So this past week at UIBE was an interesting sort of week. After an in-class confrontation with a teacher whose teaching style is, well, provincial, to say the least, things conflagrated into an epic pissing contest, which appears to have ended in a draw, with both concerned parties agreeing (on paper) to delivery formal apologies in class Monday. I can't wait.

I took that as a cue, though, to take some time off from Beijing. It's not that I don't love the city - I live, breathe, eat and sleep Beijing, it's just that after you've been living there for a while, you have a tendency to forget that the rest of the world really exists. Unfortunately, that includes my girlfriend, who lives in the rest of the world.

For the low, low price of 1600 RMB, though, I was able to snag a flight on Shandong Airlines and arrived last night in Qingdao (home of the famous Tsingdao Beer), where my girlfriend greeted me with tasty kim chee udon noodles and some much-needed face time. Now I'm sitting here at the Beihai Hotel in downtown Qingdao, enjoying nearly unrestricted internet access for the first time in months - my apartment's internet access seems to block out an arbitrary 30% of the internet at any given moment, and so I'm using this moment to catch up on some much needed Facebook and Myspace networking.

Later in the afternoon I'll drag my tired old ass down to the ocean and see if I can't get my toes wet - without getting sick. I've already got a suspicious sore throat, and we all know where that's probably headed...