I feel like I just won the lottery!

I was just informed that I would get to travel to Qingdao (known in the West as Tsingtao…yes that is the home of Tsingtao beer) for work. We’ll be flying out on Sunday morning and I think we will be gone for 4 days. Since I took a trip last week to this wetlands outside of Beijing I thought that was treat enough, but being able to visit Qingdao and see the project site is a pleasant surprise. So I’m definitely excited about this trip, but this sort of last minute planning has been happening to me a lot, I’m starting to wonder how people function around here when they are told that they will take a 4 day trip on just a day’s notice? At first I thought it was just because I didn’t speak Mandarin that I was being kept out of the loop, but I found out from one of the Chinese interns also working here that it’s a fairly common practice. She told me that she has usually been given a heads up that a trip will take place during a given week, but not know the date they actually leave until the day before. Being that my schedule here is very flexible, I can easily cope with the changing schedules, but what if I lived here? What good is a day planner here when you constantly have to wait around not knowing when a meeting will take place or when you’ll be leaving for a multiple day trip? She just kind of laughed and said “you just wait.” She then admitted that it never really occurred to her before to have things scheduled with more certainty. Perhaps I’ve been too entrenched in the American model of efficiency and certainty, always wanting to control everything possible right down to how I spend my time. So when you are confronted with this sort of last minute arrangements you can either view it with frustration or as a pleasant surprise. I’ve choose to do the latter.

It just so happens that our trip to Qingdoa coincides with their international beer festival. I'm not entirely sure how much work will get done, but I'm sure I'll learn a lot. I'll be sure to post pictures as soon as I sober up