-Thursday, 9.06-
Our first day to find our partners and work on our projects. I teamed up with the Fine Arts class president Yu Youpeng, whose specialty was Chinese woodprinting and wall murals. Luckily, he spoke quite a bit of english - at least a lot more than I spoke chinese. As we showed each other our works I realized that this was going to be tough, as our styles are drastically different. But we were able to agree that a fusion of both of our styles would look pretty cool. As our time was pretty limited that day, we were only able to plan out our project, but we had a pretty complete idea of what we both wanted to do.
We had lunch together at the school cafeteria and then he had to get some other things done, so I decided to go with some of the other students to hike the mountain right outside the school. Long story short, flip-flops don't get you very far when there's no trail. We ended up going to the rec center, or something like that, and I played a few games of ping pong.
Met back up with Youpeng and discussed our project once again to double-check the details and then left with our group back to the old campus. Dinner and then some rest.
-Friday, 9.07-
What a stressful day! Youpeng and I had planned to complete all of our line drawing in the course of the day, thinking we had the whole day to do it, but plans got changed and we had to go to a contemporary art museum followed by a sketch trip at 5 Tiger Lakes in the afternoon. We got our supplies and got as much of the line art done as we could, and then I ended up having to take our project back to work on it during my down time so that we could start coloring the next day. When our group got to 5 Tiger Lakes, instead of walking around and enjoying the scenery of the flora and the ponds or getting tea at the teahouse, I found a place to sit down and work on our project. My working drew a lot of attention, as kids and families walking by stopped to look at my work while I would just smile back and continue working. The security guard was even curious enough to leave his post and see what I was doing.
After about 30 minutes we left to eat dinner. When we got back to our rooms I worked on our project once again. Then a good lot of us went to a trendy dance club in town because one of the professors wanted to take us out to one, knowing how American students like to party. I took the opportunity to go out, since this would be the only time to experience the nightlife in Jinan. It ended up being a lot of fun. We started off in a karaoke room and I sang one song before we figured out it would be 1200 yuan for all of us to rent the room for 1 hour. Luckily one of the professors had connections with the owner of the club and got us out of that one.
We proceeded to the bar and ordered a couple drinks, and after a while the dance floor opened up. With some liquid courage in our systems, we got on the dance floor and rocked the house! There was barely anyone out there before we came on, but once we started dancing the floor got packed. When I came back to the booth the professors treated me to green tea + whiskey concoction, which was actually quite tasty. We also met a cute girl named Ro Jo who was a student at Shandong Normal University (the name sounds weird, but I think normal is supposed to mean general). She was really nice and spoke pretty good english. After about an hour or so at the club, we took a taxi back. Since I had worked off most of the liquor, I felt pretty sober at the end of the night and decided to finish my line drawings for the joint project. At least I was able to get it done!
-Saturday, 9.08-
When I got to campus, Youpeng finished his portion of the drawings and then that's when we ran into a little difficulty. Originally, I was going to color the centerpiece with my brush pens and Youpeng was going to color the drawings with acrylic paint, but he felt that I should color my own drawings. I agreed with his reasoning but I can't paint worth crap and I didn't want the outer ring to be colored with two different media. Eventually we were able to decide upon coloring the entire thing with colored pencils. So we went back to the supply store and got our colored pencils, and worked on our project to the finish, which was like 5 minutes before I had to catch the bus back to the campus at 9pm. Stressful! And I wasn't even done working. When I got back, I finished up my individual project and popped open a Tsingtao to kick back for the remainder of the night.
-Sunday, 9.09-
This day was for our critiques and getting everything ready to be photographed and printed for the exhibition. The central computer for the printing had some technical difficulties so the critiques started about 90 minutes later than planned. I think it went pretty well. Everybody had some really cool collaborations. Since we started late, we had to rush lunch and get back in time to get stuff ready for printing. Afterwards, our group returned to the old campus.
Man did it feel good to be done with our projects (for the Shandong portion of the trip at least)! We had a lot of free time left in the day, so I decided to go look for a nice pair of pants to wear for the exhibition. After passing dozens of boutiques with gaudy or overpriced clothes, Jesse and I found a pants tailor shop called Bai Yuan Trousers (which means 100 Yuan Trousers). This place was awesome! I was able to get a nice pair of black slacks tailored to my size for about 13 US dollars! Jesse ended up getting a pair too since it was such a great deal. We took a cab back to the old campus and had dinner with our group. Afterwards, some of us went to the massage parlor down the street and got backrubs.
The backrubs were nice, but the night didn't feel complete, so Joel and I went to look for a bar to get a couple drinks. We ended up walking into a karaoke bar that wanted to charge too much, so we left and found this restaurant that had a fridge full of cold beers we could see through the window. Interesting and confusing situation, as we didn't have enough small change to pay for the beers, and they couldn't break a 100. It also didn't help that we couldn't speak Chinese. As both parties were confused and somewhat frustrated, they ended up just letting us take the beers for free. Sweet!
-Monday, 9.10-
Today was the big exhibition day. When we got to campus, we had a conference with the president of the school, who made a few speeches and gave us gifts. We made our way to the exhibition hall to put our work up. It was really exciting, as I've never had any of my work showcased in an exhibition, or not that I can remember, except for maybe the art show at the University of Georgia, but I wasn't even there.
When the exhibition started, the faculty opened up with a welcoming speech and student representatives from both the US and China made speeches. Very cool. There were so many students that showed up to see our works, it was great! Everyone's work was really cool, and there were some that gartered a lot of attention. At the end of the opening day exhibition, all the students in the program were to draw whatever on this huge roll of paper, which was a lot of fun. Afterwards, we had to say goodbye to the Chinese students, after exchanging gifts and email addresses. It was kinda sad to leave so soon, as we were able make friends despite the language barrier. But hey, I got a lot of pictures and memories and I'm ready to continue on with the trip.
We had dinner with some of the faculty and the president and vice president of the school. What an interesting dinner. We had some bai jiou (.......) and danced and sang karaoke. It was actually pretty fun. Afterwards I went out with a couple of my classmates and I ended up buying a sweet pair of sunglasses, but not without bartering down the price of course. Then we hit the supermarket for some snacks and now I'm here updating my blog. After this I gotta pack cos we're taking the train to Beijing early in the morning. Great Wall here I come!
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