic for over TWO HOURS. Then, when we got to the place to board the ferry, we sat in the parking lot for over 30 minutes waiting to get on the boat. Needless to say, all of us were not happy. It was raining and we just wanted to go home. While we were in traffic I really had to go to the bathroom but they said there was nowhere to go. A little later they pointed to a tiny blue building on the side of the road and said I could use that. So about six of us girls climb out of the bus, make our way through the traffic, and go to the bathroom. Chinese bathrooms are sick, let alone ones on the side of the road, so I opted to just pee in the grass. Melissa and I took turns holding the umbrella up to block the view, but Melissa ended up touching the blue building and stained her hand with blue paint. Then we look up and see our buses have actually moved in the traffic and are now quite far away. So all of us are dying laughing, in the rain with no umbrellas, a blue hand, and now running on the side of the road trying to catch up with our buses. We finally found then, jumped the guard rail, and pushed through traffic to get on. It was good comic relief. Finally we got to the boat, got on, played some cards while we rode to the mainland, and got back on the road. The mood in the bus was definitely sour. This was one of the tightest buses I've ever been in. I'm not that tall, but sitting up straight my knees were hitting the seat in front of me. All of us were super uncomfortable because the seats were made for Chinese people. We stopped later on and picked up KFC, which the program paid for, which we were very grateful for. We kept driving and driving, stopping every now and then to go to the bathroom in a Chinese rest stop. I don't know about the rest of the bus, but my friends and I were literally going crazy. We finally got back to our dorm at 10:30. A trip that should've taken 5ish hours took 9. It was out of control.

Even though the trip ended up kind of a bad note with the long, uncomfortable bus ride, it was a fun weekend. The weather was kind of a bummer, but that can't be helped. The beach was super crowded and not as relaxing as I hoped, but I still got some sun, played in the Pacific, and had a lot of fun with my friends. It was weird knowing that was our last trip of this program. We're coming home in 11 days!