Yantai

Yesterday the lessons were cancelled again so Ellie and I decided we'd go into Yantai - it's the nearest city and it's about 2hrs away from the school in Nanshan. We told Franny the teacher here what we were planning on doing and she looked horrified we were going to try and get there and back by ourselves - we managed it. Well, actually I think a lot of credit has to be given to Ellie, her ingenuity and the Chinese characters she had written down.

We came up against the first snag in the taxi to the bus station 15mins away, he tried taking us to the shopping centre and we definitely didn't know enough Chinese to tell him it was wrong, a quick phone call to Franny later she translated and told the driver where to go. We got to the bus station and tried to buy tickets - that was the next snag as Ellie only had the characters to tell them she wanted a single to Yantai - and not two return tickets. We got there in the end with one of the bus station workers who spoke a little English.

When we got to Yantai we had to try and work out which bus station we were at (as apparently there are two) - so that if we did need to get a taxi back to the bus station we could do) - Ellie pinched a business card from a hotel a couple of doors down so we could show the driver the card so we could get back.

We didn't do much in Yantai, weren't there that long really - we just did a bit of shopping, found a Wall Mart - so I bought some typically Western food (pizza... :-) and then we just had a wander around Yantai exploring - we found a nice park with some Chinese pavilions and temples in, old people doing exercise and riding bikes around (I swear OAP's are 10 times fitter here than they are at home - they are more active than me - although thats not difficult!) then we went to the beach (although there wasn't much beach as the tide was in).

We used the ingenious hotel business card idea and flagged a taxi then caught the bus home. I was a little frightened we weren't going to get back when we were getting the taxi to back to the school in Nanshan after getting off the bus in Huangcheng - the car stalled at least 20 times and it wasn't even when he was in 1st and getting the biting point wrong - we could be going 40/50miles and hour and it would suddenly stall. The amount of times we got stuck in the middle of junctions with him trying to start the car was quite scary! We got back eventually, in one piece - although I think the taxi really did die when he dropped us off as it made a really loud clunk and the driver had to stop completely and go under the bonnet!