A lot has happened in the last few days as we’ve moved from Korea to China. We spent our last day in Korea hiking up a mountain to see the Seoul Tower. On our way up, we came across a hotel where a huge group of Koreans were outside in matching outfits (apparently, this isn’t uncommon!). They were all in their late 50s doing choreographed danced moves to hip hop music—it was quite the site! When we made it to the top of the mountain, there were 
thousands of different locks on the fences surrounding the Seoul Tower. Everyday, love-struck couples put on a lock together and throw the key over the edge. I think we saw one guy keep his key. Just kidding.
Time to head to China! We took an overnight ferry from Korea with a group of women with larger than necessary visors and their husbands who got to drinking their 2L of beer before the ship had even left the harbor. We ended up catching up on sleep and waking up to find ourselves in Qingdao, China with no plan of staying. Luckily we met two Colombians who informed us of the International Beer 
Festival taking place that weekend! It was a good thing too because they knew the language and took us to a traditional Chinese meal where everything is shared and nothing is off-limits on the menu…Pigs tongue anyone? I don’t know about you but I don’t want to eat anything that tastes me back.
Full from our lunch we headed to the beer festival only to find opening night consisted of music, but no beer. Beer festival. No beer. We don’t get that either. Not to be deterred, our new Colombian friends showed us a good time with their classmates. We became very familiar with the term “Ganbei”—meaning finish your glass.
We did stay in a couple cool guesthouses--one was in an Old Observatory on the top of a hill, and the other an Old Church turned into a cool, hip lounge. Besides the festival, we found two other ways to really appreciate Qingdao. We strolled the boardwalk where the sailing events had taken place for the recent Olympics and stumbled upon a live show. Two scalpers reeled us in with cheap tickets from their pockets of what looked to be “O” (like Cirque de Soleil) but later found out it was “Q”---Ohhh, the mermaid’s fin, I get it. To our surprise it was AMAZING—acrobats, ballerinas, martial artists, rock violinists in latex, rollerbladers, scuba-divers coming down from the ceiling, dancing starfish, you name it…all in an attempt to celebrate the city of Qingdao.
Oh, how we love the unexpected! We’re currently in Beijing and up next is, well, we’ll let you know when we get there! Ganbei!
