Allright, Here's the Scoop

I'm not sure if anyone is even aware of this blot yet, but I figure it's been a little over two weeks since coming to China and it's time to update anyone who might stumble onto this blog. I should have Britney send out a mass e-mail or something, otherwise I might end up spending the summer blogging to myself.

I'm living in a city called 青岛, for all of those who speak Chinese. For those who don't, I'm living in Qingdao, a city on the northern coast of China. It's a great city, as Chinese cities go, good people, good weather(relatively), and by Chinese standards, it's very clean. That being said, it's still dirtier than any city I've visited in the US. It's one of the few Olympic cities (the sailing events are all taking place in the harbor outside of the school offices), so they're definitely making a concerted effort to clean up the city and improve the landscaping and overall appearance of the city.

As some of you may know, there has been a huge algae bloom in the ocean here. The vast majority of the coast is covered in a 2 foot thick layer of green carpet, which just also happens to stink to high heaven. The method of dealing with said algae is to scoop it out of the ocean, load it into dump trucks, and drive it out of the city on a main road, which I just happen to live next to. Long story short, I have a long, stinky walk to the office, but fortunately I only have to come here once a week or so.

I basically have 4 goals that I'm expected to achieve this summer.

1) Find an Apartment. Done, Pictures and story to come later.

2) Daily meetings with a tutor. I have a nice teacher who I managed to talk into helping me with my thesis(more difficult than I thought it should have been). We meet for two hours a day, from 8:00 am to 10:00 am in my apartment, and with one week in the books, so far I'm really pleased with him.

3) Community Service Project. This is by far the most up-in-the-air aspect of the summer, because as of now I have no idea what I am going to do, and our teachers expect us to have something figured out by the end of next week. We'll see.

4) Thesis. Although I still have a lot of research to finish(and begin, for that matter), I'm planning on writing all of the non-research related stuff by the end of the summer. Hopefully, I'll have somewhere between 30 and 40 pages ready to print before Britney gets here, but we all know how I love to procrastinate, so, again we'll have to see.