Gloria Plaza Hotel Dalian

... meal cost 32 yuan. When I compare it to American prices, it is less than $5 so I should be fine with that. But to compare it to China meal prices it is quite expensive.

As a bonus I am adding some KFC pictures. This is taken in Dalian and my western friends call it the KFC church. Because ... it looks like a Church. None of the others look like this one. So, I wanted to share it with you. Enjoy...

... a close look at the blue street sign and you will see the road to the seashore bathing place. That is the beach to you and me. I really can’t figure out why China doesn’t hire a few foreigners who can speak and read Chinese. Their full time job could be to translate for signs and advertisements. They seem to want to have things translated into English, so why not do it correctly? Oh well. I can’t do it so I will just take pictures of the signs that amuse me.

I ...

... unprovoked daily phone call from a massuer (prostitute) offering her services. Every Caucasian I saw in the city seemed to be from Russia, perhaps unsurprisingly given its proximity. I have to say that most of the Russian men almost looked like caricatures of masculinity. Evidently I don't look like this: one taxi driver immediately identified me as a Briton (which is itself unusual, as I'm usually assumed to be American).

Dalian, Liaoning Province, China mert1149

... a big pang. So it wasn’t just me who felt that way about them. They missed me too. I told him I missed him too and missed Songpan. He asked me if I would ever come back again. I said yes, definitely, but I would not have any time until winter vacation. Chuffed, he told me to come to his family’s home when I came back in winter. I was touched. Goodnights were said. I fell asleep in a room in Dalian, but I dreamt of mountains, friends and horses on the other ...

... I was caught off guard. All he said was "relax, you must relax." I almost laughed, but did manage to relax.

Without a doubt, it was one of the most amazing massages I have ever had, head to toe.

Unbeknownst to me, Kirsty had called ahead and specifically requested one of the fellows who is particularly well skilled at targeting troubled areas, and is also blind. I felt guilty after when she told me, and ...

... br>
He picked up his calculator and typed in 60 x 15... he wanted Y60 PER shirt, not total. The Y900 was more than our entire t-shirt and printing budget, the other student had gotten the first 30 shirts for less than Y180, I was mad. We tried our best to argue that we had agreed to Y60 we were even willing to pay a little more, but to absolutely no avail, and we ended up walking away empty handed. Here I thought I was good at negotiating.

~Ashley

It is Heidi first full day of teaching, and we are launching our Stock Market Game. The premise is simple, randomly handout six cards to every student that is either $100 or a stock (A,B,C,D) explain to them the goal of the game is to amass the most wealth that they can. It works best with two people, because one person can be in charge of randomly changing the price of stocks (all going up) and the other can be the bank, loaning out $1000 for every $100 of insurance ...

... 2.068 $7.043 GDP - real growth rate: 2.2% 1.9% 11.4% GDP - per capita (PPP): $46,000 $31,000 $5,300 Budget, revenue, trillion $: $2.568 $0.976 $ 0.640 expenditures: trillion (2007 est.) $2.731 $1.029 $ 0.634 Unemployment rate: (2007 est.) 4.6% 6.7% 4% (urban) Electricity - trillion kwh (2005): 3.816 .3071 2.859 (2007 est.) Oil - million bbl/day ...

... that generate tourist dollars). dalian is known as a bit of a seaside resort...and i decided that i should at least see some of the waterside. so i set out to unlock the mystery of the buses again...much easier to deal with sans bag in the bright sunshine. i found the water, and the aquarium, and even the warship in the end. the hostel is no longer in existence...but the hosteling international sticker is still affixed to the boat. bus 712 goes nowhere near the the ...

... to do, however being scabby backpackers we refused to pay much money and ended up with a ticket that we didn't even know whether we'd get a mattress on the floor let alone a bed, so we bought some newspaper just in case! Later that day we went down to the beach area of Dalian and finally found what I had been looking for - a hostel on a boat! For the great price of about 1.50 we got a bed in the hostel on a warship ...