Qingdao with Ryan

Qingdao (3 hours south of Yantai) just happens to be where the water sports in the 2008 Olympics will be held. Ryan and I decided to take a few days and travel around the city. It's supposedly where Chinese vacation during the summer, so nice beaches. It also has a little German influence. Here's Ryan being sacrilegious in front of one of the temples...

The Buddha inside...

Ryan's favorite, the rock-on Buddha...

The 8-sided temple at the end of a long bridge/pier...

And the same temple is on the label of Qingdao beer...
Qingdao with random pagoda...

Entrance to temples...

Another temple...

It may be cold enough to snow but these guys don't care, to them it's still summer (notce the tiny bathing suits and people in the water)...

Ryan, actually in China or photo shopped in?...

Beijing with Ryan

Last Friday I met Ryan in Beijing then Mandie (who lives in Beijing) showed us around the city. We were lucky that it was a clear day. Unfortunately it was SO cold! But we saw the main stuff anyways. The Forbidden City...

Tiananmen Square...

The Beijing Hutong (poor neighborhoods)...

Random street with shops...

Tiny Pictures

This is one of the most awesome things about China... the tiny pictures. Girls go and have these made and then put them everywhere (they are about the size of a stamp and sticky). And it's not just two best friends that do this, couples have these done as well. It's another story how popular his and her stuff is here.
So of course Natalia and I decided we would have to get our own made.
The general theme is that the poses are serious. It was hard to refrain from laughing but we wanted to be authentic here. It's also common to gaze at the camera while putting your hand on your face or the very typical peace sign. Oh, and the pictures are overexposed to make you look whiter.
Here's a few of them...

It snowed!

What in the world?!? Little did I know that when I woke up on December 2nd and calmly strolled over to the window I would see tons of snow outside. So of course I had to take a picture. I'd say all in all it snowed a few inches... enough to make everything white...

and enough to build snowmen...