Boomtimehotel Dalian

... mushroom. OR, shave off one side of your hair, and have a long emo fringe that covers your face. (These styles were very popular at the hairdresser I went to (where no one spoke English) so as you can imagine, I was very nervous. But coming out looking like I just come from a preppy private school in the English Countryside is better. Phew way to dodge a bullet Peter J.)

Ok, I did it, I ate some western food. I still haven't eaten at McDonalds or KFC yet. KFC is everywhere. I wonder if they were the first American chain to come to China. McDonalds are prolific as well. No, my roommate and his friends wanted to go out for a western meal and we headed down to a place called "The Real Eddies" Not sure of the story behind the name. But here goes - Eddie was trained as a cook/chef in the ...

... food.

The next morning I went to a café to use the wireless, then walked downtown. On the way, I decided Dalian was a bit too hot, icky and modern for my liking. Worse, the air was filthy, so when I got to the bus station, I bought tickets to Dandong, for the next day, then headed out to Beichuidao, supposedly one of Dalian’s better beaches. The drive out there was actually pretty nice, but the beach itself was crowded with people and trash and the ...

... on a new camera - it's a Canon Powershot SX200 IS - to replace the ageing Casio that I bought in Japan in 2004.

On Wednesday evening we had dinner with a customer of Wei's whose daughter will be going to London in September to study for her A Levels, then hopefully stay on to University.

Thursday - today we had to be up early since the heating was being replaced in the flat, starting at 7am. There was a communal ...

... didn’t fess up right at the beginning. She was happy with her massage, but after some comparisons I definitely think I got the more skilled masseuse.

To top off the evening, we headed to Susan’s, one of the only true western restaurants in this part of China. I went all out and ordered an orange Julius and a poutine. It is not quite the same, but a pretty darn close replica, especially for China. The ...

... ripped off like foreigners always are... bargain hard.

Finding the ‘mall’ itself wasn’t too ************ce we went through the doors—it was like entering a giant, six storey flea market. We wandered, and wandered, and finally came across some stalls that offered clothing, but none had plain t-shirts. After what felt like hours, but was probably closer to one, we found a place that had a few options... We explained we wanted 15 black ...

... br>Before we arrived in China, the one thing we were told was that it was really hard to get the students actively involved in the class—that they remained stoic, sombre, and serious. That was NOT our experience. With very little prompting, students were up, out of their seats and rapidly trading, wheeling and dealing.

One student I watched kept making deals right before whatever stock he sold went up by hundreds of dollars, groaning at his misfortune ...

... Bernini sculpture, Caravaggio painting, Leonardo precision have never been seriously contested, except among themselves. This sense of style is geographic with the "boot" as well as the beauty of its beaches, valleys and mountains. Italy's architecture is still driven by the fact that successful building techniques are evident everywhere. It's ...

... who presumable have learned chinese). the news is all written by chinese writers and gone over by a communist party representative no doubt. it must be a strange job to have, to come from the west and to be the mouthpiece of the communist party's international news service. but then...it's not like western corporate news companies don't have a similar sort of process...the news coverage in the US in the years following 9/11 must have made the chinese government feel right at home.

... skills. I teach four sets of classes that meet three times a week. Each class session is two hours long for a total of twenty-four hours per week. The school is actually located in a hotel on the fourth floor and the classrooms I teach in are just tiny hotel rooms without the furniture. There are anywhere from 10 to eighteen students that attend my class. Sometimes the hotel will turn on the air conditioner and sometimes they won't. The AC is very low and with eighteen students packed ...