Blogs from Dalian, Liaoning, China, Asia - page 11

Ni Hao from Dalian! Today is Sunday so we got a bit of a sleep -in! It was quite rainy this morning but this afternoon turned out to be a beautiful day with comfortable temperatures in the mid-20s. We headed outside of the city today to visit Lushun, also known as Port Arthur. It is the location of Hill 203 the key objective point for both the Russians and Japanese in the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War. We climbed to the top and saw the Japanese memorial and could get an amazing view of the port wherein the Japanese would have landed. This part of the city has lots of boats in the harbor and there are lots of shipyards too. We also took a visit to the Victory Tower where the Chinese created a monument to thank ... read more

The months since the spring holiday have been filled with visits, weekend trips, and surprising changes. My delightful parents came for a three week visit and toured me around Qingdao (home of the 2008 Olympic sailing port) and Dandong (directly on North Korea's shores); I partook in a glamourous photo shoot that lasted 10 hours without food and learned a model's life isn't actually as easy as it looks (photos to be added later this week); and I accepted a position as co-department head for English 10 in September (where I will be heading the boy's campus). My parents, if anything on their visit, fed me well. We ate every possible type of food available to us (which spanned from Chinese to Japanese, Korean, Mexican, Italian, and "Western"). Qingdao was a cool city with a very ... read more

Mundanity? I feel as though it suits what the past couple of months have been since returning from holiday. I was sick with a lung infection for about 4 weeks (check out my exciting lung x-ray in the photos), and this weekend I was finally struck by a rather horrific stomach bug that has been plaguing our school. It was the first weekend I finally felt well enough to go out since my lung infection, so I was all dressed up, and headed by cab into Dalian, only to arrive at the bar where my friends were meeting to discover that there was no possible way I could keep my dinner down. So, head between my knees, I took the $20 cabride 40 minutes back home without ever exiting. Mundanity, indeed. There are a little less ... read more

The five week break from school flew by, leaving me with a whirlwind of memories from the places I visited across Southeast Asia. I'll give a very condensed version of events, and let some of the pictures do the talking. We left Dalian on January 19th, and flew to Hangzhou, just outside of Shanghai. While we were really only there a few hours (discounting sleep), we managed to squeeze in a boatride across the picturesque (and famous) lake before heading out to the airport to catch our plane to Kuala Lumpur. I'd never travelled with a group of teachers before, and found the plane ride to be rather enjoyable as we ended up writing stories and games on paper which, while incredibly nerdy, helped to pass the time! After arriving in KL, our group disbanded, and ... read more