Dalian Central Plaza Hotel

... tortilla chips with the meal. The enchiladas were pretty good.<br><br>Now part of the reason I don't eat western food is the price. Let me give you an example. On my way home from school I have found two places where I especially like to eat. I can get a bowl of noodles in hot soup for 6 yuan. Or I can stop at the kiosk and get a serving of fried rice or fried noodles for 3 - 5 yuan. Remember 7 yuan = $1. My ...

... saw some security guards sitting in front of their little station. So I asked Wo keyi ma (Can I?) They yelled &#8211; Bu keyi (No you can&#8217;t) Clear enough for me. And I headed down the hill and back home. Maybe I can get up to the space ship before I leave. The ride down the mountain was definitely more fun than the ride up.<br><br>On the way back to the apartment I had to stop for one more picture. One thing you do notice here is interesting translations on signs and shirts ...

... rather ironic and confusing symbolism, but perhaps memory fails: please do comment on this if you know about such biological matters. In Yantai I'm staying in paradoxically the cheapest but nicest hotel of my current trip. And I've just had a divine bowl of fish-and-pickled-cabbage soup. The restaurant was small and very scruffy, but the food was glorious, and the place was filled with a charming, down-to-earth family simplicity. So all is well.

... for a while. I decided I ought to call the hotel I had booked online for my stay in Dalian to explain the situation and ask if they would be able to keep my reservation. They are only supposed to keep rooms until 18:00 and I was worried the plane had been delayed for long enough that I would not make it in time. The woman I talked to was a stupid cow. I don&#8217;t usually call complete strangers stupid cows, but she really was. Instead of a polite refusal, she told ...

... didn&#8217;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.<br><br>To top off the evening, we headed to Susan&#8217;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 ...

... I felt more at home. So I tried to encourage them to think about design, what they want the t-shirt to say, or represent... I drew an example on the board of a simple combination of &#8216;E&#8217; and &#8216;A&#8217; and that was it, they were sold. I would have changed things around and been a little more creative if I knew I was suggesting ideas rather than suggesting examples... Oh well. Next challenge, teach the students how to use InDesign from scratch in ...

... in that first class was the super smart student who always has all the right answers in class. He was so dejected by not having all the rules, and not succeeding like some of the other students, but it was fun to tease and use him as an example of the many proud people who were left to fend for their lives in any way they could. <br><br>I think it was a great lesson. And we successfully repeated it many more times throughout the day, and in other classes...<br><br>Ashley

... The new nightclub next to my apartment chose a cheesy motorcycle made of discarded auto and industrial parts. It's particularly awful - worse than the life size sea cucumber - but at least it's an expression. There are several monumental pieces in Dalian, probably a dozen or more larger than, say, 20 feet high. The City was designed by Russians in 1904 with the help of French architects who laid out a European scheme of interconnecting public spaces ...

... with trucks as a last resort. It's a dramatic example of why China uses only 10% of the energy per capita that the US uses, although Dalian is surely at the top of China's scale. Their infrastructure for food and staples is minimal, transport is optimized for human delivery, and manpower substitutes for refrigeration, security, handling and processing. This particular market, like almost every activity in public, is cleaned up daily, by hand ...

... Just recently, China has passed a new policy which allows married couples who are "an only child" to have two children. As well, the one-child policy only applies to the Han Chinese, which makes up over 95% of China's population. The other 56 recognized minorities of China are allowed to have as many children as they like. No Water - August 16, 2005 Yesterday morning a major water pipe broke in our district leaving hundreds of thousands of people without water ...