Qingdao aerial view

I'm really glad that Bruce and I got some touristy sightseeing out of the way right off the bat because it helped me realize how big this city really is. I thought Busan was a big city (of course, it IS by American standards), and I thought Qingdao was a big city, but I didn't think Qingdao was much different than Busan. This photo really changed that for me:

It wasn't the clearest day, and the following photos were all taken through dirty observatory glass at the city TV tower, but I think you'll get the idea.

The Busan population is about 4.5 million people. Qingdao is somewhere around 7 million, best I can tell. I've heard estimates ranging from 1.5 to 10 million. The wide range must be due to lack of differentiation between urban and suburban populatio distributions.

But its not the numbers that make it real: its the miles and miles of concrete block communist style apartment housing. It stretches on inland as far as the eye can see, and then again.

Busan never really felt that big to me, probably for two (maybe three) reasons. Firstly, geographically Busan is quite hilly, so the city has developed in pockets that almost completely exclude hillside development (living on hills is tres tres declasse there!). Add to that that we lived at the beach, so we were only surrounded by a smallish pocket of city on one side, the other side was water. The third reason is that I rarely left my neighborhood for daily life, so for me, it WAS a small city.

In Qingdao, when we get our permanent housing, we'll still be on the beach. We're spoiled that way now, I can't imagine not being near the beach! This time, though, we won't have an ocean view because we'll be in an actual house with an actual driveway, yard, and garage! Its going to feel so suburban! I can't wait for Vivian to have her own outside to play in. We take space so much for granted in Oregon, the last three years have demonstrated what a luxury private outdoor space is.