Blogs from Dalian, Liaoning, China, Asia - page 10

Part One: West This week was a big one for celebration here in Dalian. In addition to Freddy's birthday this Sunday, my roommate Tim had a birthday on Wednesday, which he happens to share with the G.M. of the Goodyear plant over here. So we went down to an expat bar in the city called Brooklyn, owned by a Chinese-American who can actually speak Chinese (my boss knows enough to get around, probably more than he lets on; like a lot of expats here, not speaking Chinese unless it's absolutely necessary is sort of a point of pride) and who takes pride in serving good Western food, a true rarity here unless you savor McDonald's (see below). The bar was populated by a bunch of 40-something Westerners and their 20-something Chinese wives. Not really; not all ... 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

Due to my diligent practice of staying up til 5 AM back in the States, I am quickly defeating my jetlag. Last night I slept from 10 to 7 -- pretty normal. Because China has only one time zone (which is exactly 12 hours ahead of EST for those who are keeping track), the sun rises here very early; and anyone who knows me knows that the sun is my mortal enemy when it comes to sleeping in. My neighborhood is reasonably quiet, though. I spent two hours trying to cook with my hot plate, resulting first in a grease fire (no casualties, inanimate or animate), and then two eggs with Korean sausage. 220 degrees Celsius is apparently enough to ignite olive oil on impact. I boiled some water to sterilize it for ice cubes, and ... read more

Ni Hao everyone one last time from Dalian, Tonight is our last night here and we just came back from our final dinner and closing ceremonies. One of the things we asked the students to do was to share what their favourite memories were of our time together in Beijing, Shenyang and Dalian. I am happy to share with you here some of the things that they are grateful for and what they liked the most on this journey. The evening started with a song from the Carol Burnett Show by Ray and Steve who thanked the students for being such amazing travelers! One of the supervisors share that “of all the kids I have ever taught or worked with, I have never met students of such a high caliber. The highlight of this trip is ... read more