We slept really well on our very unusual, for us, flat hard bed. I think it was the best night sleep I have had since leaving home.
Our hotel seems to be part of a sort of industrial complex. The hotel itself is made up of several two or three story buildings. We are on the third floor or second as they count everywhere but the US. We have a nice walk to the dining room and meeting rooms. The grounds are full of rose bushes and strange concrete animals. I think we are just up the hill from the sea. This is the Pacific Ocean and we are in extreme Eastern China.
Breakfast was nice, lots of vegetables but they are really big on salt here. We are in a different province and the food is different. We don’t have as much variety in our fruit. So far dessert has always been fresh fruit.
The morning was filled with speakers. There was some English and mostly Chinese. During the second half of the morning Ming sat next to me and translated and we chatted a bit getting better acquainted. I am so glad we worked together before the conference so she will find it easier to translate for me. I watched translators struggle because speakers were speaking without preparation. Everything is not so easy to translate.
We all ate lunch together and then those of us from other countries than China went on a tour of Qing Dao.
We climbed on our bus and we were off.
The big thing here is Qing Dao beer. This is its home. We heard about the other 4 large companies that are here. This is considered a small town even though the population is 9 million. It really does feel small. We did a tour of the brewery and it was just another brewery. We did get two glasses of free beer and it was fun to get to know our other conference participants.
We then took a lovely walk along the sea side. Again we saw brides and grooms doing photo shoots. I am told this is a trend here to do photos before the wedding. We saw one bride struggling to carry her train while carrying her wedding shoes. She was wearing army boots. The things you see when expecting to see something else are most of the fun.
We next went to May 4th square and walked around. This is a fishing port and there were lots of people selling fish. We were told not to buy pearls here because they are plastic. I don’t think this is a Perl buying group.
Then it was back on the bus and home to a nice sit down dinner with lots of different dishes. We had wine and of course Qing Dao beer.
Neal and I took a walk after dinner but did not leave our compound. It was getting cool and the fresh air felt great.