Blogs from Dalian, Liaoning, China, Asia - page 8

It has been a long time since I wrote an entry here. Much has changed. For starters, I just saw Blindness (like I just-turned-off-the-DVD-player just saw it), this movie I'm sure most of you have heard of about a city whose inhabitants all suddenly become mysteriously blind, and then devolve into a Lord of the Flies-type scenario. I have found that I am very impressionable when it comes to movies, books, and music, and after watching 90 minutes of this depressingly realistic display of human fortitude and decrepitude, I was feeling a bit of resentment towards our species. Then I got a phone call from one of my Chinese coworkers, whose new policy as a whole is to take me out to eat Ma La Tang every chance they get for the next week. The reason ... read more

Been a long time, shouldn'ta left you without a witty and insightful blog post to step to Part One: Medieval Storks One of my coworkers James, is a 50-something-year-old man who is currently starting his fourth or fifth life here in China. He works at the downtown school, so I don't see him that often, but he's definitely a trip. He's been here in Dalian for about two years, and he has a Chinese wife. A few weeks ago, she gave birth to their first child (not James' first, but his first Chinese baby), and since this was the first time I have ever had a chance to celebrate the occasion of one of my friends having a baby, I decided to go down to the hospital after work on the day she was born. My ... read more

THOUGHTS IN: 1) Regular letter size (A4) paper is significantly longer than Canadian letter sized paper. I know. i was so amazed that i believed it warranted the spot of #1 on the "China thoughts list" 2) boys smell. they smell fully, they eat meat that smells funny. ... AND they're boys are gross. I gave my boys a test, and i see a student with his finger up his nose diggig' away, THEN, he switches hands, and starts cleaning out his other nostril. These gunked-up fingers then make their way onto the test, then later, i get handed back a test with brownish yellow-green stains on it. Ew. 2b) Boys here always seem to have stomach aches. Every class i get a kid running up to me, holding his stomach, and a giganto roll of ... read more

As I'm sure most of you folks back home are aware, Thanksgiving was last week. Here in China, obviously, it's not much of a holiday, but those of us teaching English to Chinese kids did our best to make it one. For us, Thursday is a work day, but thanks to the tireless organizing efforts of our resident Holiday Coordinator (teacher by day; my own term), we had a Thanksgiving feast nonetheless. The foreign staff all were required to make a dish; I was assigned the green beans (exactly 4 pounds of them, according to the email listing our school's feasting needs). We ate lunch here at the Kaifaqu school, with all of our staff, Chinese and American, including the people from downtown, which is like a 45-minute commute away. That and the somewhat dictatorial form ... read more

We joined the biker crowd in October. Who would have thought that this would have been our mode of transportation in China! Many of the locals and quite a few of the teaching staff have bikes, which really opens up your world. We have seen so much already that we never would have been able to on foot or by train. It is quite the sight for see us on the road - white haired Rick driving along with Gail gazing around taking pictures on the back. Too funny! The latest trip to the market was the best - it was freezing cold this morning and very windy. We have only peanut butter and a couple of onions in the fridge. So we have to go the market and have decided that being really cold for ... read more