our life

So it's been awhile since we have last written, partially because this last week of summer classes has been busy with grading tests and writing final evaluations. Now however, summer classes are completely over, and we get a nice break until fall classes start in september. The fall classes will be much more relaxed, we won't be teaching more than 15-20 hours a week, or so we've been told. Also, this past week my rommate and her friend visited us after teaching in Seoul for the summer, which was very fun but also kept us busy. We did some actual sight seeing of Qingdao, which was long overdue after living in the city for two months. We saw both the protestant and catholic churches, (otherwise known as the catholic and 'christian' churches). Both were actually quite charming, although I must say that the interior of the catholic church definitely beat out the protestant church in terms of interesting interior. Yet at the protestant church, we were able to climb the bell tower for 4 kuai. It was a bit of a let down to anyone who has ever been in a bell tower in a European church, but we did get a pretty good view of Qingdao, which is actually quite a gorgeous city. Both churches are in the German area, which is full of old Bavarian style buildings and newer imitation Bavarian style buildings. It's also nearby the old governor's mansion which looks like a European palace. It's now a governmental building and we weren't allowed to go in, but we peered in the door (or at least I did) and caught a glimpse of the some of the old wood work. I wouldn't say exactly that Qingdao is exactly like a European city, but it does have a very European feeling, although instead of being able to get gelato on every street corner, we can get squid on a stick. Qingdao has lots of trees and fairly wide stone sidewalks which makes it nice for strolling around.
THe beer festival has also been going on, although with our schedule, we have not found time to go. Tonight is the last night, so Dan and I will go when I finish work at 7:30. I don't work until 5:30 today, so I made an attempt to go earlier with a Chinese English teacher (about half the teachers at the school are Chinese), and we went to the smaller beer festival site, but no one was really there and she had not a lot of interest in staying, so we walked to the beach and then went to a Korean restaurant.