Blogs from Dalian, Dalian, Liaoning, China, Asia - page 2

yesterday my driver took me to pick up a few things from the store. then i met with a couple friends for lunch at I 55 cafe. their coffee is to die for, and my sandwich was delicious! we hung out there talking and smoking for a while. then we headed to a flower shop to pick up flowers for our painting class on friday. the teacher told us to get red flowers. i just couldn't help it when i saw the amazing flowers, so i bought 2 bunches. one was yellow and one was orange. then i got a single red rose and a single bird of paradise. all of the flowers, except the yellow ones, i put in a vase in my apartment for dad :) the yellow flowers and some sweets i brought ... read more

Yes, I know I don't write frequently enough. And I leave some stories unfinished. It is a combination of lazy, procrastination, and actually teaching, the reason I am here in the first place. I will cover the most recent events first and if energy permits I will try to fill in the blanks. October Holiday! In China there is a national holiday the first week of October each year. In idea of a holiday is a little different. Typically it is mix of days off work, and days of work rescheduled. In my case that means I was free from work after completing my classes on September 29th. Classes for the 30th will be made up this Saturday the 9th. Some other local colleges will also have class on Sunday and might have had additional classes ... read more

Winter break has come and gone again. I started getting ancy for my trip right around Christmas, when I threw my 2nd annual (smash-hit) brunch (attended by approximately 40 of my lovely co-workers). I was cautiously making general plans for my trip: I knew I wanted to go to Cambodia and Vietnam, but didn’t want to cram a lot of physical movement onto my travel platter. I decided to just go to the usual suspects in Cambodia, and to limit my travel in Vietnam to the south (where I could easily move around by bus or boat within a few hours), so that I could end my trip on the Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc. I flew first to Bangkok; it’s a round-about way to go, but it was the cheapest ticket from Dalian. I’ve spent ... read more

Chinese food, appallingly familiar to most Americans, is a very different beast in its home country. Learning how to order food was always the slowest of my grudgingly accelerating language skills when I was in Beijing, mainly because all the restaurants we went to had pictures on the menu. Since I've been back, I've been trying to learn the names of some of my favorite common foods. Eggplant here is amazingly delicious, perhaps because anything would be delicious if it were soaked in gratuitous amount of oil before serving. I always thought bacon made everything a better dish, so lucky for me that about every cut of meat here is basically the "bacon" of whatever animal it's been extracted from. They also know what to do with cucumber: douse it in vinegar and hot peppers. And ... read more

Life here continues to be action-packed. My boss Freddy has the energy of a pre-schooler, which might explain why he works in a school; he is constantly bouncing around, talking at 300 miles an hour, calling every 15 minutes to see if I need anything, do I want to get breakfast, how is my A.C working, will I be in school tomorrow, am I still alive and able to teach for him. Consequently, my work environment is rather fast-paced. Although I don't start working officially until Thursday (or getting paid officially, for that matter), I did full days both Saturday and Sunday this week. The weekends are our busiest time; when the kids don't have regular school or music lessons or art lessons or sports lessons or computer lessons, their parents send them to English lessons. ... read more