Dalian Baolian Hotel

... jackets are IN too! Find the puffiest, brightest, shiniest jacket ever to be cool. But its even better if its bright purple! In Dalian, purple is the hottest color right now, your nothing without purple in your wardrobe!!

Fur! Fur is so hot right now. If your not wearing your puffy shinny jacket, your wearing the mangiest, ugliest colored fur you can find! Make sure ...

... maybe Canada. He worked for a guy but the guy stole his recipes and Eddie left. Then he came back and opened "The real Eddies" Not sure if all that is correct but hopefully it is close. I guess there is another restaurant in Kai fa qu called "Eddies" Anyway, he serves western food and has a delicious bakery. I had some of the chocolate chip cookies. They were tasty.

Again, back to the story, we went to ...

... and the sand is white. My standards are too high and Dalian fell way short. I caught a cab back to the city and watched episodes of the Beijing soap followed by more Korean food. This turned out to be just what I needed, so it was a good day after all, despite not really seeing eye to eye with Dalian.

Later that night, I got a text message from Xiao Ma asking where I was and what I was up to. He said he was at Erdaohai with his dad and missed me a lot. I ...

... of the owner, who is also the school’s librarian, told us how long it took him to teach the local bakery to make real hamburger buns, both in shape and taste—they couldn’t understand why he didn’t want sugar in the recipe like their sweet buns.

It is amazing what kind of impact ‘comfort’ food can have when you are travelling, or away from home.

Yum... cheese.

~Ashley

... to look over all the 'opportunities' I was looking for something that would be small, and over quick—the festival itself was three weeks long.

One of the roles was to assist with the Opening Ceremony... which totally fit the bill. Small setup and only scheduled to last ten minutes. Well, I was kind of right.

The students who were responsible for this part were sweet, but extremely indecisive, which meant that we kept having meeting, after ...

... time.

But, to accurately demonstrate the era we were teaching—The Stock Market Crash of '29—suddenly the stocks started to drop, and of course the banker recalls all the loans... Still more frantic trading and the prices keep falling. The game ends when stocks are worthless, people have been cleaned out by the bank, and thus the discussion begins.

Who says that there is no capitalism in China? The students’ awareness of the emotions ...

... they were almost hit by a passing truck. They resulting picture is pretty funny, Heidi, the closest to the truck looks panicked, but Daniella looks like she is laughing at her.

It was a long day, but very enjoyable. When we got back to the hotel, and we were taking stock of all we had bought, I was definitely out shopped by the others, but when I counted what money I had left, versus what I had spent, I was short Y800! What a drag. The only thing I could ...

... us, and our original sign was pointing us in the wrong direction, so we walked in a big circle which was actually a good thing because we got to see everything else quickly. The panda, when we finally saw him, was a bit of a disappointment. There was one bear, he was really small, and his eye was all messed up. I think he might have had a cataract or something. It looked like there used to be other cages for more pandas, but ...

... of all the characters that set the tome for the performance. Then the main players have a say and the music starts. The music is percussion with strings, and the overall sound effect falls between cars skidding to a stop just before impact and breaking glass. That is until the women start to sing, then it gets weird. More like a cat with a problem. And it's all paced by bamboo perscussion, which is easily the ...

... 14 (Beijing departure) to February 14 (Dalian return) it was a little less than six thousand yuan (about 750 benjies). The time spent before that traveling with Robert...well, I'm still trying to figure that one out... P.S. The photos are from March 22...not dreary February...